30 of the Best Library Blogs You Should be Reading

Now that you're all set up with your shiny new blog, it's time for you to explore the world of library bloggers. We will be encouraging you later on in the course to take a look at the blogs of the other Rudai23 pariticpants. For now we want to share with you some of the amazing library blogs that will hopefully inspire you, like they do us.

Following blogs

When you've logged into the platform you've chosen to create your own blog, you will also have the option to follow others who use the same platform. In Blogger, it's called your Reading List. You will find it at the bottom of your list of settings, when you're logged into the editing mode of blogger.

To add a blog in Blogger

1. Click on Reading List.
2. Click on the pen icon on the top right corner.
3. Click on 'Add' and enter the URL of the blog you want to follow.

Alternatively when you visit a blog, you can click follow on the blog homepage and it will automatically be added to your list.
Blogger doesn't suggest blogs for you to follow, or have  a search facility; you must find them yourself on the web first.

To add a blog in Wordpress

1. Log into your wordpress account.
2. On the top right you will see a tab called 'reader'.
3. Here you can search for topics, look at wordpress recommended sites or search for specific blogs that you want to follow.

Using a blog reader

Our favourite method for following blogs however is to use an RSS feeder. An RSS feeder is a tool that will scan any websites of your choice for new content and deliver that content to one location for you to read at your leisure.

RSS feeders are useful when you have a number of websites that you regularly like to visit to read new content. It can be time consuming to have to periodically check these websites for new content, RSS feeds cut out this work for you.All you have to do is set up an account with an RSS feed service of your choice, bookmark the websites that you want to follow through that RSS feed service and then every time you log-in you will find all the content there waiting for you.

Feedly

We recommend Feedly as a reliable, free RSS feeder. We use it ourselves to keep track of all the Rudai 23 participant's blogs. You can sign up for free using your email address. When you log into feedly, search for our blog using our web address www.rudai23.blogspot.com and click on follow. Everytime you log into Feedly any new content that we publish will be waiting for you.

Feedly not only lets you read the content but also share it to various social media sites, curate your own boards or save content for later. Feedly also has some really interesting features if you're prepared to pay for the pro version that makes it a very powerful collaboration tool for work.

30 of the Best Library Blogs You Should be Reading

To get you started on reading some of the best Library blogs and blogging Librarians out there we have created an OPML file of 30 library blogs for you to follow which you can access here.

Importing blogs into your blog reader

1. Download this file and save it onto your computer. 
2. Log into your feeder of choice and find the settings/options area
3. Look for the option to Export /Import OPML and click import. 
4. Upload our OPML file which you just downloaded to your feeder. 
5. Every time you log into your blog reader any new content from these blogs will be there waiting for you. 

Happy Reading!