By now you've probably read otherpeoples' laments about Bloglines closing down. It makes me sad because I've depended on it for years, personally and for work.
I'm hoping someone will take over Bloglines and continue it, but just in case, I've been testing replacements and thought I would share my findings. (I've heard that RSS readers are a thing of the past, but I have also heard the same thing about email, radio, and libraries, which are also things I use almost every day.)
My criteria was basically everything I liked about Bloglines - a tool that let me get at the information I wanted to read, rather than getting in the way. Specifically, these were:
organize feeds into categories
sort feeds any way you want, not just alphabetically
bookmark posts to read later
load quickly
email posts to people
posts go away automatically after you view them
three view options for posts - titles only (click to expand to read fully article), post summary, and full post. And the view option can be set differently for individual feeds
Tiny Tiny RSS
One catch with tt-rss is that it's not just an online reader like Bloglines, but software you install and host yourself - or, if you're like me, ask someone else to host for you (word up, Chris). But listen to this: Blake Carver of LIShost.org has created LISfeeds.com to host tt-rss for librarians to use! So if you can't host it yourself but would like to use tt-rss, contact Blake to create an account. Thank you Blake!
simple and clean interface
didn't see a setting for view options - it displays the titles and you have to click to expand
can organize feeds into categories, but sorting within categories is just alphabetical
doesn't always display videos inline (Netvibes seems better on that score)
no ads, which Bloglines did have (although there was a greasemonkey anti-ad script called Stylish to remove them)
a little slow - switching between feeds, marking as read, etc. - just everything seemed sluggish
unsure about updating - button doesn't always seem to work, so Chris created a special url that forces updates (which take a few minutes)
harder to read/skim, because titles are same font and weight as everything else on page
lots of options listed under articles, which I don't use and kind of distract me
couldn't find a way to email posts
no way to see how many other people are subscribed to the feed (which might not be important if it's not a widely-used tool)
Netvibes
It looks like Netvibes' online RSS reader is just one portion of what they do. It's all I want though, so I just ignored all the widgety dashboard parts.
the overall interface is nice, but reading posts was still a little easier in Bloglines
top portion of the screen seems wasted - Bloglines devoted entire screen to feed reading
no ads, which Bloglines did have (although there was a greasemonkey anti-ad script called Stylish
setting in top right lets you chose display options per feed - title list, full post, or mosaic
a little bit slow - not horrible, but just enough to make me notice it
allows categories, and has drag-and-drop feed sorting which is nice (and easier than Bloglines)
plays videos inline, which Bloglines had problems with
updating can be wonky (which happened to Bloglines too) - sometimes you have to click into each category before new posts are displayed
a couple times every feed showed tons of new posts, but most didn't have anything new - but Bloglines did this too
it looks like one bad feed can prevent a whole category from loading - I had to delete and then re-add PLA blog feed because it wasn't working for me (but had to go through the category feed by feed to find it)
there's a link on each post to click right through to the comments, which is nice
one minor annoyance is that the posts' "mark as read" button is all the way on the right side of the screen, which is a pain with wide screen and a trackpad, because everything else I need to click is on the left side. But there is a "mark as read" button for the whole feed right where it should be
seems to randomly import posts from long ago, but might be because I'm just starting with it
have to either scroll past a post or manually click to mark things as read?
opening one article automatically closes another, which means you can't have more than one open at a time
handles oddballish feeds better than Bloglines, like Twitter streams and Flickr recent activity
does allow emailing posts, but I think it might send a link that requires a Netvibes account to clickthrough to - unless I'm doing it wrong
no way to see how many other people are subscribed to the feed (which might not be important if it's not a widely-used tool)
At the moment, I'm leaning towards using Netvibes. Mainly because it's a little bit faster, it lets me email posts (I'll have to work on the link issue though), I can set individual feeds to show either just titles or entire posts, and it seems closest to what I was used to Bloglines. I'm still sad about Bloglines, but I think I could get used to either of these.
Oh, but something else: since I've been using Bloglines for 5-6 years, I have hundreds of posts bookmarked in there, which I now what to retrieve somehow. Sigh, change.
Earlier this week, a patron walked up and asked if we had any tax forms. I showed him where we keep the leftovers from last tax season, and told him anything he couldn't find there we could print from the IRS and state websites.
