Week 4, thing 8

I did it! I created an account in bloglines, and subscribed to some RSS feeds. It took a good bit of practice, and a colleague's help to get the hang of adding feeds. Now that I know how to do it, I am amazed at how simple it is to do. I'm not sure I want so much information coming at me from the feeds to which I subscribed. We shall see! I think that perhaps using feeds to cull information that is important to you is a good idea. What bothers me about the idea, though, is that the information is being filtered for me, and the filters might "color" or "select" what I see, much as the news media does. That's certainly something I need to keep in mind.
There is great potential for libraries to judiciously post programming, to boost interest in materials, to inform the public about our library, and to solicit help from the community. Here I think the danger could be in pushing too much information, too often, so that people could turn a "deaf ear", or a "blind eye."

If you happen to be following my posts, I realized that I spelled Wii incorrectly in my last post, and I did practice playing a Wii game the last time I was at my daughter's house. It sure could become addicting. It's probably a good thing I don't have Wii at my house.