Swapping Subscriptions

Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 | Ben Brumfield

About a year ago, Gavin Robinson and I swapped our Google Reader subscriptions. Neither of us is affiliated with an institution, so blogs really are how we stay connected to the digital humanities community. We’d each amassed a few dozen digital history subscriptions, and when we imported each other’s OPML files, we each discovered new and relevant sites.

I’d love to swap RSS subscriptions with other digital humanists, and what better community than THATCamp?

Possible problems:

  1. Where can we put these files for easy exchange? I haven’t found a way to attach .xml files to posts in WordPress.
  2. Google Reader expects you to import and export OPML files wholesale, which may involve wrecking carefully planned folders and tags.
  3. Should we prune our subscriptions to DH-specific ones? I really don’t think THATCampers need to read my college roommate’s blog about whiskey and men’s shoes. It’ll be in my export unless I do some work removing it from the file by hand.

3 Responses to “Swapping Subscriptions”

  1. karindalziel Says:

    I have been pondering this for a few days. It seems like the best solution for me would be to sign up for a new account, OR tag some subscriptions with something and then share that tag through Google Reader- then people could subscribe to that feed.

    I subscribe to a lot others might not be interested in, but who knows?

  2. margie Says:

    I thought we might share these via a del.icio.us account. I don’t know if this is the best solution, but I created del.icio.us/thatblogs in case you want to try it. It does take some time so perhaps there’s an easier solution… I can email you the the password so that you can add to this account if you like. Margie

  3. Ben Brumfield Says:

    Please do, Margie: . Surely there’s an opml->delicious converter somewhere out there.