Transcript Keeping current with RSS

Keeping Current with RSS
Nathan Rupp & Gail Steinhart
CUL Workshop
January 6, 2006
Keeping current with RSS
How many people are using RSS?
From the Pew Internet & American Life Project:
“6 million Americans get news and information fed
to them through RSS aggregators…”
“Five percent of Internet users say they use RSS
aggregators or XML readers to get the news and
other information delivered from blogs and
content-rich Web sites as it is posted online. This
is a first-time measurement from our surveys and
is an indicator that this application is gaining an
impressive foothold.”
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp
Keeping current with RSS
What does RSS stand for?
RDF Site Summary
Rich Site Summary
Really Simple Syndication
What is RSS?
Form of XML
Not much by itself – need a RSS
reader
Keeping current with RSS
What RSS looks like (in strict XML)
Feed title
Feed description
Feed date
Article title
Link to article
Article description
Author
Keeping current with RSS
What RSS looks like (using a reader)
Feed title
Feed description
Feed date
Author
Article
description
Article title/
link to article
Keeping current with RSS
What you can get with it:
• Announcements
• News headlines
• Table of contents
• New web page content
• New blog posts
New, frequently updated information
Keeping current with RSS
Why would you use it:
If you want an efficient way to monitor
lots of sources of information
World
news
Prof
assoc
Local
news Favorite
news
Higher
blogs
ed news
Library
Tables
news
of
contents
Publishers’
Tech
news
news
Keeping current with RSS
Advantages to RSS:
• Less clicking and more reading!
• Helps to keep track of frequently AND
infrequently updated sites
• Little spam or ads (ala TIVO)
• Information presented how YOU want
it—no reading weird color schemes
Keeping current with RSS
Disadvantages to RSS:
• Some feeds just have a headline or
excerpt, no full text
• Your favorite site may not yet have RSS
• You were once clicking to 200 sites a
day, now you’re reading 200 RSS
feeds!
Keeping current with RSS
How you get it:
Web based RSS readers
• Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/)
• NewsIsFree (http://www.newsisfree.com/)
• Pluck web edition (http://client.pluck.com/pwe/)
Desktop RSS readers
• infoRSS (http://inforss.mozdev.org/)
• NewzCrawler (http://www.newzcrawler.com/)
Many more – see the RSS compendium:
http://allrss.com/
Keeping current with RSS
Finding feeds:
• On the site itself - look for one of these
buttons
, or a link that says
“syndicate this site”, or text links that say
XML, or RSS…
• Use a feed locator
• If you’re looking for a specific feed,
Google works – try site:nsf.gov rss or
site:npr.org rss
Keeping current with RSS
Feed locators and search engines:
• Google Blog Search:
http://google.com/blogsearch
• Feedster: http://www.feedster.com/
• NewsIsFree: http://www.newsisfree.com/
• Syndic8: http://www.syndic8.com/
• 2RSS.com: http://www.2rss.com/
• More from the RSS Compendium:
http://allrss.com/rsssearch.html
Your aggregator may have lists…
Keeping current with RSS
RSS panel for Firefox:
Get it here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&category=News%20Reading&id=635
Keeping current with RSS
See what other people are reading:
Bloglines
Keeping current with RSS
See what other people are reading:
Blogrolls
(scan the
sidebar of
blogs that
interest
you)
Keeping current with RSS
Some other interesting sources:
• U.S. gov’t feeds:
http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Reference_Shelf/Librar
ies/RSS_Library.shtml
and
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/rss/
• RSS in government: http://rssgov.com/
• Factiva RSS beta (enter from FD)
• Bioinformatics feeds (mostly journals):
http://barf.jcowboy.org/
• Steve Cohen, RSS junkie: http://www.librarystuff.net/
• Resource Shelf (library resources in general,
sometimes RSS): http://www.resourceshelf.com/
Keeping current with RSS
Neat stuff (or how did they do that?!)
• Google searches
• Create RSS feeds for sites that don’t
have them (OPAC?)
• Email
• Shopping deals
- Tim Yang’s “Things You Can Do with
RSS” (http://timyang.com/wiki/)
Keeping current with RSS
What could the library do with RSS?
Publish
•
•
•
•
•
New books
New databases
Events
News
Almost anything (if you are the Kansas City
Public Library: http://www.kclibrary.org/rss/)
Keeping current with RSS
What could the library do with RSS?
Recommend
• List journals with feeds (see
http://library.usask.ca/ejournals/rss_feeds
.php)
• Subject guides to feeds (see
http://www.scs.edu/library/feeds/rss.htm)
Keeping current with RSS
Libraries using RSS:
• RSS4Lib:
http://blogs.fletcher.tufts.edu/rss4lib/
• Blog without a library:
http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/
Keeping current with RSS
General RSS resources:
• RSS compendium: http://allrss.com/
• Lockergnome:
http://channels.lockergnome.com/rss/
• RSS tutorial: http://rssgov.com/rssworkshop.html
• RSS tutorial for content publishers and
webmasters: http://www.mnot.net/rss/tutorial/
And many many more…
Keeping current with RSS
Setting up a Bloglines account:
• http://bloglines.com/
• Register for an account
• Pick a couple of subscriptions from
their list just to see how it works
• Some things you can do with Bloglines:
clip or email items, organize feeds and
clippings into folders, add and delete
feeds