Making Time

Now that a palette of possible strategies has been presented, consider the time available for keeping up. We all have busy work days, so what can be accomplished in a limited amount of time?

• In 5 minutes a day, you can read and act on one e-mail announcement listing or discussion list digest and peruse the table of contents of one journal
  
  
• With 1 hour each week, you could also read relevant abstracts and act on one automatic update search

In larger departments, it makes a lot of sense to divide up the work of keeping up: a single staff member could receive e-mail updates from a mailing list or discussion list and then forward relevant items with commentary to other staffers; a policy-oriented person might want to follow the local news and legislative issues, while a more research or evaluation-focused position takes responsibility for following the peer-reviewed literature and deciding which articles to obtain and share.

How much time will it take?

The following table gives a rough time estimate for specific strategies for keeping-up-to-date.

Task	Set-Up Time	Maintenance	Frequency
Follow a discussion list message-by-message	10-15 min. to find, evaluate & join list	45 sec. to read & act on a single message	A few times a day
Follow a discussion list in digest form	10-15 min. to find, evaluate & join list	30 sec. to reach & act on a single message	Once daily
Read an announcement list	10-15 min. to find, evaluate & join list	30 sec. to reach & act on a single message	A few times a week
Peruse a table of contents e-mail with links to relevant articles	10-15 min. to find and sign up for a table of contents e-mail	2 min. to consider titles and click through to relevant abstracts	At set frequencies: weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly
Review the results of an "automatic update search"	30-60 min. to sign up and create search	1-5 min. to consider titles and click through to relevant abstracts depending on number of results and quality of search strategy	At set frequencies: choose once weekly, twice weekly, twice monthly, monthly
Visit a web site that has just been updated	5 min. to identify and activate notification for page updates	2 min. to visit site & identify the new information	A few times a week
Read the daily news on your topic	15 min. to find and bookmark sites	2-5 min. to read relevant articles	Once daily