Rethinking overthinking rethinking.....

It has taken me two months to decide that the most appropriate thing to post is this very simple tip, which I will share, and then I'll explain why it took me so long...

Do you find it hard to keep up on important issues if you have to regularly remind yourself to go looking for updates? Well, have the updates come to you! Want to anticipate your users' information needs, meaning know their needs before they do? Use Google Alerts as your foreknowledge. Suggested topics for alerts include the name of your agency, people or issues in the news you want to keep tabs on, and even your own name. Be sure to specify “Smith, Jane” and well as “Jane Smith” if you want a comprehensive list of what they are saying about you, as well as the acronym(s) for your organization. Google Alerts is a good way of keeping yourself up-to-date without having to “pull” information off the Web; instead, Google will “push” the information to you.

So, why did it take me so long to post this little tidbit? Well, suffice it to say that I was rethinking my role in the blogosphere, which led to overthinking it, and then rethinking it again. It's really no more complicated than my wanting to have something really important to say to other embedded librarians and failing miserably to squeeze anything out at the end of the semester (including the much-anticipated conclusion of my semester-long comparison of Digital Libraries with History of the Book). And then it occurred to me...

What is something simple I can share that makes my life easier here? In preparing for my annual performance review I wrote what I considered to be a risky but genuine paragraph about what I have contributed to our institutional knowledge simply by thinking to put Google Alerts on many phrases and names that we need to be "in the know" about around here. It is such a simple thing that makes such a big difference...and the feedback you get from people who think you're doing magic tricks is unbeatable.

There is a learning curve, too, to getting the most out of Google Alerts, even though it is immediately satisfying. After five months of practice, I am getting more savvy about which terms to follow, which items to pass along, which alerts to read more carefully than others. If you have used Google Alerts to your professional advantage, please share your experiences by commenting on this post.

And, as always, keep smiling!