MLA CE Week 1 - Blogs & RSS

This is great that MLA is offering Web 2.0 101! It’s an excellent follow-on to the Web 2.0 Webcast on 5 March. I think this CE is an outstanding way for medical librarians to get practical hands-on experience with the Web 2.0 tools after reviewing the resource links provided. In addition, I found the participants posted comments and questions very informative and helpful. I anticipate that I will need to complete the CE assignments at home due to our network blocking many of these Web tools due to security issues. Creating my blog and RSS feeds was similar to what we are able to do on the Army Knowledge Online (AKO) portal--AKO is currently cited as the world’s largest corporate Intranet with approximately 1.9 million registered users! It provides secure access to Army Web sites along with providing tools and services to Soldiers, Army employees, retirees, and family members worldwide.

I have had a Bloglines RSS Feeds account since last year and find it an efficient way to keep up-to-date with the various feeds that I track. Again, I do this at home due to our network security. I also view RSS feeds as an additional way to get/push information to our clientele, especially via PubMed and OvidSP for SDI/current awareness for topics of interest. I need to include additional RSS feeds on our Virtual Library’s AKO Web site to highlight new e-resources available as well as PubMed/OvidSP alerts on topics for which there is wide interest.