Walt’s a bit defensive about my response to his most recent mention of RSS (on page 6) in Cites & Insights, but unfortunately he’s not really offering up a defense. I’m not really sure what to address from his various responses (here, here, and here), except to say that I still don’t see any proof of anyone advocating RSS instead of email from before he wrote his commentary. So unless he’s got a crystal ball and he was predicting the future – which, like the eight ball in billiards you have to call ahead of time and he didn’t – then he made a sweeping generalization without any supporting evidence. Maybe one of my major complaints here is that I can’t count the number of times he has chastised others (including me) for doing just that.

“So your library would just as soon drop its new title lists and substitute an automatically generated RSS feed? You tell your patrons, ‘Oh, we don’t send that email any more. All you have to do is add our new title RSS feed to your aggregator.’ What reaction will you get?” – C&I, v. 5, no.3

At the time, it was difficult to argue with that statement since he was the only one that had ever made it. Sure, Michael Sauers and Karen Schneider have taken steps in that direction… today and in response to comments by others (including Walt), but that gives you an idea of why some of us think there’s an implied bias against RSS in Walt’s writing. Maybe we wouldn’t have reacted so negatively if Walt had rephrased it as, “Your library shouldn’t drop its new title lists or tell your patrons, ‘We don’t send that email any more. All you have to do is add our new title RSS feed to your aggregator.’ Otherwise, you’ll get a pretty negative reaction.” Instead, he attributed the idea to the ether, where it previously did not exist.

On his blog, Walt takes a different tack by providing a word count of responses to his commentary, an odd thing for someone that writes monthly, 20+ page PDFs. I must have missed the meeting where we set a limit on the number of words that make a commentary eligible for review, but in all fairness, I think Walt missed it, too, because his C&I commentary is 11 words longer than Aaron Schmidt’s original post that was the basis for his comments in the first place (and that’s with Aaron’s afterthoughts)! Let’s add to the word count anyway….

“If nobody in the world is suggesting using RSS instead of email, great--but that's not usually the way I see it coming down. My objections to parallel RSS and email provisions of needed or useful services, done by a library that can afford the time to set them up: Zero. I think that's great…. If you're right--that nobody in the world, nobody among the anti-email techies in the library field, nobody is suggesting RSS instead of (email, postcards, whatever serves a broader audience), but is only suggesting them as a new service that doesn't displace old ones--well, then there's no objection from this quarter. And I don't believe there's any objection stated in my commentary.” – Walt – comment

“This seems to be yet another case where raising any doubts whatsoever about a new technology--or, for that matter, commenting on the doubts raised by someone else (as I was here)--constitutes an attack on that technology. (I call it the ‘DR school of argument,’ and no, I won't expand those initials.)” – Journal of Walt

So, which is it, Walt? Were you raising doubts or were you not raising any objections? I’m confused. What exactly was the point of your commentary on Aaron’s post? To knock vendors for providing RSS? To encourage them to provide RSS? To encourage libraries to teach RSS? To throw out a guesstimate of users in your neighborhood? To make oblique references to folks you won’t name (“excitable” bloggers, a “top library promoter of RSS”)? What exactly were you raising doubts about? Why exactly was Aaron “asking for trouble,” especially if you agreed with him about leading the community in this area?

Side note: why is it called “commentary” when Walt comments on Aaron’s post (which cited one of my posts), but it’s called “piling on” when others comment on Walt’s writing?

Actually, let’s make the side note a main point here, because it’s really the reason I’m continuing the conversation. While I find this whole debate interesting and I’m thrilled to be able to point to Walt saying on my site, “I use RSS,” what really struck me today was the format of Walt’s responses. In the past, he’s left comments on my posts, and I love him for that. Community is a very cool thing that I never anticipated when I started my blog, and I value every comment I’ve ever gotten and ever will get, especially thoughtful ones like those Walt tends to leave.

Usually, though, when he has more than just a few sentences to say, he saves his commentary for the next issue of C&I. But he didn’t do that this time. Instead, he left a couple of comments and then felt the need to blog his major response. What he wanted to say was so important that it couldn’t wait a month for his normal publication cycle (probably because he felt attacked, which he kind of was, but in the friendly way that Walt and I agree to disagree with each other, although these days I’m not really sure what we disagree about anymore). Other than pointers to announcements of new C&I issues, I think Walt gets a lot more of an online community and conversation from his blog and the comments he leaves on other bloggers’ sites. I think it’s a very different audience for him, one that expects a conversation and is frustrated by the lack of interactivty a PDF provides. I’m not knocking the format or C&I, I’m just noting how different a monthly PDF feels from blogging.

I know Walt isn’t against blogging; instead, I want to use this example to illustrate the essential elements blogs can bring to libraries: conversation, dissemination, and community. We’re having a conversation that others are joining in on, we’re both disseminating our thoughts easily and efficiently, and we both have communities built up around our writing. Obviously Walt felt the need to make use of that interactivity and immediacy for this one.

Your library’s monthly newsletter – it has the same problems as C&I in this case. Yes, it may have its place and I’m not saying you should get rid of it, but blogging gives you something very different. Whether you’re SFPL fending off Nicholson Baker, OCLC facing a backlash because you’re suing The Library Hotel, or a small library with a “what’s new” page, blogging can give you all three of those things in spades. Ask yourself if your library has even one of those three things now, especially online. And you can’t discount the automatic RSS feed you’ll get along with your blog:

“Donning my lii.org hat, we had a remarkable education when we added RSS feeds. Now people find us through the blog-finding agents. Librarians, including me, suck at marketing, but by adding RSS feeds, we stumbled onto a way for the audience to find us, instead of the glacially slow process of dissemination through our existing readership.” – Free Range Librarian

So to sum up, blogs - good for libraries and librarians! RSS - good for libraries and librarians! Conversation – good for libraries and librarians! And the best part is that I think Walt pretty much agrees with this last paragraph.