Thing 5 - RSS

So this week we are supposed to write about our thoughts on RSS and newsreaders. This is not an easy thing for me because my feelings about RSS and readers is mixed.

On the one hand, they are obviously a great way to keep up to date. It is so much easier to access all the new information from a variety of websites in one place. No longer do I have to bookmark webpages and check them for updates. However, too much of a good thing can be bad. And there are *so many* different RSS feeds that there is no way I can keep up with all of them! It is worse than trying to keep up with e-mail! I subscribe to many feeds - both for personal and professional reasons. And there is just not enough time in the day to read all of them. So I get very behind in reading them and then I feel guilty.

I'm still trying to figure out what is the best way for me to read my feeds. Having a web-based reader is ideal because then I can access it from any computer. However, I have found that without prompting I don't remember to login to my web-based reader. And then when I eventually do login, I'm overwhelmed with new stories.

So then I tried having my feeds sent to Outlook, but that was just as bad - it made my Inbox huge and I still didn't read them. I have subscribed to a couple of sites that send me an e-mail every time there is a new post. Those work well for sites that don't have a lot of updates. I saw the Comment for this class about rssfwd.com, so I'm going to try that with a couple of my feeds and see how that works. I set it up to send me one e-mail a day with all the new posts, very similar to the digest version of listservs.

I guess the lesson might be that I should be more selective about what feeds I choose to subscribe too. But that is part of the problem - there are a lot of blogs and other resources using RSS to keep you up to date.

I can definitely use this technology to keep updated on what is going on in my professional life. There are a number of blogs about medical librarianship. Personally I use it to keep updated on some of my hobbies and current news events too.

My library does use RSS to push out information about what is new in the library. I think a number of libraries do this and it is a perfect use of the technology. And luckily, most libraries likely aren't pushing out a ton of updates so they are an easy feed to follow.