1. RSS WS 3 ELAG 2005 Peter van Boheemen Mette Båstrup-Larsen, dk Jill Cousins, eu Jean-Blaise Claivaz, ch Nathalie Cornee, uk Oleg Cvik, sk Elisabeth Freyre, fr Jan Erik Kofoed, no Martin Svoboda, cz

2. Agenda Questions –RSS – what does it mean? –What is it & what is it good for? –Who is using it and why? Relation to other kinds of communication Conclusions, recommendations

3. RSS – what does it mean? Rich Site Summary Real Simple Syndication RDF Site Summary

4. What is it & what is it good for? Small chunks of well structured data (XML; title, date, link, …) Simple standardised method of broadcasting (feeding) news

6. RSS principle of operation “news” db select reformat RSS read & interpret e-mail weblog RSS reader ??? web page

7. Who is using it and why? Who produces RSS feeds? –Bloggers: The Shifted Librarian, Peter Scott’s Library Blog, …The Shifted LibrarianPeter Scott’s Library Blog –Media: BBC, CNN, …BBC –Journal publishers: NPG (Nature), …Nature –Libraries: Woodburn Library, …Woodburn Library Who reads RSS feeds? –individuals, which? –applications aggregators, library portals?

8. ChannelPaperE-mailSMSRSS Characteristicsbroadpersonal broad Audiencebothknown anonymous Frequencylown/a potentially high Requirementseyes (+ glasses) mail readerGSMRSS reader Costs to produce high: paper, postage application development application development + delivery application development Availabilitywidespread emerging Formatfreetext/htmlshort textsimple structured text Relation to other kinds of communication

9. Conclusions, recommendations Powerful: really simple & easy to implement both at producer and user side Ca 15 million bloggers do use it Could serve libraries well to broadcast „news“ to users Not part of our standard applications yet (plug- in or separate reader needed) Likely to be integrated into browsers or e-mail clients soon (tomorrow) … Be prepared!!!

10. Sir Tim Berners-Lee for Nobel prize !