Thing 23: The ultimate research tool

Reflect on and blog about the Ultimate Research Tool. Do you agree with our choice and what role does the tool play in your life? Will you use it differently in the future now you’ve taken this programme and watched the video above?

Absolutely agreed with the choice of the library as the ultimate research tool, though very conscious of falling short myself in the delivery of the service described in Georgina's post.

Also, take some time to reflect and blog about the overall 23 Research Things programme. What were the top things you learned? What Things were you not so convinced by? What tools and concepts will you take forward with you as you move on through your life and career?

The top things I learned -- the ones I will take forward -- will have been the sources of good pictures in Thing 14, Qualtrics as a survey tool from Thing 17, and Zotero for references from Thing 21.  I had better also say, having presented Clare Sansom as the scientist in my life in my blog post for Thing 16, that I was delighted by the pleasure Clare took in Altmetrics as demonstrated by me after Thing 22.

Thing 16 was about citizen science and the democratisation of science.  My post on that point could be described as hopeful but anxious.  Democracy's way of turning itself inside out has been hard not to notice in 2017.

Thing 22: Tracking success

Explore the analytics section of your Twitter account. What sort of things did you find out?

Good question.  I've been at the Twitter Analytics addictively since it appeared, and Georgina's post is valuable for urging me to explore the section more comprehensively.  I can confirm the report by 'Librarian at heart' that tweets generally get more seen and more responded to if they have hashtags and pictures in them.  And, in a subjective impression I haven't statistically confirmed, Twitter Analytics' list of my top tweets seems to have a lot of those other blue things in it -- links and Twitter handles.

The blue/popularity correlation reflects the experience of 'A waterfall of consciousness', that tweets did well when they reworked other tweets or combined subjects. I fear I cannot replicate that post's experience of success by a tweet "that tackled a controversial subject with a negative bent".

But it's gratifying to see that my own top tweets include this one:

Aidan Baker @AidanBaker  Aug 20

Tnx Retford pharmacist, who didn't have my medication in stock so rang Retford's other pharmacists till one had it. Is this standard?

No blue text in that one; the tweet was presumably popular by the pharmacist's merit alone.  Quite right.

Track a URL using TweetReach. Try experimenting using a URL from an existing tweet

I have signed up to TweetReach.  I tracked the fortunes of a couple of hashtags I have tweeted about in the last week, but I can see I would need to be using Twitter more seriously before my use of this service became illuminating.

Add the Altmetric bookmarklet to your browser and test it out on some academic articles (either your own or from someone you know).

Use of this tool requires greater seriousness still.  True, it will tell you how often things have been tweeted, but the things in question have to be, as noted the comment of 'Librarian at heart', of a kind to have a Digital Object Identifier before Altmetric will work.  I got that, but I was slower to twig was that you had to have the article itself on the screen first -- the presence of a DOI wouldn't magically make an abstract or ResearchGate post Altmetricable.

For me, Altmetric would be a thing to recommend to researchers, not one that I'm likely to apply often to publications I have seen.  Like the other tools surveyed in this post, Altmetric will tell you where a publication has been.  It says less about what the publication did when it got there.

Thing 21: Managing citations

The post behind this assignment sends us to Zotero, ORCID, and Google Scholar.

Zotero

This round of 23things has taken me further with Zotero than I've been before. In my 2010 post, I wrote that I had attempted to use Zotero a couple of years previously, but been deterred by the facts that "I had to download Zotero machine by machine, and could use it only with Firefox".  For this '23 research things' assignment, done on my home laptop, I've succeeded in embarking on a Zotero library via Chrome, and ventured an in-text citation in Open Office Writer.  By the time you read this, I may have seen how I get on using my workplace computer's Firefox and MS Word.

I expect that my two principal uses of Zotero will be these: 

(i) to keep track of material used in Alumni Festival presentations, as in my abortive experiment of 2008 

(ii) to help any library users in their own explorations of referencing software.

ORCID

I have set up an ORCID account for myself in the same spirit as Librarian at heart, who signed up for ORCID even "while I may not be publishing papers any time soon", and with similar motivation (cf. (ii) above): "it’s useful to know how ORCID works as the University is trying to persuade everyone to get one, and it’s good to be able to offer advice based on experience when people ask".  And, like ResearchGate, Academi.edu, LinkedIn and some less serious sites, ORCID will be a way of tracking down visitors, donors, and other library users we might lose sight of.

