Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide (2nd ed.)

Citation

Secker, J. (2012), "Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Guide (2nd ed.)", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 46 No. 2, pp. 279-280. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330331211221891

I reviewed the first edition of this book back in 2007 when I was working on a project to explore social software (or social media as it's more commonly now called) the use of libraries by distance learners. At the time I was conducting my literature review Sauers had written the first monograph devoted to the topic of blogging and RSS feeds in libraries. I was therefore keen to review this second edition to see how it had been updated. It was also clearly an area where change has been fairly rapid and so a Second edition four years after the original was not unsurprising.

This new book is divided into nine chapters; the first four on blogs and the next four devoted to the topic of RSS feeds. This is broadly the same structure as before, however each of these chapters has been updated. There is now a final chapter about Twitter, a service that was launched the year after the first edition of Sauers' book was published. Chapter One provides an introduction to blogs. I do find it difficult to believe there is anyone in the library world who would not be familiar with them now, but the discussion of the impact of blogs on traditional media and search engines is really useful. There is also a good rationale for those who have yet to take the plunge about why blog. Chapters Two and Three are an overview of the “Library Blogosphere” and it has been updated from the first edition to include a number of key librarians and libraries who have blogs. There is also a useful section on miscellaneous blogs, which are worth checking out from outside the library world, such as the Google Blog and the Wikinomics blog. In Chapter Three Sauers interviews the bloggers, looking at their motivations for blogging, their tips for getting started, the strengths and weaknesses of blogs from their perspective. My two complaints are I already follow so many library and librarian bloggers and I am disappointed that the bloggers are exclusively all US librarians. We have some great UK librarian and library bloggers, I would have thought at least one could have featured?

Chapter Four looks at how to set up your own blog. There are lots of tips for getting started and quite a detailed overview of setting up a blog hosted on Blogger.com. In his first edition Sauers recognised that this section of the book was likely to date most quickly and he suggested using the Help files on the website. However, there are still 20‐30 pages on setting up and managing your blog in Blogger.com. I was struck by the lack of other options suggested and the focus on Blogger. It is a simple way to set up a blog, but I was surprised that WordPress and other options only got a really brief mention on p. 83.

Chapter Five (as with the original edition) looks at RSS (or feeds), including a history of how these have developed and what a feed file actually is. I always found the BBC Guide to RSS (www.bbc.co.uk/news/10628494) a simple introduction for staff at LSE or the Common Craft video explaining what is RSS (www.commoncraft.com/video/rss). Unless I missed it neither of these examples are in the Sauers book.

Chapter Six look at using an aggregator (or feed reader). It is broadly similar to the original edition although has been updated to include embedded RSS clients in programs such as Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3.5x. In this edition Sauers concentrates mainly on the tool Google Reader and pages 162‐202 is devoted to Google Reader, from setting up an account, through to managing your feed subscriptions. Again there are lots of screenshots and one feels this section of the book might again date fairly quickly. The final section of this chapter (pp. 202‐207 covers podcasting and RSS, including how to subscribe to a podcast and the variety of podcasts now available, although interestingly there is no mention of iTunesU one of the most popular sources of podcasts on a host of educational topics.

Chapter Seven (again like the original edition) includes plenty of examples of “noteworthy feeds”. I enjoyed the many interesting examples of libraries and library organisations using Web 2.0 technologies although almost all are from the US. Sauers highlights RSS services that allow users to perform a search and then subscribe to a feed from that search. GoogleNews is available in this way for example. On page 221 Sauers uses the same example from the first edition of how RSS can be used by libraries to benefit their users. The tool is called LibraryElf (wwwlibraryelf.com) it can, for example, notify users when books are ready to be picked up or when they are overdue. These alerts can be sent as a feed to an aggregator, via e‐mail or via SMS text message. The chapter then looks at a host of miscellaneous feeds and services from tracking eBay auctions, to using delicious the social bookmarking site.

Chapter Eight of the book looks at creating feeds yourself and similar to the first edition it is probably the most technical of all the chapters but explains three ways of creating a feed from your content. It was the least appealing of the chapters to me, but I can see the value in adding it to the book.

Chapter Nine is a brand new chapter in the Second Edition exploring Twitter, which was launched in 2007 and has become hugely popular. Sauers argues on p. 259 that if you have not been convinced by blogging then there is no way he can convince you to use Twitter! You probably would not have got this far into the book either! However he does include some reasons for why Twitter can be useful as a way of disseminating information, resources and links to your followers. He then takes you through creating an account, your account settings through to posting your first tweet, using hashtags, retweeting and direct messages. He also gives some advice of who to follow (recommending himself!) and then searching twitter. Finally he lists some useful twitter related tools and services such as TweetDeck and BackupMyTweets. I would have added Visible Tweets (http://visibletweets.com/) to the list, a great way of getting tweets using a specific hashtag to appear on a plasma screen at a conference or event.

The book concludes with an afterword, some recommended reading, a detailed appendix of Feed Code Examples and a useful Glossary. Like the first edition, I found Sauers highly readable and full of excellent examples, if a little US‐centric! It is also a pretty weighty book but if you are a novice to the world of blogs, RSS and Twitter, this may be the book for you.