Google Reader and the Academic Community

October 31st, 2006 by Jeff VanDrimmelen

WhenGoogle Reader was first introduced, the product manager, Nicholas Baum, said it was likeyour “inbox for the web.” (Read his full introduction here

) As many of you know I am a bigGoogle fan and will try out any of their products so I jumped right in. After several weeks of useI am not totally hooked and realize that Google Reader (or some sort of RSS reader) is a musthave for anyone in the academic community.How it Works:On almost any page that you visit now a days there is what’s called a RSS feed reader. It oftenhas an orange icon accompanying it or even just says ‘RSS feed’. If you look at the right of this page you will see that my blog has a RSS feed as well. If you see any of these things, or ofteneven if you don’t, you can ’subscribe’ to that webpage.To subscribe you right click on the icon or link and click “Copy Link Location” (Firefox) or “Copy Shortcut” (IE7). After that go to Google Reader and click “Add Subscription.” Walaha! Itis added to your reads and updated every couple of minutes if there is something new. There arelots of other little tricks I love about Google Reader, like the shortcuts (list of shortcuts and other FAQ’s about Google Reader ) and the ability toread it INSIDE of your G-mail, but this article is more to introduce the product and discuss it’s academic potential. Feel free to add any commentsyou have about what you like about it or other RSS-feed readers that you like. For moreinformation about RSS Feeds in general and other options out there seeWikipediaor About.com. General Uses of a RSS Feed Feader in an Academic Community:- World News - No college education would be complete without keeping up with the news of the world. (CNN Feed ,BBC Feed) - Campus Happenings - Keep up to date with what is happening on campus- Campus Sports - I am an avid Tar Heel Fan and have subscribed to several of my favorite teamsRSS feeds to keep up with what is going on (UNC Sports RSS Feeds Page).- Keeping up with your favorite hobby or passion. For me it happens to be Google so I amsubscribed to dozens of Google RSS feeds.Possible Discipline Specific Uses:The possible uses of a tool that lets you aggregate the most current information on the web is onethat is useful across all disciplines of education. Of course sciences like medicine have a constantneed to be updated on the latest and greatest developments in their field… but that need extends beyond them. If anyone is to survive in an academic community one must be up to date withwhat the rest of the community is doing. I would be interested to see what you think about this, but I believe that someday RSS feeds or something like that will start to appear that alert users of the newest publications in print articles as well. It would certainly be a useful tool for academicwriters. There is nothing worse than working on an article for weeks only to find that your topicwas already written about, and you didn’t know about it.