Working with Feeds

Suzanne has mentioned RSS feeds in previous posts. I take advantage of RSS feeds and use Bloglines to read several different blogs (including this one). Ever since I created my Bloglines account, it’s much easier to find the time to read through these blogs and keep myself up to date on what is happening in library land and other places. In addition to some popular library blogs, I also subscribe to a few non library blogs that talk about innovation, customer service, and training.

On one of these blogs (LibrarianInBlack), I read a posting that I thought might be useful. It’s about FeedBlendr, a service that blends several different feeds into one convenient package. What do I mean by that? I created a blend that looks for international articles in CNN, the International Herald Tribune, and The New York Times. What do I get? Check it out at http://feedblendr.com/viewr/12913/0. It’s one page that lists the headlines and the first couple sentences of every article that was featured in the International/World sections of the two papers and CNN. I no longer have to go to each individual website. Even better I can include this blended feed in my Bloglines account, so I don’t even have to go the website listed above.

I haven’t played with another feature in FeedBlendr which is some code that will let you include your blended feed on a website. If you have been thinking about adding feeds to your website, you might want to consider playing with FeedBlendr. You can easily add a link like the one above or even better you can use the code provided by FeedBlendr to have the feed work like the one you see on the right of Montana BiblioTechies blog. Library patrons can see the headlines and follow an article that interests them.

The blended feed option is also nice, because it adds value to your feed. Instead of having a feed that only lists The New York Times, you can add some value by blending it with other newspapers. Now the library patron can check out news around the world with one click.