The way I read my feeds has been changed forever. I’m dumping Thunderbird – and am in the process of uploading my OPML file to Google Reader. I am totally geekily excited about this. Today at work I was trying to explain the concept of RSS to the librarians and how it would be a great way to disseminate information to our patrons. I’d noticed on the FirstGov Consumer page how there were several RSS feeds as well as a basic explanatory note — and wondered aloud as to whether anyone had ever considered it for collection. (I’ve been assigned the Consumer Collection).
Well, apparently – not only had they not considered it — but they’d never heard of it. (I’d read somewhere that only 6% of American’s knew what RSS was — but this was still a bit surprising…or perhaps I’d read that only 66% of blog readers knew what RSS was — now that I’ve searched…)
One concern that was raised was the ability of patrons to be able to download software – or the library to place software on the computers so that patrons could have a feedreader and use it…I explained that that would be difficult as each feedreader is personalized with particular feeds to that particular person — (now I’m realizing that I’d forgotten about the other web-based readers – Kinja and Bloglines — but oh well) — and that to have the software on the computer wouldn’t be helpful. Now I come home to this — Google Reader — upload my feeds — and playing around with it – am enamored.
Whilst explaining, or failing miserably at explaining RSS, I came across Dartmouth’s page explaining it much more clearly while providing some basic RSS feeds — a page that I used as an example of what we could possibly set up on our library home page. I also mentioned AADL and ran a query for “public libraries RSS” for further examples. Most of the librarians are headed to MLA (Michigan Library Association) next week — and I told them to keep their ears open for XML/RSS etc…so maybe some movement might happen here…who knows…
Update: My initial enthusiasm is waning slightly. My lappy may be slow – and definitely in want of an upgrade — but the response from Reader is dragging slightly. Given – it’s working under a burden of 267 feeds – but scrolling is an issue.
I’d also like to see a click and drag mechanism – similar to PDF files – so I can pull the entire screen down at once — REAL FAST LIKE!
Also — to be able to ctrl click several feeds at once – so that I can label multiple feeds…
I can be pretty demanding.