#8 - Find some feeds

You've got your RSS reader set up (your newly created Bloglines account) and you've added a few RSS feeds. Excellent work. Seriously.

But do you really want to stop there? After you put all that effort into setting up your account? I didn't think so - today's lesson focuses on locating even more RSS feeds for your reading and information seeking pleasure.

First off, a reminder from our last unit. When you visit your favorite websites, look for feed icons - these are the clearest indication that the site offers some form of RSS feed. The feed icons will typically be displayed somewhere in the site navigation.

At KCLS? Right now you'll find RSS feeds in Catalog Explorer but not much else. Our website re-launch (which is just a few months away) will change all of that.

And what about searching for RSS feeds?

There are a number of RSS search tools - these include:

Blogline's Search tool. This lets you search for news feeds in addition to posts, citations and the web. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds you might be interested in.

Feedster. This is one of the largest collections of RSS feeds, Feedster lets you search for feeds in three categories: news, blogs & podcasts.

Topix.net. This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlets RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.

Syndic8.com.Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.

Google Blog Search. This one is limited to blogs. Once you find the blog you are looking for, add the main blog URL just as you added those from your co-workers in our previous lesson.

Today's Discovery Exercise is all about finding RSS feeds.

1. Log in to your Bloglines account and keep it to the side until you need it.
   
2. Use one of the above search tools to locate at least 2 RSS feeds on topics that interest you - add these to your Bloglines account.
   
3. Use another of the above search tools to locate at least 2 library-themed blog to your Bloglines account (or cheat and add Stephen's Lighthouse, Tame The Web, Library Bytes, Walking Paper, Librarian.net, or David Lee King.com).

Some things you might want to think about (or even add to this week's blog posting):
- Which method of finding feeds was easiest - going to your favorite sites or searching for them?
- Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing?
- What kind of unusual feeds did you find on your travels?

That's it for today's Discovery Exercise. And just about it for today's unit - just one last piece of feed icon information:

In Febuary of 2006, the adoption of standard feed icon among websites and browsers finally began helping to stop the madness and confusion caused by so many variations. So far this icon has been adopted by many websites and browsers, including Opera and FireFox, where it displays in the address bar:


And with that, you're done until next time.

Up next: MySpace...