I am heavily involved with my local library, where I run a Code Club for the 8-13yo after school. We recently got a grant for new equipment, so I’ve been spending more time in the back office configuring that, which also allows deeper conversations with staff about access and service provision across the whole community.

I happened to make an off hand comment that I write a blog, and the manager said they were interested, but didn’t know how to follow blogs. So I launched into my usual spiel about RSS and how it’s designed to enable people to access information directly without a middleman, advertising or algorithms involved.

I stopped mid-flow. Here was I, explaining to a librarian how to access information. A thought struck me out the blue.

All libraries should know about, advocate, signpost and shout about RSS. It’s the only open, federated protocol humanity has for delivering information direct from writers to readers.

In a world where fact checking has now been officially thrown out of the window, it’s more important than ever that citizens and communities compile and consult their own list of sources of information.

So the conversation quickly turned to awareness, workshops, local training sessions and other ways in which the library could enable this revolution to take place locally, from ground up.

I have tried and failed many times to convince friends to use RSS. Like other bloggers, I’ve written guides and am a daily user of it. But, I would relish the chance to hold community sessions in the library to spread the word more.

But libraries can do so much more than advocacy. Their websites can have aggregated feeds. They can publish RSS links to information with an easy way to copy the link into your reader. They can publish opml files. They can include a reader inside their apps.

Libraries need to have an RSS strategy, because they might just turn out to be our last line of defence against the relentless hosepipe of misinformation.