Thing 18

RSS feeds have been around for a while and I have dabbled with them in the past.  I have not used them extensively as daily aid in aggregating news and upon reflection I think I know why.  During the course of a typical day I spend between one to two hours a day actively reading online news sources on several topics.  I have a set pattern of reviewing sources.  I also scan for updates frequently depending on my schedule that day.  I feel awareness of current events is a cornerstone of being a prepared school media specialist. 

I suppose it is hubris on my part to think that I can perform the task of news aggregation better than RSS feeds.  One issue that I have had with them is they tend to only do exactly what you tell them to.  If you set up a feed for specific topics from specific sources that is what it does.  I have found that about 30 to 40 percent of the material that I end up sharing with staff is articles I found while looking for other things during my own search patterns.  By in large librarians like the thrill of the hunt and I fall squarely into that profile.  One stop shopping has it's place and I rely heavily on Google News and MLIVE as aggregators.  

As a research tool RSS feeds have a great benefit.  Creating feeds that track information and return it to you on specific topics in several online sources simultaneously is a way to cut down on man hours searching,  This is particularly true for large projects involving long periods of time. RSS feeds are excellent people trackers as well.  Flagging a personal name such as a politician or actor will return material on them as reported.  For students doing a biography assignment this has excellent potential.

For this assignment I chose to use IGoogle and Google Reader.  Below are screen shots of both.

To my liking I prefer the Google Reader page to IGoogle for retrieving news.  Although the other information on IGoogle is nice a times it is more noise than I need when searching for material to scan.