Reflections on RSS

Thinking back to the first class of my school i LIBR 203 I remember being in there as they introduced the use of RSS feeds. Of course I had limited experience with programming, let alone some XML programming experience where I had a reasonable understand about what the capabilities of XML were. At that point in time it helped me connect with the school feeds so that I could get updates via RSS feed to find out what was going on at school.

Unfortunately, the understanding of the benefits of one at that point did not take. I just knew that I did not see the point in maintaining an RSS feed when I could get all of the info off of emails that came to me. What I failed to realize was the benefit of RSS when it came to the blogs. Not because I had never heard about blogs, but because I did not see the benefits of blogging in general. I did not understand their practical use, or how they could be used to mass communicate to loads of patrons one message.

While I do find now how it could be a very useful tool, getting patrons to see the same thing can be as difficult as anything. With teens it shouldn't be as hard because they have been growing up in a world where blogs are exploding. So seeing why you should have a feed to allow you to view all of your blogs in one place would be natural. But to an older generation, who blogs very little, who frequently make up the vast majority of the library population, this can be a struggle. And to market to an older population is not the usual branding of the marketplace. Almost all things now are marketed for people between the ages of 12 and 30. When the average age of the person entering the library is 40 + this is different. And then their reticence to getting into new technology also makes it more difficult.

Its going to be interesting to see how the library is going to reach out to these people, or are they merely going to wait and hope that future generations will want to use the library and their new technology.