Information Research Weblog

A snowy Saturday afternoon in Sweden seems an appropriate time to check what's going on in the world and my attention was caught by reference on Librarian.net to a new 'portal' to library and information resources from Steve Cohen, who runs the Weblog Library Stuff. The title, LIS Feeds is not exactly catchy, but it gets across the idea. Using a bit of software called a 'news aggregator', which is:

"software that periodically reads a set of news sources, in one of several XML-based formats, finds the new bits, and displays them in reverse-chronological order on a single page."

Some aggregators will sit on your desktop, others need to be mounted on your Web site server, particularly if you want to deliver a news service such as LIS Feeds. One desktop version, which is free, is Amphetadesk, which can be rather addictive. The package comes set up with access to six 'channels', but you can change these and select others from a list too big to count, or insert the url for a news-feed that isn't on the list.

Amphetadesk is worth playing with, just to get a feel for the general idea - but don't overdose on the channels, otherwise you will be suffering from information overload.

Who knows, if I get really interested, I may have an RSS feed associated with this Weblog, or with the Information Research in some other way. If there is anyone out there who would like to help.... mail me