Bloglines Is Not for Me, but Those Blogging Librarians Are (Parts 8 and 9)

My, but it's clunky and klugy. I just don't like it at all. It took me several tries to even sign up. Then, when I fed URLs into the Add Feed form, it rejected most of them.

I've been using RSS readers since Mozilla first introduced one in one of its early versions of Firefox back in 2005 (or early 2006). Since then, I've switched over to the very easy-to-use and agreeable Google Reader. The same URLs I fed into Bloglines were successfully incorporated into Google Reader.

I first used the Firefox RSS reader in the browser primarily to access news. These days, however, I follow 50 or so food blogs in Google Reader. To be honest, I just don't see myself adopting another RSS reader, especially Bloglines, when my needs are already met with Google Reader.

When I started looking for library/librarian-focused blogs to add to my Google Reader, I searched Google for "librarian blogs," and came across the list of Top 25 Librarian Bloggers. In Web years, it's pretty old (published Sept. 4, 2007), but I decided to take a look at some of the top bloggers anyway. Here are the top 5.

Librarian.net -- I LOVE the tagline "putting the rarin back in librarian since 1999." How clever! For a newbie like me, however, the blog comes off as an insider's conversation. On the other hand, I could easily access archives dating back to 2003 if I wished to do some research. I like her "small bites" style of blogging -- little pieces, like thought appetizers. It's up to you to get the rest of the meal.

The Shifted Librarian -- This blog would probably be the one of choice for me. The writing is very open and good, and I can identify with her most recent piece about being a Gen X'er. I'll definitely subscribe to Jenny's blog.

Librarian in Black -- I really enjoyed this blog as well. I like the tech focus and the constant supply of interesting resources. It's understandable that this one came up in the top three.

Free Range Librarian -- Another one I'll add to my Google Reader. Its clever, tongue-in-cheek look at noteworthy news for those in the profession is refreshing.

Law Librarian Blog -- My focus isn't law libraries, but I found it to be a very interesting and easy-to-follow blog. If you're interested in law libraries, you might want to start here.

After looking at those blogs for a while, I went to Technorati, as suggested, and entered the search term "librarians." I thought that would lead me to blogs by librarians for librarians. Not so. It just pulled up posts featuring the word "librarians."

Next, I clicked on the link to Feedster. It timed out. Then, I turned to Topix. Again, it was case of finding blog entries, but not the blogs. Guess my first instinct was the right one here. I'm sure this way of searching isn't always the best way to go, but it worked on the first try, revealing some pretty neat blogs that I'll be reading regularly now.