Searching the “New” Web: Blogs & RSS ORALL Annual Meeting October 13, 2005 Presented by Bonnie Shucha UW Law Library

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

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 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

Finding Blogs  Other Library Related Blogs Blogwithoutalibrary  List of blogs by library type Library Weblogs  List of blogs by country LIS Blogsource  Blog about library blogs

Finding Blogs  Law Blogs (Blawgs) RSS News Feeds for Law, TVC Alert Blawg: Law & Legal Related Weblogs -

Searching Blog Content  Blog Search Engines Google Blog Search Feedster Technorati Daypop

Evaluating Blogs  BlogPulse 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,

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,

RSS Feeds Other Than Blogs  Other Newspapers Custom News Alerts  Feedster  Google News Alerts SEC Filings Product Recalls

RSS for Library Content  Databases ProQuest SFX & Metalib (RSS Creator)  OPACs Innovative Interfaces -

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,

RSS Readers … into something readable 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 - Bloglines - Pluck ( Web or IE Plug-in) -

Free RSS Readers  Software FeedReader - RSS Bandit -

Bloglines  Free Web-based RSS reader  Use to read: RSS feeds Listservs!  Subscribe at  Tutorial movie (UC Berkeley Library):

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