Thursday, November 02, 2006

OPML and the Internet Librarian conference

OPML is widely used to group a whole lot of RSS feeds into one bundle, ready for importing into an RSS aggregator.

I just imported my first OPML file into RSS Reader. I tried at Bloglines , but it said it would take 2 hours to import, and I was just too impatient. Bloglines has been a bit flakey recently, anyhow, with outages and delayed updates.

You could use OPML to provide "starter feeds" for people setting up RSS. You could provide information from a subject search, especially if the client wanted to know relevant resources rather than information. The grazr box on Peta's sidebar at Innovate is another use of OPML. To create OPML files, you can use a site like OPML Workstation.

What was in my bundle? Feeds associated with the Internet Librarian 2006 conference held 23 -26 October in Monterey, California. Over 1000 delegates attended and it had sessions like videocasting with David Lee King, RSS feeds and javascript with Meredith Farkas and mashups with John Blyberg. Here's the full program.

The OPML file was created by Nicole Engard at What I Learned Today .The goodies she packed in were feeds for :
  • del.icio.us tags IL06 and IL2006
  • technorati tags IL06 and IL2006
  • flickr photos tagged IL06 or IL2006
  • conference wiki at pbwiki
  • conference organiser's blog
This week has been quiet in my "library techie" folder at bloglines. Last week it was full of detailed notes from the conference sessions. If I want to follow up any, I can look at posts from 23-26 October in blogs on this list of people blogging the conf. It was compiled by Jennifer at Life as I know it .
TODAY'S HIPPIE CARD: New beginning

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