LibrarianInBlack: RSS needs a new image for libraries

"Aaron has some wonderful thoughts about RSS in libraries. The main thrust of his post?Ask your neighbor what Really Simple Syndication is. 98% of you will come back having received strange looks, and maybe 1% of you (likely less) will have the correct answer.**

** The missing 1%? You'll come back with a black eye.It points out an ongoing problem for those of us involved in the tech side of libraries--giving our users what they want, or trying to tell them what they want (even though we think we know it's good for them). And Aaron is right about something else--ILS vendors don't want to give us stuff unless we can show them that our users will take advantage of it.

And Dave has some more thoughts about getting RSS to have a presence in libraries, starting with calling it something else--preferably a name that actually means something to users. So, LiB's advice is to educate your users, but even before that, start with your staff. If the frontline staff don't know what it is and how to use it, then it's not going much of anywhere (beyond the pretty visions of dancing RSS feeds in your head)."

Libraries get hip to RSS
From LibrarianInBlack

"Jon Gordon from Future Tense has an 3 1/2 minute online audio segment about RSS and libraries. It has a good explanation of RSS and how it helps libraries and their patrons."

RSS toolkit
ontario library and information technology association

Ask Jeeves enters the blogosphere
Tech Beat: Technology Blog
BusinessWeek Online
02/05/2005

"The only way to keep track of the many good blogs out there is to use software or Web services such as Bloglines to capture the never-ending information feeds in one place. Given the increasingly central nature of search engines to all things online, maybe it's no surprise that Ask Jeeves apparently has just bought Bloglines, according to Mary Hodder, who runs a blog called Napsterization.org. It's a smart move for a company still searching for a way to overcome the seemingly insurmountable leads of Google and Yahoo!."