Meh. That’s kind of how I feel about feeds and feed readers. In my real life, I read quite a few blogs, mainly of the mommy/family type, but I’ve never really liked using a reader. I keep the sites bookmarked, and it’s part of my morning (or evening) routine, get a cup of coffee and click on each one to see what’s happening. I don’t like using a feed reader because you lose all of the blog design, they all look the same. I know it’s kind of silly, but after reading these blogs for years (some of them), I feel like I know these people, and I like to visit them. I like to go to each site, see the design, see the pictures. Going to a blogger’s site is like dropping by for a cup of coffee, whereas using a reader is kind of like e-mail, I guess, you lose some of the personality.
That said, I can see how a feed reader could be useful for other applications, especially keeping up with news or events. It would be a lot easier to have the news stories you’re interested in sent to you and be able to read them all in one place rather than clicking around to NYTimes, Washington Post, CNN, LJ, etc. I do like the way other libraries are using feeds to update on new books and library happenings. It would be nice to have a feed that listed events for each branch so that folks could get that information directly. At a PTA event last night I asked if or how people found out about library happenings and the most frequent response was “if it doesn’t come home from school or into my e-mail, I don’t know about it.” An RSS feed wouldn’t hit the e-mail, but it would be a step closer at least.
Shshhing Exercises 