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RSS feeds are everywhere these days - on news web sites, blogs, social networking sites, databases and if you're lucky, in your library catalog. But what does this really mean and how do we take advantage of this magic technology? In this class we'll explore how RSS can help you gather information more efficiently and how RSS can help your library distribute information.
Topics covered in this fast-paced class will include:
RSS basics
Using feed reader software (Google Reader and other tools)
Tools that can help you distribute information via RSS (Delicious, twitter, etc)
Creating RSS feeds & tools to add to your web page
AideRSS & PostRank - Firefox addon that helps sort out the best posts in your Google Reader account.
FeedHub - Handy tool that helps you find the gems in all the feeds you subscribe to in your feed reader. (FeedHub seems to have died, but I'll keep it here just in case it returns.)
Examples: libraries republishing RSS feeds from other sources (and a few fake examples of my own)
Half Hollow Hills PL - Brings headlines from their blog into their regular web page.
Berkeley Heights Public Library Blog - Uses free blogger.com. Incorporates other RSS feeds in the sidebar. Updates from their twitter account. News about their region from Google News. Feed from their delicious account.
LibWorm - Search library related blogs, podcasts and other RSS feeds. Browse by some major topic areas as well. Create custom RSS feed for your search.
feedMil - New search tool to help identify feeds on many different topics.
RSS to email
Not ready to read tons of RSS feeds in a feed reader? Only want to keep up on a few blogs/feeds? You can get your feed fix via email with these handy tools
FeedMyInbox - Easy! Enter the URL for the blog or other site with RSS. Enter your email. Confirm via email. Done.
Note for Blog owners: You can provide users with a preconfigured link that does the work for them. For example, the following link will take you to a page where all you have to do is enter your email to subscribe to my blog: http://www.feedmyinbox.com/?feed=http://blog.pafa.net/feed Which of course I highly recommend you do. :-)
FeedBlitz - Sign up for a free account and add RSS Feeds to the Subscriptions page to receive email updates. Note for Blog owners: Put their signup box on your blog and you'll be able to track the number of subscribers. Emails are sent to readers only when there are new posts to your blog, no need to worry about sending ‘blank’ messages.
Using Delicious.com to create feeds for your web page
Add items to your delicious account and assign unique tags Use the delicious widget options, feed2js or other 3rd party widget tools to put content on your web pages. As you add new content to delicious and tag it, it will appear on your web pages.
New books example - I bookmarked new titles from the library catalog, added the description of the title and voila, a new books list. Easily updated. Not totally automatic, but better than nothing!
Twitter is a handy tool for creating an easily updated RSS feed of news announcements, notes about services, links to interesting resources and anything else you want to broadcast. If you want to have several accounts for different departments or topics, you can use tools like HootSuite to let you manage multiple accounts.
FeedInformer - Very easy to use interface. Merge multiple RSS feeds and create a block of content to add to web pages. Lots of options for display and options to customize.
feed2js- enter an RSS feed, select some options, copy and paste a bit of javascript to your pages. If you're going to use this for lots of feeds, consider installing the feed2js software on your own server.
Yahoo Pipes - a more complicated tool that has many more options for input of rss feeds, filtering content and displaying info.
Grazr - Combine multiple feeds into one widget or into a single RSS feed. Example - NYS Jobs
Widgetbox - Lots of options for formatting a box with the feed contents. Free account has a link to the Widgetbox after your first item. Pro version = no ads. ($29.99 year)
Google Reader - organize a group of feeds into one folder. Use the "add a clip" feature to add a block of content to your web pages.
ListGarden - Tool to help you build your own RSS feeds. Free download.
RSS Headliner - Another tool for building RSS feeds. Online.
RSS to Twitter Tools - tools for automatically posting RSS feeds to twitter. Handy if you're blogging and want to send your posts to your twitter stream.
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