ELF | Your Personal Email Library Reminder Service

Following-up on my earlier LazyWeb request for library account RSS feeds. Just last night, I requested that ELF add San Francisco’s public library to their collection of systems, and, bang, there it is when I wake up this morning: free RSS feeds of (and emails about) checked-out and on-request books with configurable reminders, mobile messaging, and a nice, simple interface. Looks pretty cool to use so far, and how fast was that service?

I still believe this is the sort of thing that ought to be built-in to almost any conceivable service, going forward. Grateful as I am for the hard-working folks who build things like ELF, it seems to me that consumers shouldn’t need to seek out third-party software, hacks, scraping, and clever chicanery to bubble up their important information in a smart, contextual way.

But, until it is truly ubiquitous among vendors and services, it seems like there’s a small but viable market for folks like ELF, RSS Calendar, and others to gobble up here.

Syndication ain’t just for kitty photos any more.