Put Everything in One Place and Be Done with It

I have already discussed web feeds, but now I want to talk about using those web feeds in more detail. You may be saying, "This web feed stuff seems too techie for me." Or you may be thinking, "I can hardly handle e-mail. I can't add anything else to that." At the same time, you may be saying, "I can't keep up with all this information."

Those are all the reasons why you SHOULD register with a service like bloglines. With a service like bloglines, you can "subscribe" to a blog (or any other site with web feeds). Once you register (a simple process), you "subscribe" to web feeds by doing this:

1. Find the syndication button on a site that provides web feeds (all blogs are web feeds; however, many websites are providing this service as well). The syndication button can say RSS or XML or ATOM or SUBSCRIBE (one complaint people have is the difficulty in finding the syndication button because they can look like different things, but that should be changing soon).
   
2. Click on that button. You will be taken to a page that looks like hieroglyphics (actually HTML).
   
3. Copy the URL by clicking on the address bar and hitting CTRL+C on your keyboard (or however you like to copy) .
   
4. Go to your web feed reader/aggregator.
   
5. Click on Add.
   
6. Paste the URL into the provided text box. THAT'S ALL! A simple copy and paste.
   

Now, when you go to your web feed reader/aggregator, blogs or web feeds with new additions will be in bold with the number of new articles in parentheses to the right of the title. Click on the title and the new articles appear on the same window. No more traversing the internet. You have a one-stop shop!

For your convenience, I have placed the feed URLs for all library blogs below, so just copy these URLs and skip to step 4 in the instructions above.

http://memphislibrary.blogspot.com/atom.xml (ILS Blog)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/MplicTechTrain (This blog)

http://mplic.wordpress.com/feed/ (Reference Highway)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Leap (Library Leaders)