My Third Challenge Item

For my third 23 Things challenge activity, I chose #8:  Learn about RSS feeds and set up your own Bloglines account.  RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  An RSS reader allows users to get all the information for their favorite websites and blogs sent to one central site.  That way, they can see when new information comes up and don't have to check all their favorite sites individually.  It is a time saving mechanism.  Also, only the new posts or stories will post to the site, so there is not any advertising to wade through. The user subscribes to their favorite website by clicking on the RSS icon on the web page. 

I tried the Bloglines website, but didn't care for it.  I am completely clueless to RSS feeds and that sited did nothing to help or enlighten me in how I should start out.  I read another classmate's blog and they suggested Google Reader.  I went to their site and found it to be much more user friendly.  Since I already had a GMail account, it just took a few minutes to set up the reader and determine what sites I wanted to follow.  That was the hardest part.  I don't generally follow a lot of websites, so I don't know that this particular application would be so great for me, but I can see where it might be useful in a library setting.  There are websites with RSS feeds for book reviews like this one by the Reader's Club of the Charlotte Mecklenberg Library.  New book reviews are posted.  Libraries can use this information to determine what books to add to their collections.  Libraries might also be interested in some of the many library blogs out there, too.  RSS readers are very useful tools in the new 21st century library, but I don't know personally how long I will continue to use the feed I set up.  Maybe it will be a time saver.  As a side note, I did add the RSS option to my blog.