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#4 – Setting Up an RSS Feed
Time for.. Thing #4 – Setting up your RSS account.
a. Decide whether you want to use Google Reader (NB you will need a Google email account) or Bloglines. If you need some help deciding between the two, take a look at this article.
Of course If you feel like exploring, and you have the time, feel free to set up accounts on both sites, play around in them, get a feel for the interfaces, and decide for yourself!
b. Set up your account – following the guidelines, both are fairly simple to set up and use.
c. Add a few of your favourite websites, news sites and of course- blogs to your account. To get the most out of your reader, you need to add lots of feeds. Try to subscribe to 10 or more feeds in either Bloglines or Google Reader.
Of Course…… First of all you can add the 23Things blog so that you will know when new content is added!
Heres how: Copy this link to the blog : https://23thingsdevlibs.wordpress.com
If you’re using Bloglines: login to your account, click “Add” at the top-left of the screen, paste the link into the “Blog or Feed URL” box, and click “Subscribe”. The next screen will give you some options on where you’d like to save the feed (you can organize your feeds in folders), once you’ve made your choices, click “Subscribe” at the bottom of the page.
If you’re using Google Reader: login to your account, click “Add subscription” at the top-left of the page, paste the link into the input box that appears, and click “Add”.
Next Step: Once you’ve subscribed to the devlibs feed, take a look at some of these sites and subscribe to their feeds as well. To find their feed addresses, you will have to visit the site and look for the RSS icon or an ‘RSS/Subscribe’ link. They’ll be there somewhere….
Final Step: Still looking for more feeds to subscribe to? Getting addicted? Go to some of the library news blogs listed below. Some of these links go straight to the RSS feed – for the rest you’ll have to find the feed yourself…. Subscribe to feeds from the list. Read them weekly until October Daily is better. Why? Because you only really understand RSS by using it regularly.
Library blogs to set up feeds to:
Librarian in Black: Sarah Houghton-Jan covers many of the important stories in the ‘biblioblogosphere’ (!) in short and snappy posts.
Phil Bradley’s weblog: Phil is a professional librarian and his blog is very useful way to keep up with new Web 2.0 tools.
Stephen’s Lighthouse: Stephen Abram blogs about future strategic developments in libraries.
.Information Wants to be Free: Meredith Farkas’s blog. Meredith has written a very useful book on the uses of social software in libraries.
UK WebFocus: Brian Kelly’s blog. Brian is based at UKOLN and his blog focuses on all aspects of digital information management, but especially Web 2.0 developments.
Make sure to visit your aggregator at least a couple of times this week to check for new content in the feeds you’ve subscribed to! (you’ll be surprised at how addictive RSS feed-reading can become!) And don’t forget to blog about your experiences using these tools!
Further Readings (entirely optional!)
#5- Library Related Blogs and Newsfeeds
Now that you know all about how to use RSS aggregators/readers and have set up your RSS feed account through Reader or Bloglines, it’s time to explore the universe of blogs that will help you be a bigger, bolder, better information professional.
Remember to look for the orange RSS feed icon on sites indicating that a feed is available.
Explore these resources for identifying blog feeds regarding libraries
Use your feed reader to find blogs of interest. For instance you can search for blog of interest right on Bloglines with Blogline’s Search.
Library Blogs @ Yahoo Directory
LIS Wiki article on Library Weblogs (alphabetical list of links)
Search for Blog about Libraries on the Open Directory Project.
Other Sources
Syndic8.com – Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
Technorati Blog Directories – Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic specific blogs you may be interested in.
Discovery
You may have already had a look at some of the library related blogs that I have suggested while you were working through #4 Thing – here are some useful links for you to discover which blogs would be most useful to you in your library work.
Great feeds for libraries
Docuticker – hand-picked selection of resources, reports and publications from government agencies, NGOs, think tanks and other public interest organizations.
Government Info Pro – a blog for government librarians
LISNews – Library and Information Science News
Librarians Internet Index: New This Week
Library Journal – News and Features
Library Link of the Day – your “of the day” resource on this list
Library Stuff – Steven M. Cohen
LLRX.com -Sabrina Pacifici
Resource Shelf – Gary Price in action.
The Shifted Librarian – Jenny Levine looks at innovative technologies.
Unshelved – A great library comic strip.
Finally:
Now that you are blogging, where do you want to take it? Is it just an exercise or will you start building your readership through your own RSS feed?
So you’ve found some good blog reads. Are you sharing these finds with others? How are you doing that? Through blogrolls on your blog?
Now that you are reading more blogs more regularly through the use of your feed reader, how are you going to use that knowledge both personally and professionally?
Activity:
Create a blog post about your experience. Don’t know what to blog about? Here some questions to think about …
Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use? Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing? What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find? What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?
23 Things @ Devon Libraries - Part Deux 