Although it seems a few of these library RSS feeds have since died, I still appreciated Gerry McKiernan 2004 article‘s compilation of library RSS links. The Ohio University ‘Business Blog’ especially intrigued me because it is done in WordPress and has a great survey up on the Sept 25, 2006 post. I suppose this is a privately hosted WordPress version?
I am glad of the Weblogs and RSS in information work article for this statement: “Libraries should be guiding users to appropriate weblogs, as they do for websites or discussion lists, though identifying those of value is more difficult since the proportion of ‘serious’ ones is lower.” And for demonstrating that another difficulty is keeping the links up-to-date, since a few on this article aren’t functioning – nor are some links on the pages linked to by this article functioning, like Library Weblogs featuring a dead link to our prof Amanda’s former blog, Bibliolatry. Too bad I can’t snoop any further! But returning to the point, I think it would be valuable for librarians to recommend blogs on particular subjects, just like the author of one of the blogs I ‘reviewed’ for this week’s paper has done with law library blogs on her site Novalawcity.
From the article Success Story: RSS Moves into the Mainstream at the University of Alberta Libraries, we learn how the feeds at U of A work: “The RSS feeds for New Books by Subject include second level LC classifications, allowing the user to subscribe to the feeds for TJ – Mechanical Engineering, and Machinery and TP – Chemical Technology, for example. A subscription to the relevant RSS feeds ensures that users will not miss any new books announcements, such as when they are away at a meeting or on vacation.” I had assumed for some silly reason that the feeds were linked to keyword searches so I’m glad I have been corrected. I am very excited about the obvious great uses of this service! At my co-op jobs I distributed table of contents services and CCOD’s, both of which took a lot of effort and felt quite robotic – RSS could help librarians get around these nasty mechanical duties & make libraries into impressive hubs of efficiency.
In regards to the Bloglines, Flickr, and del.icio.us make RSS delectable article, I’ve enjoyed getting my classmates del.icio.us tags in Bloglines for the past month. But can anyone tell me why you would want to use the service Philip mentions in his last paragraph, Pasta?
Info Pro or Con? 
Hi Heather,
I thought that Reichardt’s article discussing the different uses of RSS feeds at UofA was pretty neat. It’s funny how some libraries are so far ahead in their use of blogs, RSS, and online reference, etc., while other seem to be shying away from it all together.
I too am a bit perplexed by “pasta”. But, to each his own, I guess.
Yes, pasta is a bit puzzling, isn’t it? I think it’s a tool that was created when del.icio.us didn’t have very helpful bookmarklets themselves. Now that they do, I can’t see much utility in Pasta either!