Week 4 - Thing 9 - Useful Blogs

This is another hard part about RSS - finding blogs that are worthwhile to me. There are many many blogs out there, and while they all may be very wonderful, only a few of them are relevant to me. This part is definitely a trial and error process. If I stumble across a blog address while reading something library-related, I'll often go to it, browse the latest two or three postings, and then decide if it's something I could see myself reading often. I also check the frequency of posting and the date of the latest posting. If it hasn't been updated in a while, it's usally not worth it to me to bookmark.
Then, I'll check out the list of blogs that they follow. If a blog is interesting to me, odds are the blogs that person reads have a good chance of being interesting as well.

Blogs I like:

Naomi Bates's YA Books and More
School Library Media Activities Monthly
Confessions of a Pioneer Woman - nothing to do with libraries, but check out the Black Heels to Tractor Wheels story - it's SO addicting!
Tweendom

I've got a ways to go...

Week 4 - Thing 8 - RSS

I have a love/hate relationship with RSS. The love part is easy - it comes to you! Most websites now have an RSS features to them, and as Sandra pointed out, even EBSCO offers an RSS feature that can keep you up to date. They offer a journal alert, which will alert you anytime a new issue of the journal or magazine comes out and provide links to it, and a search alert, which will alert you as new information that fits your specific criteria of your search is available.
RSS can save time since you don't always have to go out and check sites for updates, they come to you in your RSS reader (as the Common Craft video points out).

HOWEVER - You still have to check the RSS reader (I use Bloglines, when I actually do use RSS). I have Bloglines set up as a widget in my igoogle homepage, but the problem is, I hardly ever check my igoogle homepage. So...I think I need a better system...

I do like my Bloglines though, because, even if it says I have a number of unread postings, I can just say "mark as read" if I don't have the time to read them! I'm working on keeping my listserv subscriptions under control at the moment, but I think after I've got a handle on that, I'll start working hard to keep up with one or two blogs via Bloglines.