Like the new monitoring services but wondering how many times you’ll have to check the website to keep up with what’s new? Or like the idea of monitoring the headlines but not for every blog and journal we’ve identified? If the answer to either of these questions is “Yes”, then it’s time you signed up for a newsreader.

I’ve already posted about newsreaders and RSS feeds and how they can help to keep up-to-date, and uptake has been really good. In fact, one of my observations is that a lot of drugs workers find “Web 2.0″ stuff like newsreaders much easier and more convenient than standard web services. Advantages you’ve told me you experience include:

• web-based newsreaders mean you can access updates from any computer
• the updates “wait for you” – if you login every day, you get a day’s worth of updates; every week, you get a week’s worth – ideal if you’re not desk-based all the time
• their folder structure means you can organise them to suit how your mind works
• it’s quicker to skim through headlines on your reader than to open lots of emails
• some of you like to have some news emailed to you from your reader
• others find it useful that your news is not in your email as it stops you overlooking it by accident when you’re busy

Still not convinced? Worried it might be too ’techie’ for you? This jargon-busting video explains how it works in 3.5 minutes:

So, by setting youself up with a Bloglines, Google, or other reader, you can track the headlines from our monitoring service, or any of the individual blogs etc. in your own time, from your own desktop.

Give it a try and then tell me if it doesn’t make keeping up-to-date a whole lot easier.

Anne Welsh
Information Officer