How to Use RA for All: Tags!

On RA for All I have many pages to highlight longer on going conversations, but I also work very hard to tag posts in order to use the tag itself to create de-facto pages when you click on them.

Here are a few of my current favorites and why you should use them:

• Appearances: This is the tag you can use to pull up all of my presentations in reverse chronological order [most recent first]. I go out of my way to make all of my slides and handouts available to everyone, anywhere, at anytime. Yes, you are not hearing or seeing me give the presentation, but they are filled with links to places where I elaborate on the topics I am bringing up. Often many of my talking points have been expounded upon in a longer blog post. If you read the slides and follow the links you can recreate much of the presentation on your own [it just takes a little more work from you].
• Trending: This is where I write posts about ideas, topics, subgenres, etc..., the things that are emerging that you need to keep on your radar. Again they pull up most recent first, that means the further you go back the less useful the trends are. I have really focused on this tag over the last 2 years and I think the information here is extremely useful.
• ARRT: This is the tag where I allow for quick access to everything the Adult Reading Round Table does.  As a member of the Steering Committee, I do a lot for and with this organization. Today’s post is late because I was in meetings for ARRT from 12:30-4:30 today. Here is the link to our website. 
• Guest Post: This is where you click to find every post I solicited someone else to write for the blog. Last year I went through and cleaned up this tag and made sure everything was included. I have 39 right now. I love using this tag because it is someone else’s opinion. Even I get sick of only hearing from me. 
• Interactive RA: This is one of my newer tags, a topic I am exploring in longer pieces. This tag is a great example of how I explore a new concept or idea in more than just a single trending post. 

I have many more tags, but I pulled these 5 out to illustrate how I use tags and to encourage you to click around on more and use them.

I hope you enjoyed this 4 day mini-series on how to use this blog as a resource. As I said at the start of the week, it was time to do this primer both to welcome the new people and remind my long time followers of the breadth of information contained here and how to get at it in ways that help you help readers. It is not just about the newest post. There is plenty of “hidden” material that even I forget about.

That being said, the only thing this blog has never been is stagnant. As you use my primer to poke around you may notice areas that are lacking or haven’t been updated in a long time. As you can also see, I have not “done business” the same way over these almost 11 years. So, if you have comments, especially those about ways I can improve the blog, I want to hear them. Please reach out to me either in the comments or via email.

This resources is run buy me, but it is for you. Let me know how it can serve you better.

Back tomorrow with the new Library Reads and some exciting, brand new ways you can get involved as well.