Using Alerts and RSS feeds for Current Awareness Services and Dynamic Web Content Get More from Your Library Databases Robin Hastings Information Technology Manager Missouri River Regional Library Joy Weese Moll Librarian Consultant

Virtual Handout mladatabasepresentation.pbwiki.com

What Is RSS? XML-based language Conceived in 1995 First used in Netscape's “My Netscape” portal in 1999 AOL didn't like it, downplayed it Really took off in 2003

RSS Structure Structure Items in a single channel Each item contains title, link & description (attributes) ‏ LastBuildDate & pubDate enable “on demand” publishing – let aggregators know what is new Lloyd George Knew My Great-Great Grandmother. search.ebscohost.com.catalog.mrrl.org/login.aspx?direct=true&db= afh&AN= &site=ehost-live History Today; 03/01/2007<br /> (AN )<br /> Academic Search Elite Snow, Dan afh_AN_

How is RSS used in the real world? Blogs First popularized use of RSS Feeds work well for chronological format of blog postings Aggregators “feed readers” Allowed users to pick many feeds and read them in one place Sources News sites, blogs, libraries, stores...

Search Feeds Search Narrow the topic appropriately Click the “Create Alert For This Search” link Note the standard RSS symbol before the link Copy the syndication feed in the window that pops up Use it (more on this later...) ‏

Creating A Search Feed

MRRL’s Search Alert - Genealogy

Journal Alerts Click on the “Title List” link under any database in the Choose Database screen Click on the RSS symbol before any Journal Copy the syndication link from the next page Use it!

Creating A Journal Alert pt1

Creating A Journal Alert pt2

Using RSS in your site - Javascript Easy – no server side tech required Unpredictable – their server goes down, your feed goes down - Feed2JS RSS -To-Javascript RSS Viewer & Feed Combiner FeedSweep mySyndicaat

Using RSS in your site – Server Side Requires PHP or ASP server side languages Other languages (Ruby on Rails, Cold Fusion, etc.) have parsers, too - (JS or PHP) ‏ (DreamWeaver Extension - PHP) ‏ (PHP - free and for pay versions) ‏ tml - (ASP) ‏ tml

Free Solutions – with examples! Page created to show many different ways to put RSS on your site Each link shows an example of the way your feeds will look All links on all previous slides are on the virtual handout – don't forget!

Current Awareness Service Ongoing research (months or years) ‏ Individual Patrons Academic Researchers Authors Hobbyists Re-enactors Librarians Ego searches RSS Reader or

Search Terms An art – but you do it everyday! Experiment – aim for relevancy Librarians’ best friends Subject headings Thesauri

Publicity Training Drop-in sessions Workshops BI sessions One-on-one Appointments Reference Desk encounters Newsletters, brochures, other marketing materials Informational web page

Web newsletter for teaching faculty

Database Providers offering Alert Services EBSCOhost Project Muse Wilson Web Thomson Gale Many more See links on virtual handout (mladatabasepresentation.pbwiki.com) to lists that other libraries have created And more every day