Google Scholar

I have set up a Google Scholar account for myself, again with no prospect of papers any time soon.  I don't intend making it public.  I was glad to find that Google Scholar offered one publication of mine (amongst those by several other people with similar names) for inclusion in my citations list, a gratifying discovery even though the number of its citations stands at zero. 

Thing 20: Presenting data

I must admit I've never had a favourite chart of choice, nor can I immediately recall a data presentation either bad or good enough to stick in my memory.  But I have tried out one of the data visualisation tools mentioned in Georgina's post. I went for easel.ly, the one that had been used by the other participants, following their praise for its ease of use.  It took me a certain amount of trial and error to use it, especially as I didn't see a 'Help' page.  However, I hope you agree I have succeeded in making a Venn diagram of data from my blog post of January 2011, on poetry competitions.

The data concerns my poetic output from 1977 to 2011, as recorded in the card index I've kept since 1994.  Of a total 218 indexed poems, I counted 95 that had been specially written for competitions, 67 that had been published, and 25 that had been both written for competitions and published. Making the Venn diagram required some revisiting of 'O'-level maths, to determine whether the radii of the smaller circles should measure against the large circle in the ratios 95/218 and 67/218, or in ratios of the squares of 95/218 and 67/218, or in the ratios of the square roots of 95/218 and 67/218.  But I think I got there.

I have not used Microsoft Excel's SmartArt facility, but I suppose I had better try it some day, if I'm going to make a habit of Venn diagrams.
.

Thing 19: Text and data mining

I've seen Georgina's post on this topic.  Its most important advice is likely to be this:

"If you wish to use TDM in your work, we highly recommend that you ensure you are doing so legally and that you contact likeminded folk such as the team at ContentMine to ask for advice."

Will do.  My own post, like those of other participants, has to be short for want of experience.  I have not had occasion to use data-mining in my own work, but I now know that any research query that sounds as though data mining would help towards the answer is a matter for ContentMine.

Meanwhile, I suppose I get a frisson of what data mining is like when I dabble in Google Books' Ngram Viewer.  This enables the user to search vast numbers of books for the occurrence of phrases.  By it I have satisfied my idle curiosity as to the frequency of use of the locution "And Oh!" (it seems to have peaked in 1842 and then slowly declined), and the relative frequency of the phrases "railway station" and "train station" (the latter overtook the former in 1994, and peaked in 2000; they now seem to be rapidly converging again).  But I am not an expert user of this site, and I increased my knowledge of it around 150% in the past hour, revisiting it for this post.

Thing 17: Survey tools (i)

This post is an interim progress report.  I have, as Georgina bids us, applied for a Qualtrics account; I have made a survey using Google Forms while waiting for Qualtrics to arrive, and tweeted links to said survey.  Later, I will do a 'Thing 17: Survey tools (ii)' post, reporting on how I find Qualtrics and what answers, if any, my Google Forms survey has drawn.

The survey takes its cue from the 2017 Libraries at Cambridge conference. Registrants at the conference were invited to indicate what their superhero powers were, and a few did.  But the conference included much -- a panel discussion and a well-received keynote address -- on the theme of failure.  My survey asks respondents about superpowers they don't have.

Reading the posts of other '23 research things' participants has been most instructive, particularly Luther's notes about the limitations of surveying as a technique and the usefulness of other methods. He is quite right to note the ease with which spurious survey returns can be created; conversely, a toxic situation can be inflamed by insinuations that some survey returns are bogus, even if the insinuations have no basis in fact.  Luther's reference to 'grounded theory' took me on to unfamiliar territory, and I look forward to exploring this further.  Trying to relate it to my my own experience, I suppose it was something like grounded theorizing when I examined the free-text responses to a Haddon Library user survey, and when I asked library users informally why they thought a particular teaching session had had zero take-up.  In both cases I was trying to see if any patterns emerged.

Of these things, more when Qualtrics is in.  And any superpower survey responses.

Thing 16: Crowdsourcing and citizen science

Crowdsourcing

Georgina's post for this Thing has led me to re-familiarise myself with Kickstarter and Patreon, on both of which I have responded to appeals in recent years.  So far as I can tell, the main difference between the two sites is reflected in their names: Kickstarter enables contributions to get projects started, Patreon enables long-term support.  Composer Kathryn Rose has released some good music, and music in progress, via Patreon, and interesting accounts on her blog and Twitter stream about how the site impinges on the creative process and her business model.

I can see I'd do well to follow more on both sites.

