Feedly made a big announcement: Pro users can create shared collections of content that they can make private or public. This has HUGE implications for historians and history organizations.

This tool can help us bring history back to the forefront of the public mind!

What is Feedly

Feedly is the most popular RSS reader app. The app allows you to find, subscribe to, view, organize, and share blog content, news articles, YouTube videos, and podcasts. Feedly displays the headlines and body content for all of the internet content you subscribe to within categorized lists.

Millions of people use Feedly and millions of people love history.

Using Feedly's Shared Collections

Professional Use

If the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, or the National Council on Public History curated a feed of history news its members should be aware of, would you check in with it?

I would.

If these organizations curated a feed of important professional information, it would save me time and keep me better informed because I wouldn't have to hunt for it in all of the major publications. A Feedly shared collection means that we could all visit one place and see all of the most relevant and important articles about the historical profession.

Public Use

Imagine if trusted and well-established organizations like the Omohundro Institute of American History and Culture or the McNeil Center for Early American Studies curated shared collections of early American history blogs, YouTube channels, or podcasts that anyone could access.[1] They would be providing an invaluable service because history lovers and professional historians alike could easily check these shared collections and trust that the content within them was worth consuming.[2]

There is so much blog, podcast, and internet video content on the web it is difficult to sort through it and find something worth consuming. Most people give up before they find the gems hidden within the morass.

Historians, history departments, and historical organizations could help their colleagues and history lovers bypass the quagmire by guiding them to reliable, high-quality history content.

Feedly's shared collections are a powerful tool that we can use to communicate history. Shared collections reduce barriers between content curators and readers because Feedly presents readers with access to not just a list of blogs, but the articles and headlines from those blogs. It is a tool that if used properly could help us in our quest to restore history to the forefront of the public mind.[3]

Here are links to my Feedly shared collections and instructions for how you can set-up your own shared collections. I will be adding more feeds soon.

[1] The OIEAHC already has a feature like this with its Octo, but this new Feedly feature could put the content from all of the blogs it features in one, easily accessible place.

[2] History departments could also curate shared collections for students and alumni.

[3] As of now Feedly only allows you to curate blog feeds in its shared collections feature. I hope that as Feedly updates this feature they will add the ability to easily curate shared collections of individual articles.