Weed Whacking My Feeds

Holy cow, when I checked my Bloglines today, I had over 400 posts waiting for me. Yikes! I suppose that is what happens when one subscribes to *cough* 175 feeds. So, I've been weed whacking, unsubscribing to feeds where 1) no one has posted in months, 2) I never read the posts, and/or 3) there are just too many posts published too often. I've even had the courage to unsubscribe to some famous bigwigs. I doubt Stephen Abrams will miss my subscription and, if he posts something earth shattering, I trust you all to let me know via your own posts, Twitter, del.icio.us, the LSW Room or other social networking venues. I'm even reconsidering my subscriptions to ResourceShelf and the ReadWriteWeb, much as I love them, simply because they are so prolific that I can't keep up. I don't necessarily have to subscribe to every feed myself to keep current. I'm prioritizing feeds from LIS job sites, people I know, other LIS students, and LIS blogs that are funny, inspiring and/or incisive. I'll also keep some feeds from people who write about medical librarianship, Health and Medicine 2.0, academic librarianship and Google. I'm also keeping a few personal favorites (well, obsessions, really), like Chowhound and the Daily Puppy. Of the feeds that I drop, we shall see which ones I truly miss over the next few weeks.

Gosh, this is hard. Right now, I'm down to 152 feeds, aiming for 125. Wish me luck!

Carnival of the Infosciences #86

When we Minnesotans hear the words "carnival" and "winter" together, we immediately think first of the Saint Paul Winter Carnival. Since 1886, we have celebrated the coldest days of winter with festivities and events including parades, ice skating, tournaments, ice carving, building spectacular ice castles and, most notably, a dramatic reenactment of the epic battle between the Vulcanus Rex and His Krewe and the Realm of Boreas.

In Libraryland, we also celebrate winter according to the ways of our people. We feast with our families and friends, play DDR, Guitar Hero and Wii, read fat, fluffy novels, meet in hotels and conference centers to discuss matters of the greatest importance, frantically prepare for the work of the new year, and, most especially, we blog. Here are a few recent, notable posts from the biblioblogosphere.

Both Anna Creech and Connie Crosby submitted yeah, that might work from Attempting Elegance, in which Jenica P. Rogers-Urbanek discusses the trend of publishers pulling their journal content out of the aggregators in favor of publisher-specific stand-alone platforms. According to Jenica, while this model might benefit the publishers, it may not be cost-effective or efficient for libraries.

Anna Creech also submitted a post in which Mark Lindner of the Off the Mark responds to the recent LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. Anna says, "What's the point of having cooperative cataloging if only certain blessed individuals can correct or enhance OCLC records? Mark is probably not the only frustrated cataloger reacting to the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control's report with a strong dose of apathy."

Peter Bromberg of Library Garden wants to know: Librarians, Got Information Literacy? In this post (submitted by Kate Sheehan), Bromberg responds to a post by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb about how librarians of the future will be able to help patrons upload videos to YouTube. According to Bromberg, in order to promote true information literacy, librarians need to be able to teach such technology skills to patrons. He says,

"In days of yore librarians took pride in our information literacy knowledge and in our ability to instruct others, and help them navigate through the myriad of resources and finding tools (indexes, handbooks, specialized encyclopedias, etc.) I am hopeful that we can tap into that shared professional passion for connecting people and information and continue to manifest it by learning how to navigate through the NEW myriad of resources and finding tools."

See also responses from Kate Sheehan at the Loose Cannon Librarian and the Carnival's own Chadwick Seagraves at InfoSciPhi.

Meanwhile, over at librarian.net, Jessamyn West thinks about why exactly the digital divide matters (post submitted by Kate Sheehan). Jessamyn says, in summary, "We are a democracy. People who vote need to have access to as much reputable information as possible so they can make these and other choices. The internet is becoming an important ‘place’ to find this information. Unequal access to the internet creates unequal access to government."

Science librarian Christina Pikas considers Implications of newer models of popularization of science for science library collection development on Christina's LIS Rant. She summarizes, "Here's my point: research science libraries should make more effort to collect and market popular science materials. These materials should be an important part of the service we do -- plus they're cheap."

I've been pondering two posts by Meredith Farkas on Information Wants To Be Free. In Darn that dream, Meredith talks quite openly and honestly about her thwarted efforts to move into a management position at her library. In the follow up post Women, career, and getting a fair shake, she reflects upon a comment on the first post that said, in effect, that Meredith's job would mean less to her once she had children. Meredith examines this assumption by the anonymous commenter that all women necessarily want to have children. I recommend also reading the comments on both posts.

Alrighty, folks, that concludes this installment of the Carnival! Please be sure to submit posts to the eclectic librarian for #87. You can use the online form or tag posts carninfo in del.icio.us.