Thing #3 -- So Many Blogs, So Little Time

I've been using Bloglines for several months now but I've discovered that I've subscribed to too many feeds. I check Bloglines every few days, usually if I have a few minutes at the end of my work day and don't have time to start something new. I read many library-related blogs but I've grown tired of some of them--many of them are just self-promotions (which is true of many blogs, I think) so I go through the list and "trash" those every couple of months. I end up asking myself "Do I really care what this person thinks or what conference they've just attended?" But it is good practice to try some blogs for awhile then switch around if you want something new. Some library blogs that I do like are LISNews, The Annoyed Librarian, Information Wants to Be Free, Library Stuff, and Library Crunch. And of course the cartoons, Shelf Check and Unshelved. For readers advisory and keeping up with new authors, I like The Reader's Advisor Online Blog, The Book Babes, and Critical Mass from the National Book Critics Circle.

I prefer to keep up with the daily news by reading the newspaper every single day. I can't skip the paper or the daily comics. It's much more relaxing for me to sit down with the paper than to sit at the computer for my daily news fix. I've always believed that reading news from a daily paper helps me do my job better. Reading blogs doesn't help me in the same way that a newspaper does when a customer mentions they saw something in the paper and want to know more about it or they want help finding an article. For me, there's just something about a printed newspaper. Yes, my age is showing! There are a couple of Minnesota-related news blogs that I do check regularly: MinnPost and Minnesota Monitor. Many of the writers at MinnPost are former StarTribune columnists. I missed them when they left the paper, so it's great to still be able to read them online.

I don't really understand how the RSS feeds work yet, or how they're different from blog readers. More investigating of that later. I need to pick up a book before it's too late tonight!