Library Stuff posts several feeds

Library Stuff has, by far, the most feeds. In the last 48 hours there were twenty of them, while Librarian.net had one, the Shifted Librarian only four. The single post on Librarian.net was quite interesting. It linked to the Open Library Project, a demo website started by multiple people, mainly Aaron Swartz. This would be an internet library, literally providing (ideally), every book to every person. It seems to encourage the participation of the public, with them creating and governing its content. This almost sounds like a blog, an interactive community where people can have their say in what happens and what decisions are made (concerning the library).
Other issues and topics covered in the blogs were libraries and gaming, internet filters and pornography, and expired domain names.
After having subscribed to these three blogs, I will probably only continue with Library Stuff, simply for its wealth of information. Bloglines is simple to use, for all of the most recent feeds pop up right after you sign in, and you can view older ones.
Concerning RSS, I just subscribed to feeds from NPR, the Washington Post, and BBC News. I'm not sure how long I'll stick with this. I'll try it out versus just going to the websites. RSS seems like it may be more convenient for someone who only reads through certain news topics. I tend to look around at almost everything, so RSS may not save me much time (as far as the major news sites go).

Google is big news

I checked the feeds again today, and the Google craze was talked about in two of them. Librarian.net had a link to a NY Times (online) article dated October 22nd entitled "Librarians Shun Deals to Place Book on Web," which I had actually already read today. Google and Microsoft are presenting libraries with offers to have their books scanned in for free. However, they have some restrictions, which many librarians won't agree to. One of these is that the material will be unavailable to other commercial search services.
Another company, the Open Content Alliance, is a nonprofit effort that is striving to make materials widely available. They, in contrast, are charging as much as thirty dollars to scan each book. The Shifted Librarian highlighted a book about emerging technologies and the future of academic libraries. These stories can't help but remind me that the identities of libraries and librarians are changing. With so much of a library's resources being digitized nowadays, and with online databases and catalogs, people seem to rely less on the library as a physical building.
Librarians are having to keep up with their own education, so as to stay well-informed about new technology, and also in order to instruct patrons and even other faculty members. Though people may do more and more research outside of the library building itself, they still rely on librarians to help them, as per phone and instant messaging assistance.

Interesting links in feeds

I started subscribing to Librarian.net, the Shifted Librarian, and to Library Stuff. Librarian.net was updated four times on Saturday the 20th. So far, there hasn't been anything too interesting posted. There were a couple links to librarian t-shirts and games. I was already familiar with Library Stuff, so I decided to subscribe to it. I like it because of its variety of posts. Right now it has up a scene from the t.v. show "The Office," information about the Montana State Library closings and a couple of book reviews.

There was also a story about research libraries refusing offers from Google and Microsoft to allow them to scan their books into computer databases. This topic is especially interesting, and there was a related feed on the Shifted Librarian about it. This person wondered whether or not libraries should just give in to Google (and allow them to provide books online), so that libraries may be freed up for other reasons, such as becoming cultural centers and focusing more on classes/instruction. Another Shifted Librarian post pertains to a presentation on gaming and libraries that she recently gave in Calgary. One interesting bit was how she loves presenting for Canadian librarians, for they do a much better job (in her opinion) of working together and allocating resources than we do in the U.S. I've actually been curious about living and working in Canada...

I visited the following news sites, all of which offer RSS.
www.npr.com, www.news.bbc.co.uk/, www.washingtonpost.com