Top Ten Sources looks to explain reading lists to average joe
Halley Suitt asked the crowd to define reading lists at OPML camp. I didn’t get all the answers but here are a few.
reading lists are. . .
OPML docs that point to RSS feeds- per dave winer
A group of recommended sources selected on a topic by an editor
An explicit representation of attention
high altitude snapshot of atttention
the good blogs I like
like my bookshelves-people see what I read and care
collection of pointers
sources of information on the live web (me)
a list of things to read

[…] Halley Suitt, CEO of top ten sources, departed from the structured presentation most of us were giving and shot straight into “what do *you* think is a reading list”. Ranging around the room lots of different answers were given, Matt Terenzio luckily noted some of the definitions. Individuals could clearly see in reading lists something interesting and that the value seen was colored by their own particular ideas and or application. Individuals such as Pito of Blogbridge, Eric Hayes of Attensa and Matt had ‘reading list as manifestation of attention’ clearly in mind. That’s not a slight, it shows that reading lists have some depth and ‘directed’ utility beyond a simple subscription or discovery mechanism, and even beyond attention mining. The definitions ranged from pointers to resources, to a digital analog of ‘whats on my bookshelf’ a way to gather more information about an individual (which begs an interesting implied question of will it evolve to the point where a reading list will be manipulated to incorporate resources that make you ‘look’ smart or like a prolific reader even if you don’t actually read them, like that dusty Chaucer that’s sitting there on the shelf?). The concept of a reading lists, organized under unifying themes, (like food) starts to encroach on the idea of taxonomies and bookmarks. All this from a simple list of feed resources. […]