Feed the birds....and information seekers

Well in order to keep even more information coming my way effortlessly way I have:-

• added feeds to my iGoogle page including some ABC blogs, ABS 4 L
  ibraries; JOL Blog etc
  
• opened a Bloglines account and added numerous feeds there, including the OPAL Training blog. I also chose some of my own feeds and also used Bloglines Quick Picks to select groups of blogs
• I have also added the ABC Offair blog, SLQ Website news, OPAL Training, ABS 4 Libraries and the JOL Blog to this blog.

I was pleased to finally come to some familiarity with feeds as they had mystified me for some time. I have had another blog for a year or so now and I did sign up to Feedburner to allow readers (if there are any out there) to follow my blog but I wasn't really sure how it worked from the other end, sounds mad I know. I did subscribe to follow my own blog through my iGoogle page and Bloglines and my feed button works so I was please about that.

The best thing about this gadget is that if you stick to one RSS Reader, you can check on all the latest news, opinion, events and innovations of interest to you on one site. The trick is to control yourself I guess and choose well. As I said iGoogle, although not a reader as such also allows you to show your feeds. I might stick with iGoogle as it includes the search facility, gmail and other gadgets I like to see regularly as well as my feeds. Bloglines doesn't look as friendly and it is just another site to check, whislt iGoogle does this and more.

Libraries that have active blogs can encourage patrons to keep track this way with both the library blog and other blogs or sites with feeds that address the information needs of each patron.

Now this has got me thinking...I could imagine Librarians offering an Personalised Online Reference Service(PORS), that is sitting down with individual patrons in a Reference Interview, determining their information needs and helping them set up an RSS reader and select sites and blogs in their area of interest to add to the reader. The patron then leaves the library with an online information service set up for them to follow at home or anywhere they may be. Any feedback on that idea?

BAM