Friday shout-out: Google Reader in the library
I’ve been playing around with Google Reader, migrating my RSS feeds from Sage and figuring out some of the cool additional features that GR offers.
One of them–the ability to create and share a feed of your “top picks” from all the feeds you read–is being used in a cool, innovative way by the staff at Berkeley’s Environmental Design Library. Check out the ENVI home page to see it in action: at the bottom of the page you’ll see a feed of items drawn from blogs related to architecture, city planning, and environmental design. The items are constantly updated so there’s always new, relevant, interesting content on the library’s home page. It’s a great, simple way to leverage a free tool (Google Reader) to keep librarians and patrons up to date on what’s going on outside the library’s walls.
For more help with Google Reader’s sharing features, see the Google Reader Sharing FAQ. Props to Matthew Prutsman and the other ENVI staff for setting this up!
Brian Westra said,
May 20, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Cool! I did this last year when I was trying to find a better way to support a diverse set of workgroups from a special library. Since many staff were not familiar with RSS, and didn’t want to do more filtering of information, I set up a bunch of these to provide filtered feeds that program staff could then subscribe to. By tagging the relevant feed items, I was able to provide a value-added service to the staff.
The current librarian (Ann Madhavan) has taken over this since I left the program. You can see the full blogroll and the various feeds on the Hazardous Waste Management Program Web site: http://www.govlink.org/hazwaste/library/feeds.html