RSS Feeds

OK, I tried Bloglines, but it didn’t work. I requested a verification email, but never received it. I tried again. Still no verification email. I checked with colleagues, who said they don’t like bloglines. They think it’s meschugge. They use Google Reader or Live Journal instead.

I have a Google Reader account. I really like it. When I subscribed Google Reader made it very easy for me to choose the news feeds I wanted. Since then I’ve added a number of feeds. Google Reader also makes it easy for meto organize and categorize my feeds.

I’m now in the habit of checking my RSS reader every day. I scan the entries. If something interests me, I click on it and read the headline. If the headline interests me, I click again and open the whole story.

With my journalism background and my quaint belief in journalistic objectivity, I still like to think that readers in the print age could get opposing points of view from their major news source. If they get all their news through RSS feeds, most people, I fear, will subscribe only to feeds from sources that agree with their point of view. They won’t get opposing viewpoints. If this happens, these readers will be less informed than they were when they were reading a daily metropolitan newspaper. If they get their news through RSS feeds, they should be sure to subscribe to feeds that provide opposing viewpoints as well as to feeds that present a point of view that coincides with their own.

Posting to My Blog

I learned how to sign in and post to my blog today. That may sound easy to you. But guess what, you're not technologically impaired like me. This needn't be so painful. But no pain, no gain, they say. Hey look, I'm learning by doing. It really is as easy as every technologicly literate person says it is.

Actually, I'm making great strides. Yesterday the Information Services librarians and I set up a del.icio.us account. We'll add websites that we find while researching customers' chat and telephone reference questions. I can hardly wait to see how some of the librarians will tag those sites. I can just imagine. Stay tuned.