Thing #6

Thing #6: Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader.

Ah, here's another thing I already did on my own. Quite a long time ago, unrelated to work (obviously), I set up a Bloglines account to track (don't laugh) all of my favorite online comics. In fact, I'm now kind of offended when I come across a blog or a comic that don't offer an RSS feed. Checking them manually is such a bore!

One thing I've noticed, though, is that feeds are not always reliable. It's not uncommon for me to get an update, and from the content it is completely obvious that I've missed something. Sure enough, when I go to the site to check, I discover that I've missed out on sometimes as many as five updates. With equal frequency, I'll see one of my entries bolded to indicate a new update, only to find it's the exact same update I read the day before, like the feed is going out twice. And these don't happen to just one or two sites--one or both of these events have happened to more than half of my subscriptions at some point, not always infrequently.

Since Bloglines is one of the big players in the game, the problem most probably lies not with them but with the feeds set up by the individual sites. It's unfortunate, but it goes to show that if you're going to set up an RSS feed, you need to test it with several readers and several browsers, to make sure it works widely.

Even with the reliability problems I've encountered, RSS is absolutely invaluable. I would never want go back to checking all those sites manually. RSS is really the way to go.

The value of RSS for libraries is twofold. Internally, librarians and staff could use readers to keep up with various work related blogs. OCLC offers a lot of RSS feeds that you could subscribe to, and I'm sure you can find many other blogs or services that will feed you information to help you do your job better. Externally, libraries can provide RSS feeds to their users. If you don't already do this, look into offering a feed showcasing your new books and DVDs, or at least provide a feed with news about upcoming events and new services. Not everyone will visit your website every day, but a lot of people will toss your feed into their reader, and they'll find out about the cool stuff you're offering.

Oh, and a word of advice to those publishing feeds. Many of the feeds I subscribe to actually show me the content in the reader, but quite a few of them only tell me there's been an update and offer a link back to their site. This is annoying! If you push out a feed, put actual content in the feed!

Oh, again! One thing I had never done before was import an OMPL file to my reader, so I did grab the NLCrecommended.ompl. Looks like exporting an OMPL file is just as easy, too. Good to know, if I ever decide to switch readers. Thanks! I learned something new and useful.