Library Stuff

Neat!!! Gary and Chris are going to be part of the Luminary Lectures @ Your Library, part of the incredible series.

Remember when Library Stuff was about libraries and librarians? I’ve been so enmeshed in the weblog/RSS world that many of you may think that I have forgotten about libraries. Not true. I was telling a few people via IM today, it has been a crazy week for RSS. I’ll get back to posting about librarianship soon, but if you think about it, this weblog is dedicated to resources for keeping current and (not as much lately) professional development, which takes us back to using weblogs and RSS. So these RSS posts still have an effect on librarians…

Blogger now has an information page for ATOM and has implemented its use for their blogs. In my edit features, I’m given the choice of using ATOM or RSS. Interesting.

The good news is that everyone with a Blogger blog can syndicate their content. No more excuses people. Hip Hip Hooray!!!!!

Blogstreet really needs a weblog that tells us what is happening on their site. I hadn’t visited in a while and came across this RSS 2 Mobile thing that I’m sure Jenny would love to try out.

OK, I added the front page of Blogstreet to my Watch That Page monitor, so I should be notified of any changes to the site.

I’m not into the whole OPML hype, for one reason. I don’t think that everyone would want to read everything that I read in my aggregator (heck, I don’t want to read everything in my aggregator). So, if you were to grab and syndicate my OPML, I would want to you choose which feeds that you would want to subscribe to. I’m not sure how it works on other aggregators, but the only one that I’ve used that allows the reader to choose which feeds to read from an OPML feed is Newzcrawler. Bloglines doesn’t do that and neither does Radio. If that were the case, tools like this OPML Directory would be more appealing to me…

G-Blog noticed that Topix is now providing RSS Feeds for searches on their site. I played with Topix last week by putting in my zipcode and I was extremely happy with the results, but didn’t mention it because it wasn’t RSS enabled. Now, I can get local news in my aggregator.

Actually I can’t yet because the feed won’t work in Bloglines, but I’m sure that they will fix that soon. Also, I only see feeds for zip codes, not searches done on the engine. Again, something that they will probably fix soon.

A column from Greg Conners on using RSS and aggregators to keep up with sports news. A nice mention of Bloglines. Also, he links to the numerous feeds that Buffalo State University is providing.

BTW, the title of this post comes from Dig a Pony by the Beatles, which is great timing. I just found the title for my future presentations about RSS, especially the one on personalization and customization at CIL.

I’m not into iTunes, but if I were, I would use the iTunes Music Store RSS Generator.

This got me thinking. How about libraries doing something like this? Providing feeds of different genres of books, music, and movies directly from the cataloging software. I know a similar project is being worked on. So sad that I’m not in a type of library setting at which this type of application would be used widely. Jenny: Any grants on the way? (iTunes link via del.icio.us)

If you subscribe to feeds from NewsIsFree, you probably have been receiving error messages. There has been a change in the URLs for those feeds. Apparently, there has been a redirect from the old feeds to the new feeds, most of which happened without the user knowing. Now, you’re going to get an error message and you’ll have to change the new URL in your aggregator. I haven’t seen this in action, just reporting what I read on the NIF Blog.

Interesting NYT article on Keeping Found Things Found, a project at the Information School at the University of Washington (which has been mentioned before on a few different library weblogs). My guess is that searchable web-based bookmark services like Furl will help in the process of keeping, annotating, and searcing for “found” information.

“To allow more room for context, the Washington team created Add to Favorites 2, a software prototype that enhances the Favorites feature in Internet Explorer. The prototype includes a box that enables people to enter a description of a site they want to bookmark. It also lets them e-mail the link and save it within a document folder. Over the next few months, the software will be tested by a small group of Internet users at the University of Washington.”

Yup, it’s all about context.