Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Week 4, Thing # 9: MERLIN


MERLIN-Maryland's Essential Resources for Library Information Networks. Wow! I had not been aware of this resource for information sharing (note the squirrels in the photo above are sharing information, too!) I was particularly impressed by the list of Learning Links. These short tutorials, from Blogs, to Gaming, to Podcasting, etc. are really on target for our self-directed learning. I plan on going back to review many of them. The Trends & Cool stuff has much to offer., even a discussion of handheld devices (we had some MP3 questions here in our library). I really appreciate this site. I was intrigued by "LibVibe", a library newscast audio.

The search tools exercise was interesting. I liked the fact that one could sort RSS feeds by date and relevance on Feedster. I was a bit confused by Topix.net, as one had to put in the city and state and then the newsfeed items all pertained to your own city. So, this really focuses your search regionally. Syndic8 provided some good vegetarian RSS info. I had to play around with the use of the FEED URL and getting it in Bloglines. Once I figured it out (had to choose the XML box, then cut and past the entire URL that appears on the top of the screen into Bloglines), it was easy. Technorati has a really good support section with a 4 page "Blogging Basics" articles that explains blogging, RSS, syndication, RSS search engines, and the relationship between blogging and journalism (a line that is getting more and more blurred).

The Technorati site has lots of information about creating "favorites", tagging, etc. There is certainly a lot to learn about Blogging and the Blogospeare! I can see that I have just scratched the surface.

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