Searching the “New” Web:Blogs & RSS

ORALL Annual Meeting October 13, 2005

Presented by Bonnie ShuchaUW Law Library

bjshucha@wisc.edu

What Is the Difference Between a Blog and a Web Site?

A blog IS a Web site However, the structure is slightly

different than a traditional website

All convertibles are cars, but not all cars are convertibles

All blogs are Web sites, but not all Web sites are blogs

What Is the Difference Between a Blog and a Web Site?

As with any Web site. . .

There are some really great blogs

There are some really rotten ones

And there are a lot of them in between

Blog Characteristics

Brief informational posts arranged in reverse chronological order

Timestamp for each post Archives of previously posted content Comment feature offers interactivity

The Blogosphere

There are 14.2 Million weblogs with over 1.3 billion links

The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months

A new blog is created about every second and over 80,000 created daily

From: Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere http://www.technorati.com/weblog

Blogs are Everywhere!

The Importance of Blogs

Help our patrons and ourselves: Stay informed about areas of interest Get up-to-the-minute news & information See viewpoints outside the

mainstream media

Example: WisBlawg

http://wisblawg.blogspot.com

WisBlawg offers legal research and Internet news & information with an emphasis on Wisconsin

Blawg=Law-related blog

WisBlawg is viewed about 100

times per day

Blog Features

Informational posts with links to relevant sites

Images (optional)

Comment feature

Finding Blogs

Law Library Blogs 48 blogs associated with a library 20 blogs by law librarians 7 law library association or committee

blogs

For a list, see the “Shucha List” at http://library.law.wisc.edu/wisblawg/blogslistpublic.htm

Finding Blogs

Other Library Related Blogs Blogwithoutalibrary

http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links.html List of blogs by library type

Library Weblogs http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html

List of blogs by country

LIS Blogsource http://lisblogsource.net/ Blog about library blogs

Finding Blogs

Law Blogs (Blawgs) RSS News Feeds for Law, TVC Alert -

http://www.virtualchase.com/resources/rss_law.html

Blawg: Law & Legal Related Weblogs - http://www.blawg.org/

Searching Blog Content

Blog Search Engines Google Blog Search

http://blogsearch.google.com/ Feedster http://feedfinder.feedster.com/ Technorati http://www.technorati.com/ Daypop http://www.daypop.com/

Evaluating Blogs

BlogPulse - http://blogpulse.com/profile

Tool to help you evaluate the content and influence of a blog

who authors it how active the blog is how it ranks compared to other blogs what it's about

Reading Blogs

Good - As a Web page Stay current but requires reader

to visit multiple sites daily to check for updates

Better - Via a RSS feed All updates delivered to one location Read multiple feeds in one place

RSS

What Is RSS?Rich Site Summary OR

Really Simple Syndication

See LawLibTech (Cindy Chick) RSS Tutorial: What Is RSS, http://www.lawlibtech.com/archives/000098.html

RSS Feeds Other Than Blogs

Law-Related Dockets Recent opinions Journal tables of contents Government agency news

See TVC Alert’s RSS News Feeds for Law, http://www.virtualchase.com/resources/rss_law.html

RSS Feeds Other Than Blogs

Other Newspapers Custom News Alerts

Feedster Google News Alerts

SEC Filings Product Recalls

RSS for Library Content

Databases ProQuest

-http://www.il.proquest.com/proquest/rss/

SFX & Metalib (RSS Creator) - http://public.csusm.edu/dwalker/rss.htm

OPACs Innovative Interfaces -

http://www.iii.com/news/pr_template.php?id=256

RSS Feeds Other Than Blogs

Coming Soon? LexisNexis ECLIPSE Westclip – Already available with West

IntraClip

RSS

“Anyone who needs to monitor current news on a regular basis will need to understand and use RSS in some form going forward.”

Source: LawLibTech RSS Tutorial: What Is RSS, http://www.lawlibtech.com/archives/000098.html

RSS Readers

… into somethingreadable

Turns RSS feed…

RSS Readers

Click on or RSS link on blog or web site to get the URL for the feed

Subscribe to the feed with a RSS reader which displays it in readable format

With a RSS reader, multiple feeds are delivered to a single software or Web application

RSS Readers

RSS readers are also known as: RSS aggregators news readers news aggregators

Free RSS Readers

Web-based MyYahoo - http://my.yahoo.com/ Bloglines - http://www.bloglines.com Pluck (Web or IE Plug-in) -

http://www.pluck.com/

Free RSS Readers

Software FeedReader - http://www.feedreader.com/ RSS Bandit - http://www.rssbandit.org/

Bloglines

Free Web-based RSS reader Use to read:

RSS feeds Email Listservs!

Subscribe at http://www.bloglines.com/

Tutorial movie (UC Berkeley Library): http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/BIOS/rss.html

RSS Feeds

Posts

Drawbacks of RSS Readers

Can’t easily reply to posts Posts not saved – unless you save

them May get ads from some feeds or

readers Predictions that spy ware will soon

invade RSS

“We librarians, as information experts, do our patrons a disservice if we fail to make an effort at tapping into some of the information that may only be found in the blogosphere.”

From “Mining Information Gold in the Blogosphere,” AALL Spectrum, November 2004