There is so much information on the Web these days, how can we keep up? One way most bloggers track what’s new is by subscribing to RSS (really simple syndication)feeds. By subscribing, most often through a web-based aggregator such as Bloglines, a blogger can scrape only the new material from many Web sites and view it very quickly.

This process is very simple and very effiecient, and is now leading to what I’m calling ‘feed envy’. Jenny Levine reported that she now subscribes to 230+ feeds to update her blog, The Shifted Librarian, while Steven Cohen subscribes to 400 for to update his blog,Library Stuff, to look for studies to update ResourceShelf, and to keep lawyers in his firm current with happenings in their world . Over cocktails last night with Jenny and Steve and lots of other bloggers, it became apparent that the new challenge is how many feeds you can subscribe to in order to keep up with the changing material on the Web. We decided that Michael Sauers definitely had ‘feed envy’ as he reported that he had to get subscribing to RSS feeds in order to catch up with Steve (he now only subscribes to 80)….. and a new concept is born!