"Do you have an idea for a project that could be crowdfunded?" asks the post.  Sorry, no.  I am intrigued to read the caveats from A Waterfall of Consciousness and Library Spiel about the risk that crowdfunded projects may repel friends and regular funders, especially noting that in Library Spiel's case this caveat is evidently based on experience.  Here's an idea that I did have at one time; it has now run out of steam, and crowdfunding is not sought.  I had better admit that my own kin never thought much of the project.

Citizen science

"What do you think about the democratisation of research and science through citizen science projects?"

It's probably a good idea.  Here's an article my science-journalist wife wrote about developments in this area some four years ago.  Note that the article doesn't present citizen science as an irreversible triumph: in 2013, chemistry was less keen on the idea.  Despite the successful application of citizen-science practice in some chemical research, the question was "Should chemistry join the gang?" and reservations were quoted from some chemists.  I don't know if it's significant that Zooniverse's current project list includes no reference to chemistry.

Related to both chemistry and citizen science is another movement drawn to my attention by Clare: that of the expert patient.  A flagship for this movement is Patientslikeme.  New research mentioned on this site on the day I write, 1 January 2017, includes developments in clinical trials, new ways of indicating levels of pain, and improvements in patients' self-management and self-efficacy.

The question uses the word 'democratisation'.  Democratisation is the benefit that citizen science confers.  Research abc writes that "Hopefully more people appreciating this process will increase public confidence in scientific statements."  

That's better than an unquestioning acceptance of what experts say.  And better than a generic distrust of experts.

I suppose citizen science stands up better against sociopaths and demagogues than those other states.  But I bet a determined troublemaker could spoil even citizen science.

Thing 15: Collaboration tools

Evernote

Of the three tools described in the post, Evernote is the only one with which I was unfamiliar.  I have taken it for a spin, listing the roads one would use for a car journey from a Yorkshire place to a Berkshire place while adopting a selective approach to motorways. But I, like Librarian at Heart, know the value of "the very low-tech but aesthetically pleasing option of an actual paper and pen notebook".  I can whip out a notebook and pen quicker than I can do the login(s) necessary for reaching the Evernote app.  The notebook, being a stage removed from the online world, is a little bit more secure.  The "elephants graveyard of notes I can’t understand anymore" recognised by Research abc would, in a notebook, be likely to have at least the virtue of chronological order.

I hope my view does not sound too much like the claim, in a 1990s spoof, that undesirable results from a mythical Microsoft product were "a feature not a bug".

I will continue trying with Evernote and see if I get to like it any better.

Doodle

I told of my enthusiasm for Doodle in the 2010 round of 23things.  I continue to use it today.  Doodle is not to be blamed for the user error of forgetting that anything requiring a Doodle poll probably needs more than a Doodle poll: a poll to set up a meeting will not necessarily ensure the meeting takes place, and is not a major action on the issue behind the meeting.

Google Drive

I use Google Drive extensively.  It is very helpful for the planning committee of an event, allowing details of venue &c to be circulated rapidly and acquire modifications and comments.  I'm not sure of the best answer to the data-protection questions that Google Drive can present.  Is there a place where private individuals can store things like a Christmas card list or address book online?

Thing 14: Sourcing and using good images

Write a blogpost about reusing images and what you have done in the past 

I found myself nodding in agreement with Researchabc and Thelibrarianerrant, both of whom owned to a measure of restraint in the use of images.  I excuse my own lack of pictures, when necessary, by reference to television jokes about the Lord Privy Seal.

I have used images in the Haddon Library's PowerPoints for presentations at induction time and in the Alumni Festival.  I'm not posting these, as they would make no sense without the accompanying spoken text, but I can say that I've paid due respect to copyright, and enjoyed searching Flickr's Creative Commons area for images to use.

Find a really good picture that is shareable and embed it in your blogpost with appropriate credit

New Bridge by Cycling Man  CC BY-NC-ND

The picture shows Christchurch Bridge in Reading.  I haven't yet photographed this bridge myself, or cycled over it, but I have kinsfolk in Reading, and probably will do those things.

Write about how you found using the tools to find images and crediting the image itself

My exploration of the sites recommended in the blog post was unsystematic, with searches at different times for images of fire, demolition, rivers, cathedrals, and bears.  The picture I eventually chose for this blog was from none of those searches: I returned to the familiar Flickr Creative Commons area and looked for that specific bridge, a kind of substitute for pedalling a bike over it.

