bye bye bloglines

Bloglines is shutting down on October 1st. End ofan era, I remember that it was the first site I could use to see who was actually reading my site via RSS. And Vox.com is also shutting down at the end of the month. I transferred my content there, such as it was to a typepad blog which has been a long series of tech support conversations. I’m curious actually where those domains will even point to a month or two from now.

And I get a lot of library news from the pretty disparate fields of Twitter and print magazines. I’ve been reading Computers in Libraries‘ latest issue [Donna Ekhart and I share a column there] about social technology and enjoying it. Wishing more of the content was online and linkable. And Twitter just this afternoon has pointed me to some great blog posts like this one by Dale Askey about Yale’s new University Librarian and his utter lack of librarian-type qualifications. Strong stuff, and well put.

I’ll continue to use NetNewsWire (for all Mac devices) as my RSS reader, being slightly behind but not buried, as usual, and want to put in a plug for Sage, the Firefox plug in, for those who don’t want to hop on the Google Reader train. It’s a great time to be in the information management business. Thanks Bloglines, you had a good run.

Engaged Patrons

There is no reason not to try this. EngagedPatrons.org “provide website services connecting public libraries and their patrons. We handle the programming; you reap the benefits of being able to offer your users a more engaging and interactive web presence.” The head honcho, Glenn Peterson, has been working on the Hennepin County Library website for a decade. A decade! Free to qualifying public libraries. Do you have a single thing to lose? No, you do not. [thanks rick]

some rss reading for those who are interested

I’ve gotten at least one request — which means there are probably more silent readers wondering — if I could define my terms somewhat more, maybe give some more background reading on some of the stuff I talk about, specifically RSS. I’ll point you to a few pages that have been helpful to me: