RSS - How to Build, Organize and Read a Personal News Repository

Are you frustrated or overwhelmed by the ever growing amount of information necessary to stay even remotely current in your field?  Do you wonder how anyone can keep up?  Perhaps it is time to reconsider your strategies for professional reading and organizing your preferred web sites for news and information.  I have found that using a tool like Google Reader to build my own news repository, allows me to organize my routine reading material and better manage the landslide of information.  The method I use focuses on 3 concepts: Scanning -> Filtering -> and Sharing.  Here are some helpful hints I found as I put together my strategy.

1) Learn the Basics of RSS
RSS is a method for organizations to publish information and for you to easily consume it.  Organizations publish information (their articles or other content) into a feed.  You can then consume the information by subscribing to the feed using an RSS Reader, like Google Reader. Read on to get yourself up and running in less than 3 minutes - or skip to point 2 if you already have

To access Google Reader simply go to www.google.com/reader.  If you already have a Gmail or a Google Apps account (like we use at ATSU), then you can use your existing account.  If not you will have to create an account.  Once logged in, you will see the screen is segmented into 2 columns.  The left column is the navigation area, the right area is the content area.  Read through the helpful articles in the right hand column.  I suggest you minimize the All Items, People you follow, and Explore options on the left hand navigation and focus only on the Subscriptions option.  At this point you probably don't have any subscriptions listed, so let's get a few.

2) Organize New Feeds as you Add Them
 The ease of adding subscriptions is the power behind RSS.  Feeds to which you can subscribe are plentiful on the web.  Anywhere you see the orange RSS box (the image on the left), you can subscribe to a feed.  My suggestion is to organize feeds into folders within the subscription navigation area.  Each time you add a new feed, add it to a folder with similar feeds.  Think of folders as sections in a Newspaper.  It will make your reading far more efficient later when you have dozens of feeds.

Another powerful feature of RSS is the ability to use subscription bundles curated by others.  To see a selection of bundles, click on the Explore option to show the sub-items and then click on View all recommendations.  From here click on the Browse tab and find the bundle that is most interesting to you.   Another option is to look to the right of this article and subscribe to my "Education" bundle right from this blog site.  Bundles are a great way to add your first group of feeds.  Don't forget to organize them into your folder structure.

3) Scan Articles before Reading Them
Once you have set up a few folders and assigned subscriptions to each, it is time to really put Reader to use.  I find the best way to organize my reading is to review subscriptions one folder at a time.  Because similar feeds are organized into folders, I can more clearly focus on articles related to a given topic.  After selecting a folder, I make sure to click on the Show: List mode in the upper right hand corner of the content area.  This changes the view and allows me to see many more headlines at a glance.  I then review the list to quickly get a sense of hot topics or important news items.  Moreover, I can note articles about a particular event from 2 or 3 different sources giving me a more rounded account simply from the headlines.

4) Use the Control Key and New Tabs for Deep Dive Reading

After scanning a topic folder, it is time to read selected articles for more information.  I tend to maintain a pretty high volume and fairly wide variety of sources to scan from, but I end up reading a relatively small percentage of articles in detail.  If an article looks interesting, I click on the headline to get the article to expand and show a few sentences or paragraphs (the amount shown varies with the feed).  If I then want to read more, I click on the headline which opens the article in a new tab.  At this point, I switch to the new tab where I can read the full article at the original website.  

Here is where I use the power of the control key.  When reading a full article in detail, I will frequently use the links embedded in an article.  I will always click on these links while holding down the control key so the new link will open up in another new tab.  I will occasionally go two or three levels deep into an article, but by using the control key and tabs I can easily get back on track by closing out each tab.  

5) Use Your Network to Filter Content by Following People
One of the more powerful (and perhaps underused) features of Google Reader is the ability to follow people. This allows you to see articles that others highlight and share.  It is a great way to filter content and find new sources of information.  Within an organization, it could also be used to share updates on important projects, events or news of common interest.  Following people is easy.  Simply click on the sharing settings under People You follow and search by name or email address.  Feel free to follow me by going here.

6) Give Back by Sharing
As you start using Google Reader to regularly scan and review hundreds, if not thousands of articles, I highly encourage you to help others by sharing the articles you find interesting.  To share an article simply click on the Share or Share with Note buttons below an article snippet.  Think of sharing as an electronic version of a conversation starter.  Sharing may be the most useful part of the Scan -> Filter -> Share method.

Let me know in the comments what works and what doesn't work for you.