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Librarian of all trades…


Master of none! 

I’m haunted, you know. Haunted, by RSS feeds, from sites that I monitor, taunting me with their unread status. And for the bulk of them, the magical “mark all as read” button doesn't work, as I need to go through them all and check if there’s anything relevant for work….and work covers a LOT of topics!

Some of the legal topics I need to be aware of for work reasons (for Scottish, English, Welsh, Irish and European jurisdictions, where appropriate):

banking, finance, environment and pollution, construction, tax, corporate rescue and insolvency, planning, commercial litigation, employment, planning, and intellectual property.

And all their many, many sub-areas!

Library topics I need to be aware of for professional reasons:

UK law libraries, Scottish law libraries, international law libraries, UK public libraries, UK academic libraries, Scottish public libraries, Scottish academic libraries.

Add all these areas together, and throw in varying sources that constantly churn info out, from Government sites, to newspapers and blog, and I'm always running just to stay still. You know it’s bad, when you look at your feed reader and catch yourself thinking “oh, there’s ONLY 200 unread items, that’s good!”

But then I get an enquiry, and come back to the feeds an hour later, to find it’s now 300 unread items. And another enquiry means it creeps up further…and by Monday, with the 2 days of the weekend meaning I’m leaving it untended, it’s often 800-900 unread items.

And I’m going on holiday now…when I come back, after a total of 10 days away from my feed reader, will it have snowballed out of control? I know I’ll be faced by Greader with that horrible taunt: “1,000+ items” in the bold that means unread. Mean, mean Greader!

Although, on the good side, I am pretty well informed and quite aware of the basics of almost anything to do with libraries, and commercial law in the UK...to the extent where I sometimes think that information is pushing other, more important stuff out of my head. Like the lyrics of 1980s pop songs.

Altogether now: Ah-gah-DOO-DOO-DOO, push pineapple, shake a tree....
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Comments

Hazel said…
lesYou are not on your own. Careers information also covers a wide variety of topics. Company information, statistics on labour markets in UK and Europe, education in all its guises, comments on job links, voluntary work (not just relevant in libraries), data management, data protection, copyright. I can't go on!!
http://adsetsinformationweblog.blogspot.co.uk/ will provide you with details.
5 April 2012 at 13:03
Tixylix said…
arg, me too. I try not to look at the 1000+ thingy and just make my way though 'favourite' blogs first and then eventually get to the rest when I have some time off... You can't keep up with everything, I spose, but it seems we all try to!
14 April 2012 at 21:12
Michael said…
Don't feel too bad... whenever I get the 1000+ message I just go on a 'mark all as read' spree.

If there's a crucial nugget of info that I miss in doing so, I guess I'll find out about it some other way. If I don't, it can't have been too crucial in the first place. (At least that's the theory...)

Sometimes life's too short to worry about these things (or so I desperately keep telling myself!!)
21 April 2012 at 22:57
Dumpling said…
Unfortunately, these aren't feeds I read for pleasure, so there's no chance of using "mark all as read". If the fee earners miss that important bit of info buried in the mass of posts, then that's my fault. And I can't leave any for later - they're all needed NOW.
23 April 2012 at 09:55
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