KISS Meets RSS

Simple is the operative word in both Keep it Simple, Stupid and Really Simple Syndication. Helping you keep it simple is what RSS is all about.

I've known about RSS for over a year, always meant to do an aggregator, but never seemed to have time. That's one really nice thing about the 23 Things, you have to make the time to learn about and use these tools.

Yesterday (Wednesday the 27th) the Reference Dept. had a special staff meeting with presentations on aggregators, blogging, and wikis. Staff who are ahead of the rest of us in these areas showed us what they had discovered. Based on that I chose Bloglines as my aggregator.

I already knew some blogs I wanted as feeds (Tame the Web, of course), but also added some that the 23 Things on a Stick recommended (both of the MINITEX blogs -- the reference services blog and the digital reference blog -- and Unshelved), and even two that Bloglines recommended in their Wordsmith package when I first signed up (Librarians' Internet Index and the Shifted Librarian, another "of course" one). I'm writing this from home and tomorrow at work I have some archivists' blogs that I will add.

I think the true key to making an aggregator useful is to have a specific time every day that you set aside to look at it! Checking one's email seems to have become the first thing we all do in the morning and I think checking one's aggregator will soon become my second.

How will this be useful for work? The obvious is helping keep current and spot trends. I think that it also might be useful to mine for potential postings on the Researchers Notebook blog. We'll have to see how that develops!