I hope the licence is correctly made.  It's not my first use of a CC licence, but as this post is an exercise, I looked at Creative Commons' own site for i's to dot and t's to cross, and believe I have done so.

Exploring the blog post's other recommendations was fun. I expect to use Pixabay, Unsplash, Morguefile, and Photopin again, next time I'm looking for pictures in earnest, and I may recommend them to friends making posters and church magazines.  I'm afraid I still can't see how to search Travel Coffee Book and New Old Stock, and am less likely to revisit them therefore.  I failed also with HaikuDeck; but PowerPoint, Open Office Impress, SlideShare and Creative Commons will between them probably do me what HaikuDeck would have done.

Thing 13: Creative Commons

My main use of Creative Commons licences, up to now, has been with regard to other people's work. For the 2011 round of 23 Things, I made the experiment of stitching a CC BY-NC-SA logo to a piece of artwork I embedded in my blog.  I expected then that I would be making more extensive use of such logos on artwork copied in the Haddon Library blog, but in fact I have not yet done anything of the kind.

For Alumni Festival presentations at the Haddon Library, however, I've made a point of seeking images first in the Creative Commons area of Flickr.  The reproduction has the CC keyboarded into the credits, even if the logo has been lacking.  And when readers have asked for images they can reproduce, Flickr CC is where I refer them.

I'm glad that the posts by other participants in 23 Research Things reflect a similar diffidence -- gladder still that the view is, for so many of them, "CC is great and now I've looked at it properly I'll use it more."  That's more or less what I said in 2011, I know, and I haven't used CC all that much more since then.  But I'm having to prove myself in a lot of areas at the moment, and greater mastery of CC licensing is clearly one that's worth it.

Thing 12: Presenting and sharing

The post for Thing 12 offers some helpful thoughts on presentation, independently of any electronic aids: think what exactly you're seeking to put across, who you're hoping to put it across to, what's the best structure for your message.  Indeed.  Those things are far more important than electronic aids, and may even lead you to decide that a given presentation should be done without electronic aids.  I follow public-speaking guru Max Atkinson on Twitter having first come across him, back in 2009, strongly disrecommending PowerPoint for facilitating presentation without skill.

I note that Max Atkinson's blog hasn't covered PowerPoint since 2011.  Has his influence led to public speakers being more skillful and restrained in their use of this tool?  It's only just occurred to me to ask on Twitter if people have noticed any such trend, and I have not set the Twitterverse ablaze thereby.

My subjective impression is that people are not using PowerPoint any less.  For the skill, I suppose I had better offer comparisons with my response to other media.  I can't recall a PowerPoint that frustrated me as much as an overhead projector presentation I remember from the 1980s (the presenter wrote her ideas on to the slides while speaking, and took each slide off before I had finished copying it into my notes).  But neither has a PowerPoint made me stand in the street and applaud (as a Carling Black Label ad once did, for its technique not its message) or moved me to tears (as an anti-drink-drive TV commercial once did, for everything).

My own offering is about washing up.  On my computer it has 5 slides, and on SlideShare, for some reason, slide 5 appears twice.  I'd better admit that I used Open Office Impress rather than PowerPoint, and perhaps there is some glitch between the open-source file and the other programs the upload led it through.

Thing 11: Communicating for free

The assignment this time is to nominate one YouTube video and one podcast and say why.

For a YouTube video, I propose the tour of Cambridge University's Social and Political Science Library, presented by Jenni Skinner. The SPS Library is a sibling of the library in which I work, and seeing what they could do, when they first loaded this video, inevitably gave me ideas.  In the Haddon, the ideas have so far come to nothing, but perhaps some day we might rise to the occasion.

For a podcast, I nominate a brief extract from David Hendy's documentary about BBC Radio 3: a recollection of continuity announcers Tom Crow and Patricia Hughes.  When they were active, I was in my teens, and much more drawn to radio than to television.  Podcasts are the 21st century's adaptation of that medium, and I can't think why I haven't explored them more.

Thing 10: Communicating complex ideas

I recognised much in the podcast for Thing 10.  I am married to a science journalist whose work is precisely about communicating research in field X to workers in field Y.  The part of my own life where I come closest to using such things is as an activist with Global Justice Now, often gathering signatures for petitions.

Yes, I know an activist isn't a researcher.

