{"id":1438,"date":"2016-01-19T09:30:20","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T09:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/?p=1438"},"modified":"2016-01-18T09:22:26","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T09:22:26","slug":"keeping-up-to-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/web\/2016\/01\/19\/keeping-up-to-date\/","title":{"rendered":"Keeping Up to Date"},"content":{"rendered":"

In our Making New Year\u2019s Resolutions<\/a> post we shared our resolutions to improve websites and the services we provide to web editors. Mine was to develop a process for keeping up to date with advice from web industry experts.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve already subscribed to a number of blogs and newsletters via email, and I read lots of articles and books but this is often sporadic and fragmented. When I do read something useful I often don\u2019t do anything with that information, so it just sits in my inbox or on my desk.<\/p>\n

I aim to come up with a systematic process for collating, reading and, most importantly, using the information<\/strong> I read to help inform our work. In this post I\u2019m going to explain how I\u2019ll tackle this.<\/p>\n

Collating articles<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve set a rule in my inbox so that emails from blogs and websites I\u2019ve subscribed to go directly to a folder for web articles. This will limit the disruption to my workflow.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also created a Trello board<\/a> to help organise my reading. It contains different lists for different web topics that I read about such as content strategy, writing for the web, user research etc.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve then dedicated some time on Friday mornings to go through the web articles folder and skim read articles to determine whether they will be useful. If an article looks relevant I’ll create a card in the relevant list in my Trello board for it and I’ll include the link to the article.<\/p>\n

Reading articles<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve also\u00a0blocked out some time<\/strong> every Monday afternoon to read the web articles I\u2019ve collected from the previous week. Since the articles have already been categorised in Trello, I can quickly select\u00a0articles that are most relevant to the projects I\u2019m working on that week.<\/p>\n

Allocating a dedicated time will allow me to focus solely on the article, as it will become another piece of planned work.<\/p>\n

Using the information<\/h2>\n

After reading the article I will then use it in some way to inform our work. So, depending on the nature of the information, I might:<\/p>\n