Blogline Island Hopping

Today's activity will be a treasure hunt for information... information about anything and everything you ever wanted to know... and then some.

I had a good time learning this unit. I really liked how easy the Google Blog search engine was. I stumbled across a blog of my cousin who lives in Vancouver, Canada and am now officially subscribed to her blog. Before I knew about Bloglines, I was doing it the "old fashioned" way and had her blog bookmarked and would just check it periodically for updates. I found the actual searching easier then going to my favorite sites. I tried going to the sites I like but was having trouble finding that "subscribe" icon on them so searching was definetely better for me.

With the exception of the really user friendly Google Blog search I found a lot of the other searches confusing... I never was able to get the Feedster page loaded and Syndic8.com had a little to much "clutter" for my liking.

I think RSS feeds could be very interesting if put to use in librairies. It would be a great way to keep patrons up to date on special events happening at the library, programs, announcements, bookmobile schedules, hours of operation, new titles, etc. If new policies are put into place it would be terrific to write up something informing the patrons of the changes (ie: self pick-up holds procedures, how self check-out works, $5 restocking fee, etc.)

From an employees' point of view, I think RSS feeds would be a great way for different library districts to keep in touch with each other. As I was trying to find some library related RSS feeds, I stumbled upon many librarians who have personal blogs who share funny stories about patrons and the day to day challenges that come up in their jobs. It would be a great way of uniting people who work in the library industry. It could be a very useful and resourceful tool for sharing/swapping program ideas or just building friendships based on common ground.