A recent survey of WebJunction users showed some interesting statistics on use of various online tools by librarians (the write-up is at at “Library Staff Report Their Use of Online Tools“).
The trend from the survey indicates that social media (such as Facebook) is making inroads on email as a communication tool. Of particular interest to me is the finding that RSS feeds are used daily or weekly by only 24% of respondents and used never by 50%. Blogs are used daily or weekly by only 27%, and never by 40%.
I know I spend much less time reading blogs (and, as those of you who read RSS4Lib in its native blog for or via RSS might notice, writing for one). I do wonder how much RSS usage is un-noticed or un-recognized by respondents; as RSS (and XML in general) become the way data move, do its consumers care how the data appear where they’re consumed?
The survey results highlight differences between academic and public librarians (academic librarians are more likely to use online tools than their public counterparts) and a series of interesting differences between urban and rural librarians.
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