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Week 4: RSS
For over a year now, I've been using RSS feeds to keep track of a lot of different sources - in fact, way too many of them. I add new ones suggested by other sites or I find them while browsing and I just don't want to give anything up. It's fun to open up my reader and see what has been updated, but I can't keep current with them all. Sometimes I let everything slide for a while instead and then have to play catch up with my favourites, while other feeds I can barely remember. RSS feeds can't save me time unless I work on my selectivity and in the interests of that, I've just turned over a new leaf and moved a whole set to a separate folder to be ignored. I hadn't given much thought about the technology behind RSS feeds until running through this week's readings, but luckily the explanations were in line with my existing ideas. I had been reading my feeds mainly through IE7 and this switch to Bloglines is quite an improvement.
Since I had never before looked at the RSS feeds offered by a public library, I was really excited after visiting the first case study and looking at the feeds offered by the Kansas City Public Library. I immediately opened a new tab for the Toronto Public Library to see what I had been missing and then realized that I had not been missing anything because this library system has yet to offer RSS feeds (that I can find). After continuing on through the remaining case studies, I am in awe at the number of RSS feeds offered at Tacoma Public Library and hope to never visit the Dublin City Public Libraries portal ever again with its confusing layout. I can appreciate the wide range of services that can potentially be offered for patrons and librarians to communicate ideas and keep informed. I really like the idea of different feeds for genres, population groups, new books and so on.
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Hi Jen,
I think you're right about the idea of being selective in the feeds you choose to keep up with. Even though RSS helps us to filter the vast world of online information, choosing to keep up with too many feeds may also be futile!! As it stands I just skim about 90% of my feed titles, and open up the others to actually read. I may need to whittle down my list, as you have!
Just wanted to say that I'm really surprised that Toronto Public Library doesn't have RSS feeds!
I am proud to say that Western Libraries DOES have RSS feeds (http://www.lib.uwo.ca/feeds/list.php), though I'm not sure how useful they are since the news feeds are NOT updated often. Western's homepage (http://www.uwo.ca) also has a feed, which would probably be updated every weekday since that is roughly how often they update the website. If you only have new news items once a month or less, how practical is it to provide a news feed? This is perhaps where bookmarking may still prove to be a useful application.
This post and subsequent comments have sparked my curiosity... I am happy to report the Ottawa Public Library has RSS feeds for library events, new titles, and the library newsletter.
Anyone else want to weigh in with their town's public library and RSS?
Cheers,
Rebecca
Hi Jen,
You are way ahead of me in your use of RSS feeds. But what you've found with your own reader does not surprise me. I can easily see that subscribing to a number of feeds over time can cause huge problems. How much information does anyone want to be bombarded with! RSS feeds are supposed to filter the vast amount of information on the web for us and make it manageable. But as you point out, once people start subscribing to a number of feeds, they can be overwhelmed with information.
I am happy to report that my hometown library in Regina, Sk, has RSS feeds featured prominently on the homepage - but they are called xml feeds (eek - another word/term to remember). Luckily the big orange button is there. And there are even customizable feeds. This is something I would have never thought to look for before this week.
"RSS feeds can't save me time unless I work on my selectivity"
I'd say you hit the nail right on the head there, Jen :)