RSS Basics and Beyond RSS Basics and Beyond Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most out of Syndicated Content

13 June 2007RSS Basics and Beyond Quick Questionnaire Who has heard of RSS? Who reads RSS feeds? Who creates RSS feeds? Google “RSS”. What does RSS stand for?

RSS Basics and Beyond RSS Working Definition RSS is a combination of: 1.Data Format RSS (0.93, 1.0, 2.0…) RDF Atom 2.Data Interchange Syndication

RSS Basics and Beyond Really Simple Syndication Syndication is key element It enables you to make your content available to anyone to use. News Events Book lists Study guides Etc. It puts you on par with the AP or Reuters

RSS Basics and Beyond RSS is Nearly Everywhere!

RSS Basics and Beyond Where Does RSS Come From? Automatically Generated Weblog software (Movable Type, TypePad, Bloglines, Wordpress, etc.) Content management systems (i.e., Wikis) Using Perl, PHP, Ruby, etc. Create feeds from database searches By Hand If you know HTML you can learn RSS

RSS Basics and Beyond Finding Feeds Look for icons on page Look for icons in browser location bar If you can find the link, you can use the content. Some conditions apply. See copyright holder for details.

RSS Basics and Beyond Consuming RSS All tools have common traits Access RSS Feeds Track what a user has already read Reproduce feed content Link to original source

RSS Readers Download and compare FeedDemon and FeedReader Compare the readers above to the aggregators Bloglines and Google Reader What is an aggregator?

RSS Basics and Beyond Consuming RSS: Readers PC-Based -- tied to a particular computer Special Applications FeedDemon FeedReader NetNewsWire (for Macintosh) Web Browsers Safari IE7 Firefox

RSS Basics and Beyond Consuming RSS: Aggregators Web-based Access anywhere Examples Yahoo! Bloglines Google Reader Even read off-line

RSS Basics and Beyond Consuming RSS: Integration RSS is just a stream of information Easy to integrate into a web page Many tools have ‘hooks’ to hang RSS on: Weblog software Content management Wiki software, etc., etc., etc. But if you’re using good ol’ HTML Feed2JS RSS2HTML

RSS Basics and Beyond It’s This Easy Go to Click “Build” Paste in a feed URL ( Click “Generate JavaScript” Copy 4 lines of HTML onto the page you want it to appear

RSS Basics and Beyond

del.icio.us Go to What do you notice about the domain name? What doe del.icio.us do?del.icio.us

RSS Basics and Beyond Create “Live” Subject Guides del.icio.us lets you ‘tag’ web sites Create an account for your library People tag web pages that make sense Sales & Marketing Management Human Resources As people find web sites that are interesting and fit a subject guide, tag them

RSS Basics and Beyond Subscribe to RSS Feed Every del.icio.us tag has an RSS Feed Example: Put it in a ‘what’s new’ section on a subject guide -- with Feed2JS or other

RSS Basics and Beyond del.icio.us result

RSS Basics and Beyond Cambridge (Ontario)

RSS Basics and Beyond Monitoring the Web How do you know when a web page changes? New journal issue? New report from the county board? Monitoring tools check sites for you Google Alerts watches topics

RSS Basics and Beyond Roll Your Own RSS Several ways to get an RSS feed Write one by hand Set up a (free) blog Write a script yourself (if you have a Perl/PHP/Ruby person) Use a service like FeedXS

RSS Basics and Beyond Beyond the Basics Mostly talked about existing services that you can leverage Now turn to some more advanced topics Search = Feed Using RSS to get to your patrons where they “live”

RSS Basics and Beyond Final Thoughts RSS means simplicity of sharing content Simple to create, simple to use Great tool for putting your library “out there” where your patrons are Flexible Very low barrier to creation or consumption