He looked at the forms for a few seconds, then turned to me and said,
No, I want the new forms for this year, so I can get an early start on them.
I feel the need to reemphasize that this happened this week, specifically on September 14th (eight months and one day early!). Being asked for tax forms in December and January always seemed early, but September?
Just recently, someone who follows my blog sent me this email:
I have just started a job as a library reference assistant in a public library system in a city of over 500,000 people. I will be in one of the busier neighborhood libraries (there are around a dozen neighborhood libraries and a central library).
Any tips/advice for a new library reference assistant with only patron experience (and that, only checking out books, no reference usage) in a library?
Anyway, I thought I'd put together a Top 5 list for advice for new library employees. It's tricky, as library jobs can be so different, but here's the advice (mostly reference-related) I came up with - please submit more advice in the comments:
Don't be afraid to tell the patron you're new, and might not know something
Don't be afraid to ask coworkers for help (this will also save the patron's time)
When working on a difficult or complex question with a patron, I will get the patron started in one area (say, browsing the right Dewey section) while I go back and continue searching on my own. I find it much easier to think when a patron isn't standing there staring at me, and I think they get more out of it by being involved in the search
During downtime, learn your library's policies and about what resources & tools available to you - the catalog, vertical files, information at the reference desk, etc. (this is especially true for local information, which always seems like the hardest thing to find)
Practice - a little while ago I posted a couple tests used for hiring and training new staff - the more experience you have and the more familiar you are with the quirks of your tools, the more comfortable and helpful you'll be
And on the lighter side of interviewing for a library position, here's a classic Monty Python sketch - humorous, yes, but most of what the interviewers say is still spot on:
Hi everyone - I'm hoping you can help out with a quick survey. Kersten Matera from the Nashua (NH) Public Library is compiling data on how libraries handle digitized collections of historical photos.
Please, take a couple minutes to fill out the survey below. It's always interesting to compare how libraries handle similar tasks, and I'm particularly curious to learn what software libraries use to share their digital collections.
When the survey is complete, Kersten and I will post the results for everyone to check out - thanks for helping:
A patron comes to the desk and asks where the books on back pain are. I get up to show him, but he says he can find them himself, if I just write down the call number for him. So I write 617.564 on scrap paper and he was off.
A few minutes later he comes back and says he needs help after all. He found the books okay, but it turned out they are all on the bottom shelf and his back hurts too much to bend over.
We have a laugh at the irony, then I pull them all and put them on a cart, so he can take them over to a chair.
I was watching a show called The Book Group on Hulu recently, and got a taste of how they recommend other shows to people.
The bottom of every show page always has a "You Might Also Like" section, recommending similar shows, which I have used that in the past. But because a couple of the episodes of The Book Group were rated TV-MA, and required me to log in, during one of the commercial breaks I got this ad:
Which I read as,
Brian, not only are we violating your privacy, but we also think you have bad taste.
I'm sure the "27x more fans" thing is just to induce me to watch the other show (Peep Show, which I did watch a few episodes of and didn't really like). However, requiring me to log in and then using that to track me and "personalize" suggestions does feel like a violation. A different ad seemed more reasonable:
This conveys the exact same message, but doesn't also imply a deficiency on my part. So, I guess a word of caution to anyone providing readers advisory or viewing suggestions on your website - careful how you word the message.
Also, this got me thinking about two types of suggestions: item-oriented suggestions and person-oriented suggestions. Item-oriented is like NoveList or LibraryThing for Libraries - basically, providing suggestions based on the characteristics of an item.
Person-oriented suggestion is more like a personal shopper, or saying, "based on our monitoring of your behavior, we think you'd like this" - providing suggestions based on the preferences (or past behavior) of a person (or people). Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" or "Frequently Bought Together" sections are like this, as well as their "Recently Viewed Items." Which isn't a bad thing, unless the person being monitored don't know about it, or has no choice about it.
Hulu might be genericizing the data of what other people are doing, but it seems like they're still tracking what individual people do on their website, and I will always feel uncomfortable with that.
By now you've probably read other peoples' laments about Bloglines closing down. It makes me sad because I've depended on it for years, personally and for work.
Tiny Tiny RSS
Netvibes
