RSS

This week, I played and learned about RSS and newsreaders. It's a really great concept if you are a person who visits the same web sites looking for new information routinely. I worked on this at home over the weekend, and my IE browser has this feature as well, under Favorites. I haven't been able to explore the difference yet. I set up my bloglines at www.bloglines.com/public/sopranolibrarian. I added the three required, except I don't like Unshelved, so I chose Dilbert instead. I also added a few more blogs from the top 1000 at Bloglines. Check them out.

I don't know that I'll use this particular technology in either my work or my personal life. The majority of the web sites I routinely use don't have RSS feeds. Bloglines was kind of difficult to figure out and I am having trouble making my blog and Bloglines talk to each other.

I can see libraries taking advantage of this technology, particulary in the reference area or in a reader's advisory capacity. Libraries can receive RSS feeds for reference updates and new books from publishers. They can subcribe to the New York Times Bestseller List and can pass that along to patrons or allow patrons to connect to RSS feeds based on new materials in specific interest groups.