#9 Finding Feeds

Now that you have a newsreader (your Bloglines account), you can begin adding other newsfeeds that interest you. There are several ways you can locate newsfeeds.

Discovery Resources:

• When visiting your favorite websites -- look for news feed icons that indicate the website provides it. Often a feed icon will be displayed somewhere in the navigation bar of the site. (Here's an image that contains a sampling of several feed icons).
  
  
• Use Blogline's Search tool - Bloglines search tool lets you search for news feeds in addition to posts, citations and the web. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds you might be interested in.
  
  
• Other Search tools that can help you find feeds:
• Feedster - One of the largest collections of RSS feeds, Feedster lets you search for feeds in three categories: news, blogs & podcasts
• Topix.net - This search tool allows you to locate recent newsfeed items based upon keyword or phrase searching. The tool focuses specifically on news and media outlet RSS feeds for information, not weblogs.
• Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands of RSS feeds that users have submitted.
• Technorati - Technorati is a popular blog finding tool that lets you search for blogs. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging tools, Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic specific blogs you may be interested in.
  Additonal Resource: Technorati Tutorial on finding and adding your blog.
  

Discovery Excercise:

1. Explore some of the search tools noted above that can help you locate some news feeds. See if you can locate some that are library-related.
2. Create a blog post about your experience. Don't know what to blog about? Here some questions to think about:
   Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use?
   Which Search tool was the easiest for you?
   Which was more confusing?
   What kind of useful feeds did you find in your travels?
   Or what kind of unusual ones did you find?
   What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

Note: The image shown at the beginning of this post is the standard icon that should be used among websites and browsers to identify RSS feed availability. So far, this icon has been adopted by many websites and browsers, including Firefox, where it displays in the address bar. In Internet Explorer 7, there is an RSS icon on the toolbar. When a website offers RSS, this icon will appear; otherwise it is grayed out.