Bloglines for Librarians in Three (and a half) Easy Steps

by Joy Weese Moll

No time to learn about blogs, RSS, news aggregators, etc? Then don't. These three easy steps offer no choices, no background, and no reasons why. Just a fast way to get in the game.

1. Create an account at Bloglines (bloglines.com). Click on "Click here to sign up" in the middle of the page to get to the easy form. You will then be asked to go to your email to validate the new account.
2. Subscribe to feeds. When you click on the validation, you will be taken to Bloglines. Click on the My Feeds tab in the upper left corner. Bloglines will have kindly subscribed you to their news blog.

   Now you want to subscribe to feeds that are useful to librarians. Put this URL in your browser and click Go: http://www.bloglines.com/public/QuickLibrarianSetUp. Click on the top feed in the left column. A blue banner in the right column will have several options, including Subscribe--click on that. You will now be back at your feeds with the new feed added. Use the Back button of your browser to go back to QuickLibrarianSetUp's Feeds. Subscribe to each feed on the list. You are now subscribed to a variety of feeds of general interest to librarians!

3. Make a Bookmark or Favorite of your My Feeds page. Check your Bloglines at least once every weekday.

Step 3 and a half Add new feeds and delete ones that aren't helping you. The Add link is just above your list of feeds and leads to an easy form. To delete a feed, click on the unsubscribe link in the blue banner that appears while you are looking at the contents of that feed.

Questions? Suggestions? Want to add a feed to my blog?

• Email: joy at moll projects dot com (put together in the conventional way)
• Wanderings of a Student Librarian: joy.mollprojects.com/myblogs/wanderings/

This (boring) page is designed to be printed on one page and used as a handout. Feel free to do so under the conditions of the Creative Commons license.

If you received this page in print, it's on the Web, with live links, at: http://joy.mollprojects.com/myprojects/rss/quickrss.html

Created: February 8, 2005. Last modified: October 23, 2005 (to make it really fit on one page).