Researcher online byline alert:
Bill Lucey of the Sun-Sentinel has a Super Bowl trivia roundup on the S-S's Web site.

More RSS
There's a new link on right to a "Site Feed". It's an XML feed from Atom, which Blogger is now supporting. There are some questions about which feeds will work in which news aggregators/readers (I couldn't make this work in Amphetadesk--yet), but if you want to try, click on the Site Feed link, or use this URL: http://newslib.blogspot.com/atom.xml .
-- Liz Donovan

Help with RSS:
Want to try using a news aggregator to read RSS/XML feeds but don't know where to start? Librarian's Index to the Internet has a nice tutorial on how to get started using Bloglines, a free Web-based aggregator. LII has a new news feed in RSS too.

-- Liz Donovan

Former news librarian:
This forwarded by Jim Hunter:

Colleagues- I wanted to note the passing of Tom Barensfeld, librarian of the Cleveland Press. The elegant Plain Dealer obituary speaks for itself. Tom was was a close associate of Rose Vormelker -both of whom we mentors to me when I began working in a news library. I believe Tom last attended an SLA conference in Torono in 1974.

Copyright 2004 Plain Dealer Publishing Co.
Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio)

January 14, 2004 Wednesday, FINAL / ALL

SECTION: METRO; Pg. B5

LENGTH: 516 words

HEADLINE: Tom Barensfeld, Cleveland Press librarian

BYLINE: RICHARD PEERY, PLAIN DEALER REPORTER

BODY:

Tom Barensfeld was an authority on literature and an expert on newspaper libraries. He was in charge of the library at the Cleveland Press and served as a consultant for installation of new libraries throughout the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain.

Barensfeld, 81, died Monday at the Eliza Jennings home. Services will be at 8 p.m. today at the Donald Martens & Son Funeral Home, 11210 Detroit Ave.

"I used to call him a Renaissance man, centering his life on
literature, art and gourmet food," William Tanner, former city editor of the Cleveland Press, wrote to friends when he heard of Barensfeld's death.

Thomas E. Barensfeld was born in a Victorian house in West Park that had been built by his grandfather. Except for time he spent in the Army and at college, that was his residence for his entire life.

He graduated from West High School and attended Drexel University. During World War II, he served with the infantry in California and England. He was so taken with life on the West Coast that he attended UCLA after the war. Warner Bros. offered him a job as a researcher, but he returned to Cleveland and
earned a master's degree in library science at Western Reserve University.

He became fascinated with books when he read Aldous Huxley's novel, "After Many a Summer Dies the Swan," as an adolescent.

"That's when I realized what books could do for you - give you experiences that you could never have otherwise," he told an interviewer years later.

It spurred him to set a goal of buying and reading all of the great books listed in a supplement of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a feat he completed over three decades.

Barensfeld teamed with fellow librarian Fern Long in the 1940s to conduct Great Books discussions. He said the Great Books address the ultimate human questions: "Where are we? Who and what are we? Why are we? The answers are what the Great books offer. . . . You have a continuing dialogue with the ages," he
said.

He left the library in the 1960s to work for the Press. When the paper closed in 1982, he stayed on to oversee the transfer of the Press library material to Cleveland State University. For the next dozen years, he was a Cleveland public school teacher for adults seeking high school equivalency certificates. He retired in 1995.

Councilman Jay Westbrook, who was a neighbor of Barensfeld and talked to him about linguistic theory a few weeks ago, called him "the most unique person you would ever want to meet. His house was a virtual library with walls of books from the attic to the basement. It was a journey of the mind to be with him at
any time. He was like your favorite professor."

Barensfeld was as interested in local history as he was in philosophy and the classics. He wrote articles about Cleveland neighborhoods. He conducted bus tours on which he described the origins of landmarks and the homes of historic Clevelanders.

He lived with his sister, Winifred, a retired nurse. He is also
survived by a brother, Donald of Olmsted Falls.

To reach this Plain Dealer Reporter:

dpeery@plaind.com, 216-999-4807

Still not perfect:
Seems as though the search doesn't hit the latest posts. Haven't figured out what makes this flaky. Still trying a few things: have also installed Feedster RSS on my Infomaniac blog, and have found some of the same quirks: Feedster's suggested URL doesn't always work, but the one you find searching Feedster's 'FeedFinder' has a different -- and better -- URL.
-- Liz

Now searchable!
You can now search the Newsliblog archives by using the Feedster search form in the right-hand column.

(Later) I've changed the RSS URL in the search and now it seems to be working. Haven't yet changed the feed url in the Feedster form, but this new URL seems to be working better for the feed: http://feedster.com/makerss.php?url=http://newslib.blogspot.com/. Try this one. Note, it does work in Amphetadesk; I couldn't get the other URL to work at all there.

-- Liz

Testing RSS feed:
With Jessica's urging, I'm trying out Feedster's instructions for adding an RSS feed to a Blogger blog. Here's the first test.

Since it appears to be working, here's notice you can now subscribe to an RSS feed of the Newsliblog. Click on the "RSS Feedster" icon on right-hand column to get the feed.

-- Liz Donovan

Barbara blogs!
This via Jessica Baumgart's blog, news of the Park Library News online newsletter published by news library guru Barbara Semonche. Jessica blogged it yesterday, and says "The "news" Barbara reports is often helpful to journalists and news librarians everywhere, not just the UNC journalism students who use the Park Library."
-- Liz Donovan

Vormelker-Thomas Student Award
Applications are now being accepted for the Special Libraries Association News Division's Vormelker-Thomas Student Award, the stipend given to a graduate student or December 2003 graduate interested in news librarianship to help defray the cost of attending his/her first Special Libraries Association Annual Conference. Details on how to apply for the award are on the SLA News Division Web site.

Applying may sound like a lot of work, but the pool of applicants is usually small, so your chances of winning are much, much, much better than winning the lottery. Besides, it's nothing compared to what you will gain from attending your first professional conference with some financial assistance. Past winners have become important contributors to the field of news librarianship and the News Division.

--Jessica Baumgart, 2000 Vormelker-Thomas Student Award recipient and SLA News Division Webmaster

Special Libraries Association 2004 Annual Conference Registration
Registration for the Special Libraries Association 2004 Annual Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, has begun. Information is on the Web at: http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/2004annual/. The registration fee is $275 before May 1. After May 1, it increases to $325. Lots of exciting stuff and News Division activities at the conference, as always! Information about News Division activities is on the News Division Web site at: http://www.ibiblio.org/slanews/conferences/sla2004/.

--Jessica Baumgart