Thing 9: Explore MERLIN

I spent some time looking at MERLIN- looking at links, seeing which systems have a presence in the social space blog and twitter world, and reading about the components for training offered to library systems. It is full of potential, although it doesn't look as if many people are participating yet in the interactive discussions. I went to bloglines and used the blogline search tool to search for more feeds. I ended up adding MERLIN highlights of the month to my list of feeds through this search tool. I also adding Dilbert and the New York Times Book Review to my feeds from this resource. I followed a link and opened an account with Good Reads, which I remember spending some time on from a previous training, but I haven't yet created my list. I also looked at Topix.net, Syndic8.com and Technorati, getting the general gist of what they do, although without signing on there isn't too far to go. I was not able to get onto Feedster after several tries. I am told perhaps it is an Internet Explorer problem (it might work in Firefox, for instance), but since that is the browser I have to use I will just let it go. I tried a search for swine flu vaccine availability information- I'm ambivalent about whether the results I got were any better than Google searching, but you are assured that whatever comes up will have an RSS feed. A positive note: I have looked at my bloglines feeds five times this week, so it looks like something I may truly keep up with.