backtracking to bloglines

Thanks to my frustration with Thing 8, I postponed Thing 9. But, I begrudgingly logged back into my bloglines account just now to set up a few library-related news feeds (and encountered more frustration!). The pages take forever to load and twice it froze up. The layout is just awful. I hate to harp on aesthetics-I would be willing to overlook the lack thereof if-IF- the content and functionality were there. Anyway, that’s not the purpose of this post, so let me move on.

Apparently, when I opened my bloglines account I inadvertently subscribed to a bunch of library feeds automatically. So, I checked out a couple of them and one of them led me to the post below about Google scanning newspapers. I clicked into a feed called Resource Shelf and saw a link at the top for “related feeds”. That took me to a page of feeds and I chose a couple more to subscribe to: Librarian’s Internet Index and Research Buzz.

I think it makes sense for libraries to receive feeds from other libraries in order to be aware of and keep up on trends. I also think it would be a good form of “communication” between libraries throughout a community or region. CML could monitor feeds from other Ohio libraries or other library systems that serve similar populations.

Subscribing to news feeds could also make a valuable contribution to one’s professional development or increase networking opportunities.

So, the moral of this post is that news feeds are great tools, bloglines is not.