Of the feed search tools suggested for us to try, I most liked Topix. It has a fairly attractive layout, and wasn't too hard to figure out how to use. It offers a keyword search as well as some category groupings.
Feedster sounded interesting, but unfortunately their website seems to be down for maintenance. I was unable to access it a few days ago, and it still didn't work for me today.
At first I didn't care for Syndic8. It looks like it was designed by techies who read the phone book for pleasure. Lots of texty links. But then I found its beauty. You put your keywords into the search box, and instead of a page full of posts from different newsfeeds, up comes a simple list of matching feed names, with some basic info for each. For instance, it gives you the date a blog was created, the language, and its URL. I like being able to link directly to a source via its URL, rather than coming in through the back door of a string of postings.
Technorati looked kind of like Topix. I'll explore it more when it comes up again in the tutorial.
How can the library use RSS? Patrons could subscribe to our newsletters, event calendars, booklists, etc, as an option along with email or postal mail. They also could build customized groupings of newsfeeds from what the library has to offer. (A library blog I subscribed to will be sending me information related to one particular topic area). Staff can use their Bloglines account to subscribe to all the in-house blogs that interest them and organize them into one spot.
Frankly, though, I think subscribing to newsfeeds can be like subscribing to listservs in our email accounts. It takes a lot of time to read them, and it is easy to sign up for more than you can handle.
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