What Works with Keeping Up - Post for Course

For a long time, whenever I'd find a page or blog of interest, I would bookmark the page in my browser's favorites. At first, I would check my favorites daily, then it became cumbersome, very cumbersome.

Almost a year ago, I started up a Bloglines account and began taking advantage of RSS feeds. Using Bloglines has saved me a lot of valuable time: everything is sent to me in one spot and I don't feel that I am missing out on information most important to me. I now use the beta version of Bloglines and subscribe to 36 feeds (and growing!). My feeds range from blogs from other libraries and librarians (Paper Cuts, the Krafty Librarian, A Library Writer's Blog) to copyright (Copyright Advisory Network, Tarlton Law Library). Having a PubMed search feed on copyright as well as having the table of contents to Library and Information Science Research are additional ways RSS helps me to keep up to date. And how can I forget my Notre Dame and Travel blogs?

Bloglines has had a major impact in how I keep up on information and I see it having a similar impact on our library's patrons: busy physicians and students who need to find information quickly and efficiently. To spread the good word of RSS and aggregators such as Bloglines, I conduct a 2 hour session on the benefits of and how to use RSS feeds. We just started the sessions this spring and the session is still in its trial phase, but having the opportunity to teach others different tips and tricks to help them save time is the highlight of the sessions.