Feeds: Day One

When I read through my feeds today, I realized that the content I was getting was dated from about Oct. 5th to the present. So, I will do a brief synopsis of all the post on the feed, not just those posted in the last 24 hours.

librarian.net

So far this looks to be an interesting and relevant feed. The posts are written by a librarian who claims to have been "putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999." It has 7131 subscribers. Some of the posts were short and didn't really make sense to me as they must have related to previous topics. There were a few, though, that did. The most recent was one announcing that the ALA is making PDFs of issues of AL Direct open and searchable. This is apparently the first step in a move that will make all issues of the publication freely available. I'm not personally familiar with AL Direct, but this seemed like a good thing to me. The next post was about a "holiday" proposed by Brian Herzog called Work Like a Patron Day (Oct. 15). The idea is for librarians to put themselves in the place of library users for a day and try to see things as they do. One issue mentioned was hours. No one wants to work evening and weekend hours, but these are often most convenient for patrons. The purpose of Work Like a Patron Day is to look at issues like this from a library user's perspective. The final and oldest interesting post apologized (sort of) for not giving recognition to Banned Books Week this year (which was a couple of weeks ago). The post discussed how other issues of freedom of information are important too (such as the ability to photocopy needed material without fearing copyright laws). All in all this seems like a good feed to keep up on for library related news and ideas.

Library Stuff

This feed provides many blog postings by "Steven." The feed claims to be "dedicated to resources for keeping current and professional development." All of the postings were short. One to three sentences and were essentially library related headlines. If you want more information, you have to hunt it down yourself. Some of the topics were: "Surfing the Internet Boosts Aging Brains," "'Dewey' Chronicles Life of Library Cat," and "Princeton's Gehry Library Banishes Stacks, Encourages Talking." While some of the topics sounded interesting, the lack of much information or opinion was disappointing.

NPR Topics: Books

This feed gives short bits of book news such as announcements of new books being released. Some of the most recent topics were: "Robert Jordan: Hemingway's Bipartisan Hero" which talks about how both current presidential candidates have listed For Whom the Bell Tolls as a favorite, "Saving America Through Energy Innovation" which talks about a book by Thomas Friedman that claims that saving the planet isn't about whales but about competitive necessity, and "Britain's Cherie Blair Speaks for Herself in Memoir" which talks about a new memoir out by the wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. There is also some information about books like The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer. While this feed does not provide what could be called academic information, it is a good way to keep up on news in the world of books. something I consider worthwhile.

Midwestern Microhistory

This feed is about "Genealogy and family history in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and neighbor and feeder states." I chose it because I am interested in genealogy and would like to learn more about it. The recent topics on this feed were: Midwestern mention in the September issue of National Genealogical Society Quarterly, a recommendation for a civil war blog which is currently discussing a cemetery in Detroit, and a recommendation for a new book called Place Names of Illinois by Edward Callary from the University of Illinois. The feed seems so far to offer news and links for those who may already be involved with genealogy in some way rather than the casual observer, but I still think it may prove interesting.