Keeping Up With the Blogs

I have started following quite a few blogs on my journey to becoming a librarian.  While most of these blogs are classmates, there are also leaders in the field of Library science and literacy that have great ideas.  Because my blog is on Blogger, I can follow other Blogger users from my page, but not from other blog sites.  In order to organize the blogs that I follow and not miss anything, I began looking at Blog Readers (aka RSS Readers) - sites that allow you to read all of the blogs that you follow from one convenient location.  I tried several websites - Feedly, Digg, Bloglines, Bloglovin', and Newsblur.

The first blog reader that I tried was Feedly.  Feedly has a clean user interface and is easy to use.  You can choose from categories to follow, enter a topic to search, or add an URL.   It can also add social media posts from Twitter and Facebook as well as Youtube and newspaper and magazine publications to your feed.  It has several options for organization, themes, and preferences. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well with Internet Explorer, but I didn't have any issues with Google Chrome.

The next blog reader I tested was Digg Reader.  Right away I noticed that you can not create an account using your e-mail address.  You must sign in using Google, Facebook, or Twitter.  You can add blogs to your feed by simply clicking the Add+ button on the bottom left corner.  It also has options for organizing feeds into folders, which I really liked.  By clicking on Digg Deeper, it will find more blogs for you to follow that are similar to your current feeds.  Digg is very simple with a basic gray background and no options for changing your theme. Digg reader lacks the ability to add social media to your feed.

Bloglines was the next Blog reader that I explored.  Unfortunately, the site has been down and I have been unable to access the site.  So on to the next RSS reader - Bloglovin'.  Bloglovin' did not work very well for me at first.  I had a hard time adding blogs to my feed that were not already on Bloglovin'.  I came back the next day and was able to add the blogs that I couldn't find the previous day.   I'm not sure if there was an issue on their website or if it was something that I was doing wrong.  The user interface reminds me of Pinterest in the way that it is set up.  I like that it shows you the most recent posts from the blogs that you follow..

The last blog reader I used was Newsblur.  Newsblur has a simple design that reminds me of Outlook. It is a very plain interface that shows three panes - one that is a menu where you select the blog you are interested in, one that show the blogs that were published on the chosen blog in order by date, and one that displays that post that you are interested in reading.  This blog was very appealing to my sense of order.

I ultimately chose to use Bloglovin'.  Even though I wasn't a fan at first, once I was able add the blogs that I wanted, I really liked the layout and how it gave me suggestions for more blogs to follow.  Here are the five new blogs that I chose to follow.

Great Kids Books

This blog is intended to help parents to find books for their 4-14 year old children, but I found it very useful for learning about new books that are available for my library.




Library Safari

Library Safari is a great source for library management and instruction ideas.  I found a link on Pinterest which led me to this blog.





Mighty Little Librarian

The Mighty Librarian is a middle school librarian who shares her wisdom in all things library and technology related.  She is very inspiring.



DCG Elementary Libraries

PreK - 5th grade elementary libraries in the Dallas Center-Grimes Community School District in Central Iowa share lesson ideas, activities, book recommendations, and general information.








The Daring Librarian

The Daring Librarian is a teacher-librarian and technology specialist that writes this award winning blog about technology, lessons, and resources.

I also created a Tumblr account.  Tumbler is a microblog - a combination of social media like Facebook and Twitter and a short blog.  You can post photos, text, quotes, links, music, and videos from the website or from the app.  This would be another great tool for school librarians to engage tech savvy parents in school library activities and news.  I also see libraries that are sharing book reviews and articles that might be of interest to parents or sharing photos and inspirational quotes.  I have created a Tumbler page for my school library.  Here is the link: http://drrodriguezilc.tumblr.com/.  I look forward to posting on this new media.

-Lisa