Quite by accident, I bought a news reader for my portable device. I wanted to purchase database software for my PDA and ended up getting a good deal on a suite of four programs, one of which was a news reader. So I decided to try it out with RSS feeds of interest to medical librarians. Here’s what I added to my news reader:

• A feed from my university’s email and web hosting system
  (How nice to know when the campus help desk will be down on weekends!)
• PubMed New and Noteworthy
  (I think I was the first on my block to know when PubMed became available as a search engine add-on on the search bar in the upper right corner of Firefox 2.0 and IE 7.0)
• NLM Technical Bulletin
  (I was very excited to learn when MeSH changes for 2007 became available in the Tech Bulletin — always an interesting late-night read.)
• NIH Clinical Alerts
  (You never know when something important will be announced, and now I don’t have to look for them — they come to me.)
• A news feed from the software company that makes my list software so I know all the bells and whistles that I can download.
  (Oh look! Someone’s posted a Household Medicine Inventory List. How useful!)

Now, when I sync my device, I find out about the new “headlines” in my subscribed services.

So, where can you start? Begin at Josephine Tan’s Latitudes article on RSS feeds. Go to http://www.nlm.nih.gov/listserv/rss_podcasts.html for the URLs for NLM RSS feeds. When you are ready to add a news reader to your PDA, look for software that gives you a free trial. And don’t forget to add the Latitudes news feed! Look for the XML icon .

Editor’s Note: In case you are wondering, I’ve been using NewsBreak from Ilium Software with a Dell Axim X51v.