Thing #3

"With so many online news sources, how do you find the ones that relate to you? Learn about blog search tools."

How to find your way through the labyrinth? -- for me, perhaps the most important factor has simply been total amount of time spent searching the web, using it, running into dead ends, and then successfully finding stuff I'm that interests me -- articles, bloggers, websites, listservs, RSS feeds, and other things that matter to me. Once you've found some sources that you like, they lead to more sources, and those lead to more, and so on.....

Serendipity plays a big part.

As far as subject specific searches goes, I like that Google will let you specify if you are looking for images, news, maps, etc. Haven't tried their blog search much, but will make a point to give it a try.

For folks taking a more academic approach, verification of a source is essential. Here's a guide from UC Berkeley on how to evaluate web pages. If you are just surfin' for fun, anything goes...you'll know after you've followed a feed for awhile whether or not it is worth your time.

It was back on March 15, 2006 (yes, I found my certificate of completetion and handouts), that I attended the NEFLIN "Library Blogs and Newsfeeds" workshop. I believe the entire class signed up for a Bloglines account that day. My account just sat there for awhile. Months, probably. It looked to me like one of those things I'd never use again -- then all of sudden I started adding some RSS feeds from blogs or news sources I read regularly, and pretty soon Bloglines was a page I was visiting every day. I'm up to 96 feeds now. If I'm not sure if a webpage has a feed, I put the URL into the Bloglines add subscription box, and it lets me know.

The feeds require pruning now and then. But I love Bloglines. In fact it might be the webpage I visit most often. It's easily in my top 5.

evernerve likes it too.

The NEFLIN class offered up a list of blog and RSS search engines but I can't find it right now. I think icerocket was one. Unless I am looking for something really blog-specific, I hardly ever use these.