Glad to see the importance the podcast attaches to questions from the person one is communicating with.  I had once to write a piece about a part of the Haddon Library's collection with which I am not very familiar.  If you have experienced the symptoms of imposter syndrome at any time, you will have some idea how that felt.  I described the pain of this in a phone conversation with my brother.  He was most interested in the story of the collection, and plied me with questions.  When I'd answered several of these, he said: "Write down what you've told me, Aidan, and you've got your article."

It worked.  I have good sibs.

Another thing the podcast mentions is the elevator pitch.  An opportunity to practise that came recently, when a writers' group to which I belong solicited 50-word gobbets of individual news from members.  What do you think of mine?

Thing 9: Alternative online communities for research

In their 23researchthings post this time, Georgina looks at Reddit, Wikipedia and GitHub.  I'd better leave GitHub out of the reckoning, as it is for sharing code, and I am not a coder.

Wikipedia I use every day, in the way Georgina and the other 23researchthings participants describe.  My experience as a Wikipedia editor is very slight, and dates from 2008, but it did happen.  I made some small modifications to the entry for the village in which I grew up, and described the experience in a poem. I can think of no instances since then where the urge to correct a Wikipedia entry has been so strong for me as to force such a use of time.  However, the ancillary parts of the entries -- the references, and the 'Talk', 'Contributions', and 'View history' links -- are of obvious use to research.

I don't think I'd looked Reddit before tackling this Thing.  I have now joined it, and posted my first question there.  The site is indeed very clunky, and I didn't like the fact that new members are not only expected to join subreddits (roughly equivalent to Twitter's lists), but even have a number of these subreddits assigned to them on arrival.

A couple of hours after posting, my question has drawn no attention.  Let me admit, however, that a shortened version of it has similarly drawn nothing on Twitter.  Present company will probably have seen me air the question before, in my coursework for Thing 5, and are statistically unlikely to have now the answers they didn't have then.

It may be that Reddit, like Twitter, will reveal its merits to me after a few months of inactive membership. Meanwhile, I can see the point of it, and may suggest it to others who don't mind a bit of untidiness when asking oddball questions.

Thing 8: Academia.edu & Researchgate

I use Academia.edu much as I use LinkedIn -- a means of tracking down library users whose contact details are fading from Cambridge University's corporate memory.  Both sites fulfil that purpose with far less distraction than Facebook; Academia.edu with perhaps the less distraction of the two, and I have the impression, not confirmed by a rigorous counting exercise, that many of the academics I've found there have not posted on the site for some years.

I have joined Researchgate on account of Kirsten's mention of its facility to request copies.  That might be useful, to Haddon Library users if not to me personally.  I may, in time, come to use Researchgate also for tracking people down, though its smaller membership makes that less likely.

Thing 7: LinkedIn

I have been a member of LinkedIn probably since 2011.  Following the 2010 23things, I blogged that I'd seen no reason to join the site.  I now have 169 connections, but I suspect I will never view this site with the same enthusiasm as Twitter.

For me, the best use of LinkedIn, as of Academia.edu, is for tracking people down and making contact with them -- a boon when acknowledging gifts to the Haddon Library from people who aren't based in Cambridge, or, conversely, seeking to levy fines from people who've left.

Following the promptings from 23 Research Things, I have polished up my LinkedIn profile, adding information mainly about my volunteering with AgeUK; joined an Open Access group which didn't seem to have the expected Cambridge people in it; and turned the activity alerts off.

Not the keenest endorsement, I know.  But keeping a sober profile on LinkedIn will be useful in sobering situations.

Thing 6: Creating new content

The course blog post points us in the direction of Storify, Paper.li and Scoop.it .

Storify is one I have used already. I have made Storify collections for my musical, political and poetic interests, and indeed one on professional matters.  I have found Storify remarkably user-friendly.  It can't, of course, make amateur compilations look like the work of an experienced web designer, but it makes them presentable.  If I were more given to tweeting from work, I have no doubt that I would be Storifying from work as well.

Paper.li and Scoop.it I have experienced as a reader, and know them mainly by frustrations.  Paper.li has come my way via tweets that seemed interesting, but took an inordinate time to load.  Scoop.it has likewise come my way via tweets; the tweets flagged up interesting material, but that material seemed inaccessible to me because I didn't know how to close a tab on my mobile's browser, and indeed thought the browser could have no more than one tab open at a time.

However, writing this post has spurred me to find out how to manage the browser's tabs.  Thus the frustration was not a fault of Scoop.it.  And whilst I can't readily see myself finding a use for Scoop.it in any connection, I can say that exploring it has taught me something.

