LIBR 246-04/13 Web 2.0 (Spring 2010)

I was very impressed with the service of the medical librarian in Recap: My notes on RSS for Clinicians linked from this week's lecture. I was impressed for a very special reason: this last week, my wife was admitted to the hospital with dangerously high blood pressure, migraine-level headache, extreme nausea, high intra-cranial fluid pressure, and loss of kidney function.

I work with many technophobes I can't even imagine mentioning RSS to them.  However, buy-in is all in the delivery, right?  I loved netvibes and pageflakes.  I imagined the page on every public internet computer in place of the ubiquitious google.  I envisioned pretty squares leading patrons to databases, new (to them) web tools like delicious, widgety things like dictionaries and encyclopedias, suggestion boxes, the catalog...  current city information... open office software, email.  The list is endless.

How can librarians get their patrons to use RSS and/or understand the benefits of it?