During this past week as a participant in the MLA Web 2.0 101 course, I have learned a great deal about blogs and RSS feeds. The learning resources have been very helpful, especially for individuals like myself who are absolute beginners, without any colleagues close by to help. Actually, I must give credit to my 11-year-old daughter, who, when I was ready to give up on subscribing to the PubMed feed, showed me how to copy and paste the feed correctly.
In addition to this course blog, I created a blog on a topic very dear to me. It's called Women Playing Ice Hockey. At present, my hockey blog contains only one posting, and features a photo of my team, the "Thunder Bay Magic", taken last month, after we won our annual tournament championship. However, I plan to update it regularly. I also subscribed to the Google Reader, and to five RSS feeds, including: a) the MLA Task Force on Social Networking Software; b) the Krafty Librarian; c) DavidRothman.net; d) Library Journal - Academic Libraries; and e) PubMed Search: "evidence-based medicine and information science".
Using Blogs and RSS Feeds in our Libraries
As part of the week one assignment, we were asked to consider how we could use RSS feeds in our libraries. RSS feeds would be very effective for linking to a library newsletter, so that our students, faculty and staff could stay up-to-date on the library services, resources, instruction, technology and staff news. In particular, RSS feeds would be especially useful for linking clientele to an E-Resources blog.
With regard to blogs, an E-Resources blog would be a great addition to most academic health sciences libraries. The blog could include information about new databases, journal / book collections, PDA resources, and other products; new product trials in progress, any technical difficulties with regard to access; and e-resources recommendations, and providing an RSS feed would make it that much easier for our clientele to stay up-to-date.
joanne
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