Week Four - RSS

Subscribing to Bloglines was very easy, but deciding on which feeds to subscribe to took a lot longer. In addition to

(1) The Power House Museum photo of the day, I decided on:

(2) LibraryBytes – Helene Blowers. “Byte-size” chunks of news about libraries & new technologies.
Helene’s bio. details are impressive!
Her role as Public Services Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County has been well known courtesy of the Learning 2.0 programme, but she is now Director of Digital Strategy for the Columbus Metropolitan Library. Also joint author of Weaving a library web: a guide to developing children’s websites.

(3) Research Buzz - News about search engines, databases, and online information collections. Reports on the world of internet research, provides updates on search engines, data managing software, browser technology, etc. This site is by Tara Calishain, who has authored several books. I also receive her “Research Buzz” via email, but trying is as an RSS feed could be a better proposition.

(4) The Shifted Librarian – ‘shifting libraries at the speed of byte’. This blog is by Jenny Levine. I have seen this blog being referred to but have never looked closely at the site.
“Levine has one simple goal: to help us librarians become as technologically adept as our users are so that we can deliver services to them when and where they wish to use them and in their preferred medium and platform” Library Journal 2003.

(5) Boing Boing – while this site looks rather ordinary and is subtitled “A directory of wonderful things” Boing Boing is summed up as: a weblog of cultural curiosities and interesting technologies. It's the most popular blog in the world, as ranked by Technorati.com, and won the Lifetime Achievement and Best Group Blog awards at the 2006 Bloggies ceremony.
It does have the most random blogs to view with everything from current news to a suggestion that the Dalai Lama could start a celebrity t-shirt line!

(6) Search Engine Watch - provides tips and information about searching the web and analysis of the search engine industry. Subscribing provides updates for items posted to the SEW blog. This includes any story that has run in Search Engine Watch, along with references to stories from across the web.
It also provides a link to related SEW blog posts so the reader can follow the trail of similar posts for a particular topic.

I downloaded the Bloglines Windows Notifier so I can quickly see when new posts arrive.

More thoughts on RSS:
RSS is a great way to stay updated with the latest blog news, but it would be easy to over-subscribe and be subjected to more information overload, so feeds would have to be chosen carefully and eliminated if they don’t provide your information needs appropriately.

Public libraries could use RSS to stay up-to-date on reader’s issues, such as gathering the latest book reviews or book news to post to their own Library blog or website. In terms of special libraries, immediate news could be advised and passed on to relevant people in the organisation, eg. in medial libraries news from National Library of Medicine or health blogs. In law libraries, findings from court cases or discussions of impending legislation could be covered.

Other good library blogs:

Newcastle Region Library hosts “The Book Crowd” for book reviews (I'm a contributor, it must be fabulous!) ;) http://www.thebookcrowd.blogspot.com/

ACT Public Library Blog - http://actpubliclibrary.blogspot.com/
I like the way they have so many links to other sites and sources throughout their blog, widening the reach of the library linking through other information channels.

...I have some others but the list is at work, so I’ll have to add them later…

Okay - there's one more:
Birmingham Public Library has news, reviews and info. - their blog includes plenty of photos/illustrations which make it appear more vibrant and interesting.