Article Note: On Blogging as Tool, but Really About Using RSS

Citation for article:

Bhatt, Jay. "Blogging as a Tool: Innovative Approaches to Information Access." Library HiTech News 22.9 (2005): 28-32.

I read this article via Emerald.

When I picked up this short piece, I thought from the title that it was yet another article on blogs and how good they are. In other words, I thought it was another gospel article. However, as I began to read through it, it turns out that the article is actually a look at rss applications for engineering students and faculty. The real focus of the article is how to make use of rss to keep up with research in engineering and biomedical sciences. It's focus is on the experience at Drexel University. While the article gives the usual ideas for using blogs and rss in an academic library such as using a blog to announce new books and using rss, the real thrust of the article is the integration with the subject field. For example, the article discusses how to use rss to keep up with the results of search queries from databases. Before, one usually had to set e-mail alerts; now, you can do this with feeds and a Bloglines account. The article also discusses in brief the need to integrate rss with courseware like WebCT. The only drawback of the article is the writing style. I found it to be extremely cluttered, and at times a bit difficult to read because it did not seem well written. However, the information is valuable, especially to librarians in engineering and technology, which is why I will be passing this article along to our Engineering Technology Librarian. It does include a nice list at the end of various feeds in the field of engineering and biomedical engineering that may be of interest to specialists.