Thing #9 - Library-related Blogs & Newsfeeds

A weekend of RSS feeds to my Google Reader has exposed some feeds as "not worthy" of my continued patronage. One great post does not a great blog make, eh? So I've culled out some subscribed blogs, starred amazing posts from others (I do like the categorization that various Google tools give you), and am now searching out others.

I do love getting the "right then and there" reporting on ALA, EdubloggerCon Unconference, and NECC/ISTE from David Warlick (2cents), Judy O'Connell (heyjude), Doug Johnson (blue skunk), and our own dear Kickball Captain VWB through their blogs.

I will see some of these great online personas in the flesh at the IASL Conference in Oakland in early August - World Class Learning and Literacy through School Libraries - http://www.iasl-online.org/events/conf/2008/index.htm --- Yes, you should go! Meeting school librarians from other countries is amazing!

Since I StumbleUpon as a seredipitous exploration method of web perusal, now I can quickly add potentially-great blogs found through that avenue to my Google Reader, give them a few days to prove out, then either keep or kill. I really, really liked CoolCat's "circle of the wise" concept, and am striving to do this in my GReader setup, both for personal interest and library/education bits.

Being a good studenty-person too, I've tried some of the blog search tools listed in Thing#9.

Bloglines was easy to use; found some good things through that, and subscribed.
Then skipped down to Google Blogsearch since I use GR; found more good things, that linked to other good things. Took in some of their 'categories' as in groups of blogfeeds, dumped a few indiv blogs because of irrelevance of most posts, others because of sheer volume, kept some ... time flew by, then it was time to get back to Library2Play and get on task!

Tried SuprGlu - by the time I got to it, the blogs listed were all repeats found through earlier blogsearches.
Syndic8 - interface a little clunky, but interesting to see user-submitted choices, including a few goodies that may be keepers
Technorati - interface a little too slick, didn't pull up as many useful blogs as others, even including repeats. Probably won't go back to this, but will recognize the name as trend-watching site.

Best blogs found in this go-round:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/k12onlineconference

- Oh, I can't wait for this fall's online conference! Distance prof.dev. with authority AND relevance! for FREEEEEE!!!

http://www.tk421.net/librarylink/rss.xml?days=1 -

Library Link of the Day -intl in scope, just the headline with link, quick & efficient
http://www.ccrls.org/woodburn/rss/teens.rss -Teen Reads - my HS kids will be asking for these books when we get back in fall, so I need to be ready