Thing 5: Twitter

I have been using Twitter enthusiastically since April 2009, not only from my own account but in tweeting for the Haddon Library, the Cambridge Philharmonic Society and Global Justice Cambridge.  What has changed since I blogged about Twitter in my coursework for those earlier rounds of 23things in 2010 and 2011?

Advanced search: this facility had dropped off my account, perhaps because of some Twitter re-setting.  I've now reinstated it, though I think in a slightly different form that requires me to open Twitter and search proactively rather than expect updates delivered to my email.  But the amount of material this search seems likely to retrieve is as small as I found it in 2010.

Twitter ban at work: in March 2010, I imposed a rule on myself that I should avoid Twitter at work when anything remained in my email inbox. I haven't had Inbox Zero since 2011.  My rule therefore now amounts, for practical purposes, to a requirement that I should not use Twitter at work.  I've kept to this pretty rigorously, and Twitterfeed continues to post to the Haddon Twitter stream from our blog.  Additionally, now, acknowledgment of some of the books we receive as gifts is made using Facebook and Twitter as well as email.

And what about Twitter's potential benefits to research?  It will do for sharing research once published, or semi-published: you can tweet links to journal articles, conference presentations and blog posts.  Searching Twitter will give some idea of what kinds of opinion are doing the rounds.

I did a few searches just now, to support amateur curiosity not research.  I wanted to find out if the inventor(s) of the 1935 Notificator, often likened to Twitter, had lived to see or support later developments in communications technology.  I wanted to know if other people were as much troubled by the sight of misplaced solicitude as I am.  I wanted to know if pre-emptive criticism, which I think we should all avoid, was a thing that troubled others.  I'll spare you blow-by-blow accounts of the search strategies I used, but I can say that I got no answer to the Notificator one, that tweets incorporating the phrase "misplaced solicitude" had been written by me alone, and that pre-emptive criticism is a thing.  Further research needed.

Thing 4: Pulling in information

In my blog post from the 2010 round of 23things, Thing 2 was to add the RSS feed for the 23things blog to our iGoogle page.  A couple of weeks later, participant @Skiddie2 recommended Google Reader as the way to keep up with all the blogs that the participants in 23things were making.  My own blog post admitted that RSS generically was something "I've always found less use for than I've felt was expected" but that "perhaps I'll find it necessary in order to keep up with everybody's cam23 blogging."  In the event, I have continued to find little use for RSS feeds generally, but Google Reader was absolutely fit for the purpose of following the blogs that other participants in 23things were writing.

I was not as devastated as some by the demise of Google Reader in 2013.  I had used it mainly for following my fellow 23things participants, and after the second run of 23things in 2011 that purpose was no longer there.  Google Reader was thus presenting me with lots of posts that were of less relevance to me.

This time round, I have signed up for Feedly, Zetoc and Pocket.

Feedly is fulfilling the same role for me that Google Reader did in 2010 and 2011: enabling me to keep up with the blogs of everyone else following this 23 Research Things programme. I tried clicking on those blogs' 'Follow' buttons.  Having done that for all of them at the end of an evening, I was a mite peeved to find that I would now need to set up a Wordpress account for most of the clicks to work. I called it a day there. Thing 4's exposition of Feedly was welcome.

Zetoc (and its rival JournalTOCs, which makes more of open access) are things I have recommended to Haddon users since I heard of them, and the users have been grateful.  The searches I set up for myself, be it admitted, expired in 2012.  I've now set up a new one, to help me keep track of publications about open access.

Pocket -- well, I've set my account up using borrowed computers, and have therefore not added the Pocket button to any browsers.  That may come.  Meanwhile, the first resource I have pocketed is the Scottish composer Chris Hutchings' page Choirs against racism.

Will Pocket come to displace Bitly as my grabber of choice?  Bitly has become pretty entrenched over the last 6-7 years.  I might come to see one-click pocketing as quicker than the string of clicks needed in creating a bitlink -- or I might see the string of clicks as a valuable slowing down.  Such things do exist.

Thing 3: Managing your online identity

I discovered in 1998, via an online search (AltaVista in those days, rather than Google) that I shared my name with a Canadian musician and writer.  Googling my name alone tends to bring up material about him rather than me, but a search for Aidan Baker Cambridge drew material that I recognized very well from my own life. The online directory 192.com told me there were 21 Aidan Bakers in the UK.

A search of https://haveibeenpwned.com/ showed that two sites I use fairly regularly -- LinkedIn and Patreon -- had been compromised.  I have changed my password on both.