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.
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