Week #4, Things #8 & 9 - RSS

I started using Bloglines about a year ago as my RSS aggregator and then after reading many comparisons I switched to Google Reader about three months ago. As with everything there are positives and negatives to both. I like the ease with which I can scroll through all the entries in Google Reader, but if I have over 100 entries it's a little overwhelming. Something about the magic number of 100 often leads me to mark all as read so as to start fresh the next day.

I check approximately 15 library-related blogs every day, plus a few personal blogs interspersed (including "Unshelved" as a great way to start the day). Some of my favorites are Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed, Librarian in Black, LISNews.org, The Shifted Librarian, The Liminal Librarian, and The Free Range Librarian.

I love getting different perspectives and ideas from across librarianship, which is why I read public, academic, and school librarians' work. It is easy to add RSS feeds until they are scrolling off your list, and then the daily reading becomes a task instead of an informative session. Google Reader has a nice feature where you can see when your feeds were last updated and I occasionally check that and delete blogs that have not been updated in a month or more.

I also learned how to set up an RSS feed for our school's website and a parent emailed me last week to tell me he had actually added us to his aggregator! It was an exciting moment because I thought I was the only one reading my own feed. It also changes what and how often I post news items, with an audience paying attention it's an important communication tool between school and home.