Reading at Random.

Bloglines has a feature called Clippings that I've been using for some time now. In essence, when I'm reading from my blogroll and come across a post somewhere that I find interesting and want to spend more time with later, I can add it to my Clippings. I can organize clippings in folders in the same way I organize my blogroll. I find Clippings useful for a couple of reasons: the fact is that I do a lot of my reading from library/librarian blogs while I'm at work, either during break or when I have a free moment. And I'm often pulled away from the screen before I'm finished. Clippings gives me some prayer at scanning the headlines and saving what I find valuable.

Of course, I'm doing more or less the same thing over at del.icio.us when I apply the tag blogpost to a new bookmark, but thus far I've considered my Bloglines clippings as a kind of temporary warehouse of stuff. If Bloglines as a whole is a kind of Tivo for the blogosphere, then the clippings are the shows I keep on Tivo for some time until I'm really finished with them. But eventually, in theory, I will get to them. And when I'm finished I'll delete them from the clippings.

The thing is, though, what am I doing with them? For some time now I've been itching to make something out of this random reading. Because that's what it is, really: I'm still in the stage where I'm sampling what's out there in the "biblioblogosphere." I keep stumbling across things that make me think ... but then that's often as far as it goes.

So why not write about this stuff? Bloglines offers a secondary feature for its Clippings file: it allows one to broadcast one's Clippings file in a Clip Blog hosted by Bloglines. I've considered doing just that: a kind of internet finger pointing at interesting posts. "Here," it would say, "I liked something about this." The thought of creating a third blog seemed alarming, though, and so I'm hoping to do a little blogosphere finger-pointing here in Seven Fifty Three, instead. That way I'll be encouraged to make a few observations about whatever I'm reading.

This will be an experiment. I've already run out of time this morning, so my first clipping post will have to come later. With some perseverance, I hope to resuscitate this blog.