>(I feel a ridiculous need to be clever with titles…but what can you do with a post that solely exists to prove that I accomplished items 6, 7, and 8 on the 23 Things challenge?)

I fooled around with RSS feeds and set up a few on Bloglines. I added my favorite comic, Dykes to Watch Out For, as well as the library comic Unshelved. I’ve always enjoyed Jessamyn West‘s writings, and have also added The Information Literacy Land of Confusion as I am currently teaching info literacy classes at SRJC.

I find it REALLY clunky to check feeds with a Web interface – it’s not any easier than just having links on my personal homepage, which is what I’d been doing before – but I am still running an ancient version of Windows that will not support programs like SharpReader. I’ve purchased Windows XP and a newer version of MS Office, but keep putting off installing them until I have an entire day in which I have nothing mission-critical to do. I much prefer to have stuff come to me via email, rather than have to actively go look at it.

I looked at the Websites for the various libraries listed under Thing #8, and I have to say I am underwhelmed…it seems there is a lot of excitement around using new technologies just because they are new, without stopping to think if they are really going to improve communications, do an important job more effectively, etc. I really need to be convinced that there is a good reason for me to use something like Second Life or RSS feeds – a reason, that is, besides merely being “cool.” I had my first look at Second Life yesterday during an SLA chapter board meeting; again, another cool way to waste time but I really don’t see that there’s any THERE there.

We’re also working on using wiki software for some of our chapter business. That is showing a lot of potential.