Thursday, June 26, 2008

Thing #8 - RSS feeds

OMG, you course designers are devious, devious people... not only is my summer getting eaten up by school-related pursuits, it's getting positively gluttonous on relevant info through interesting blogs that lead to >gasp< other interesting blogs with even more info, and on, and on!

I remember how excited I was in library school in the late 70's (back when computers filled entire rooms, we typed catalog cards, and Reader's Guide was everyone's research friend - yes, indeed, kiddies, some of us who remember such things are still working and ambulatory...) about the whole new concept of hyperlinks.

Suddenly reading was no longer completely linear (this predated Choose Your Own Adventure books by just a bit) - how on earth would we keep up with where we had been? Would we be lost in the digital woods forever (and never finish writing that paper about abstracts in PRECIS)?

Thankfully, the tech wizards who never sleep devised 'breadcrumbs' so we could find our way back to where we'd started on this serendipitous information search, and some less-romantic techie soul decided that back-arrowing would work too. 'sOkay...

Anywho, I have my Google Reader receiving some scrumptious cooking & baking feeds (try Homesick Texan and Baking Bites, from King Arthur Flour), 4 fun Geeky feeds (Make magazine is too fun), the biggies in Technology (Slashdot, Engadget, Wired, etc), and some more high-falutin' stuff in the Thinkers category (NPR, TED, even Languagehat.com - Oh, yeah, baby! Give me more on Indo-European loanwords in Finnish! Really! I studied Indo-European in college linguistics classes... I'm not kidding! I love the esoteric language bits).

And, eventually, once I get caught up on the new feeds from these yummy, clever, tech-cool, intellectual blogs (so much, just since yesterday!), well, then, dear instructors, I mean, Kickball Captains, I will get a chance to see what wonders of the Library world I can add in... I wonder if Biblia, Warrior Librarian from the UK has a blog??? hmmmmmm

2 comments:

VWB said...

I'm twisting my dastardly deed moustache in your honor!

so glad you have been hooked and I know secretly you are too!

and yes, I remember RG...both the red and green!

Gaia Girl said...

Very cool, sis. I'm proud of you! I will pass along the RSS info to the folks at my place and maybe they can check into your course, too. I've read your other posts, too, and found a number if blogs, tools, etc., that I want to check out. Hadn't heard of mashups so that's my task for the day after I get back from a few hours in the office working on new teacher orientation handbook. If we could get the 'rents on the Web, we could do all kinds of family sharing things with schedules, pix, etc. Love you!