(This post is extracted from a comment that I made in another thread, and edited to focus in on RSS feeds, because the thought belatedly occurred to me that it would probably be a good idea to share RSS feeds that we have found useful in our research.)
"Greg," I hear you ask, "don't you have anything else to do but look through news sites looking for information about genealogy?" (Or at least, you might ask that, if you were even mildly interested in what I'm up to.)
Actually, collecting these stories takes me no time at all (although formatting these posts for posting to G2G can be kind of tedious). Years ago, a friend of mine showed me a video called "RSS in Plain English." It's a little bit dated now, as some of the services it refers to have since been shut down, but the principle remains the same: you choose an RSS reader that you like (there are a bunch to choose from), then look on the sites that you follow for news for some kind of link to an RSS feed (you may also see Atom feeds, and some RSS readers can handle both formats).
In my case, I follow tech sites for my work (and they occasionally refer to the life and/or death of somebody who is notable for their contributions to science and/or technology), and general news sites just to keep aware of what's happening outside my office (and they occasionally refer to the life and/or death of somebody who catches the imagination of a particular reporter or editor). So in those cases, I just leave those items marked as unread in my RSS reader until I get around to posting one of these news roundup items here in G2G.
So, if you, like me, are curious about pretty much everything and everybody (or even if you're "normal", and are only interested in particular fields), but find it hard to keep up with all the news sources that are out there, you might want to try one or more RSS readers (the screen layouts and user interfaces vary wildly, so it may take you a few tries to find one that works naturally for you). I have found that it saves me a ton of time keeping on top of the topics that I need to follow (and even those that I just want to follow).
Here are some RSS feeds that you may find helpful for genealogy. Feel free to add your own suggestions.
- Authenticity - City of Vancouver archives blog. Lots of posts about new additions to the collection, or hints on researching particular kinds of information, but occasional posts on notable people from Vancouver.
- Changing Vancouver - At one level, this is just a series of historic photos of Vancouver, paired with current photos of the same locations. But, at least recently, most of the posts go into remarkable detail about the people who designed, built, owned, or lived in the historic buildings in the "before" photos. If the blog happens to have covered a building that somebody you're researching was involved with, it can provide lots of useful information.
- Library and Archives Canada Blog - Lots of posts about new additions to the collection, but recently, the blog has been posting about Canadian recipients of the Victoria Cross, probably uncovered as part of their recently-completed project to digitise all the military records from World War I.
- WikiTree Blog
(And, of course, as in my own experience, you may well find that an RSS feed which is on some other subject may occasionally serve up information which is genealogy-related. In my case, many of the news feeds I follow report on the deaths of people who are notable in that particular field.)
