RSS

What I like about RSS and newsreaders is that I can select specific sites/topics to notify me when new items appear. The sites I selected were the requested Powerhouse Museum site, Bruce Wolpe's White House '08 blog from the SMH, the ABC cricket news site, "statistically speaking" - the ABS site for librarians, and Helen Blowers' Librarybytes blog.

I am sure some of the items that arrive in my email from the Learning 2.0 team have been detected/selected as a result of RSS or newsreaders feeds, and can see that it is a great way of keeping up to date with the latest in technology or just changes, and onforwarding same to interested parties.

Libraries can include feeds on their blogs, or have their blog included on others' to inform about local events/changes or about things happening further afield. I can relate to the concerns of some of the other 2.0 participants about information overload, but as you are only prompted when new items appear, if you have managed your selection properly then it really will save time.

The challenge is to ensure that blogs are maintained, active and current, as the example of the "@ your library blog" shows - it has just one post dated April 10, 2007. I did a Google search which returned over 20 million hits for library blogs worldwide, and 120,000 in Australia - that is daunting.

I asked my 16 year old daughter (an active library user) whether she would access a library blog and she couldn't think of anything more boring, so the challenge is there to create interesting content.