Finally! Libraries now have a home on Alltop, along with a bunch of other interesting topics (ok, I emailed them and asked for it – and they listened. Nice.).

You’re familiar with Alltop, right? It’s basically a list of blogs/news sites for a variety of topics. From their About page – “The purpose of Alltop is to help you answer the question, “What’s happening?” in “all the topics” that interest you.” It’s sort of a subject guide for the web.

So, it’s a quick way to get an overview of what’s going on in any given topic. I use it to follow web design, for example – I subscribe to the topic via the RSS feed, then skim through the topics in my RSS reader. It’s easier than hunting down individual blogs that I wouldn’t necessarily know.

Anyway, thought I’d share!

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I’m slow to some things, believe it or not. I am just getting to testing out Feedburner’s Subscribe by Email option on RSS feeds. What’s that mean? It means that you can now subscribe to my blog using your email account rather than using RSS feeds and feed readers, if you so desire.

Of course, I’ve subscribed to myself doing this, so we’ll see what I get once I hit the publish button on this post. Eventually, my idea is to offer this service on my library’s website. Let’s see what happens!

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At least, as far as i can tell. His latest Alertbox article is a good example. The article discusses why one should “write articles, not blog postings.” His summary states: “To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers.”

Then he goes into his usual charts and graphs that show that well-written, thorough content is much better than shallow, quickly-written content.

I have a question: how come a blog posting can’t be “thorough, value-added content?”

Neilsen seems to be confusing the content with the container. A blog is nothing more than an easy-to-use CMS (content management system) – the content can be shallow or thorough. It depends on the individual author.

For example, Neilsen’s Alertbox articles, which I usually find to be “thorough, value-added content” could easily be blog postings… all he has to do is offer an RSS feed and allow comments, really (yes, I know, he’d need to use some type of blogging software for it too be a REAL blog…). If he did that – added a way to subscribe to his articles via an RSS feed – would that suddenly turn his well-thought-out articles into “quickly written, shallow postings”?

I don’t think so. Do you?

jakobnielsen

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Just testing Squeet… Thanks! One more test.

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This is extremely cool – RSS is now integrated into Yahoo! Mail and Alerts (from TechCrunch).

Think about that for a sec – how many of your users have a Yahoo! email account? And how many of them use web-based email services? And how many of those users might now be willing to learn about the whole RSS/Blog thing… since they already have a reader, and it most likely will make more sense to them (at least those using Yahoo! mail)?

Better yet – how many libraries teach classes on opening an email account with hotmail, yahoo mail, etc? It’s a short leap to focusing primarily on Yahoo! Mail, adding a small section on the RSS component, and “helping” class attendees subscribe to their first RSS feed (namely, your library’s feed). Suddenly, those users are learning about RSS from the library, experiencing what RSS does… while at the same time seeing all your cool programs, news, events, materials, etc (depending on what you stuff into the feed).

What do you think?

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Just saw this post this morning.

I think describing RSS as “automated web surfing” is a pretty good description – what do you think?

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Glenn at Hennepin County Library commented on my post about RSS:

“Timely post! We just added a customizable library events feed this week at http://www.hclib.org/pub/events/. You can subscribe to events at your local library, events by age group, events by type (book sales, storytime, multicultural) or any combination.”

Hennepin County Library’s website is COOL. They do a great job of presenting info for their customers – this is just another way they’re excelling! Check out their Event feeds.

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Update: changing the link to Tim Yang’s wiki about “things you can do with RSS.” There’s now 39 things you can do with RSS, and I’ll bet that list continues to grow. Check it out!

Found this on Tim Yang’s Geek Blog: 15 things you can do with RSS (it was supposed to be 10, but I got carried away).

His list of 15 things includes some fun stuff like ebay notifications, weather reports, ego feeds, and software update notifications.

What’s missing in this list would be our library-specific stuff, like:

16. RSS feeds from the library catalog – searches to watch, favorite subject headings, favorite authors, new books, etc.

17. RSS feeds from library databases – searches to watch, etc.

18. That “what I have checked out” thing…

19. Library Calendar of Events feed

20. RSS feed of area happenings, coming from the library’s website

Can you think of other useful feeds?

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Google has been testing out ads for RSS feeds. Take a peek at this image, taken in my bloglines account. If you go to the actual blog page, you don’t see the ad – it only appears in the RSS feed!

Honestly, I’m not sure what I think about that. On the one hand, some bloggers can probably make a few bucks… so that’s good – it’s something to show for all their hard work. But on the other hand, I like ad-free feeds. I really DON’T like USAToday or the Drudge Report’s pop-ups – thankfully, my pop-up blocker usually catches them. But they’re still nuisances (they aren’t caught all the time.

Or those pesky ads that pop-up on the page, right as I start to read something… and force me to waste my precious time looking for the “close this ad” X to click.

Either way, though – it should be an interesting development to watch.

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Glenn Peterson, Web Administrator at Hennepin County Library, just sent an announcement to web4lib about their RSS feeds.

Take a look – Hennepin has done a great job of not only creating useful subject guides for content (26 of them right now), but they have also designed them well. The visual look (much like the rest of their site) is very attractive and usable, and I love the images of actual librarians (photos of staff who take care of each subject guide page – it’s a nice human touch).

Keep it up!

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