RSS and Blogs For Libraries

John J MeierScience Librarian

Pennsylvania State University

Not another new technology!

• There are many new technology solutions available with different functions

• Don’t let technology drive your workflow – Find a solution that fits your library

What does a blog look like?

What does a blog look like?

What does a blog look like?

What does a blog look like?

What does a blog look like?

• Professional Communication• Library News• Portfolio / Resume• New Book Announcements

• Frequently Asked Reference Questions• Staff News and Announcements

What are Blogs?

• Blogs (short form of web-logs) are a method for easily publishing information to the web– Usually composed of entries that go in reverse

chronological order– Can allow multiple authors for entries– Can allow anyone to comment on the entries,

creating a conversation

What are Blogs?

• Blogs (short form of web-logs) are a method for easily publishing information to the web– Usually composed of entries that go in reverse

chronological order– Can allow multiple authors for entries– Can allow anyone to comment on the entries, creating

a conversation

•Can publish as RSS

What is RSS?

• Really Simple Syndication• Rich Site Summary• Uses XML formating

What is RSS?

• Really Simple Syndication• Rich Site Summary• Uses XML Formatting

•Re-use Same Stuff

Combine the benefits of RSS and blogs

Use blogs to easily and quickly write news and information for users and co-workers

Use RSS to publish blog entries and other news on multiple web pages and in email

More information that is updated frequently for less effort and staff time

Strategies for using blogs and RSS

• Bring it together (Aggregating)• Put it on your website• Ease the transition to RSS• Examples– Dust off the Frequent Reference Question blog– What they want – new book announcements– Eye popping – using RSS in live displays

Combine multiple feeds into one

Strategies• Publish information you

create in blogs

• Publish information from news sources

• Select from multiple sources

Advantages• Reduce work by reusing

what exists

• Selecting information rather than creating

• Be a filter to the information overload

Useful Feed Aggregators for Combining Multiple Feeds

• Google Reader– Tag RSS feeds and Share as an Atom feed

• Bloglines– Create a feed of selected entries using “Clip Blog”

• Feedjumbler– Merge/splice several RSS or Atom-based feeds

into one combined RSS and/or Atom feed

Penn State Aggregated Blogs

RSS on your website

• XML is just HTML without the formatting, so you can add it to your website– Use CSS to add “style” to the appearance

• For those without XML/CSS expertise– Feed2js.org creates java script code to embed any

RSS feed in your website– Other websites can be used to create “tickers” or

other formatting for your RSS feeds

Transition from email to blogs

• Email may be the traditional form of communication to staff or users

• For blogs– Send out an email with the headline of each new

entry and a link to blog for reading it (some blog platforms can do this for you)

– When the RSS feed from the blog is used on the web it will lead readers back to the blog

Transition from email to RSS

• RMail and RSSFwd are two examples of many services that can put feeds in the inbox

• Methods for moving to RSS– Introduce a RSS reader for everyone to use– Find a reader that is built into a browser, your

email program, or an online account

Examples

• Firefox – you can bookmark RSS feeds– You can also install an RSS ticker in the browser

• Thunderbird – you can set up an inbox for all your RSS and news feeds

• Google Reader – if your staff or users have a Google account, it is very easy to add RSS feeds to Reader and place in the iGoogle homepage

More examples (to avoid lawsuits)

• Other browsers– Internet Explorer

• Other email clients– Eudora

• Other websites– My Yahoo– Feedburner

What does a blog look like?

• Professional Communication• Library News• Portfolio / Resume• New Book Announcements

• Frequently Asked Reference Questions• Staff News and Announcements

Reference Desk Blog

• Early staff use of a blog platform– Transition from paper notebook– Hard to get staff to use consistently

Reference Desk Blog

• Early staff use of a blog platform– Transition from paper notebook– Hard to get staff to use consistently

• Tips to make it work– Integrate into a system that is already in use, like

iGoogle– Make it a public page as well, this could serve as a

Frequently Asked Questions page

New Books Blog

• Use the Catalog– Many library catalogs that supported email alerts

offer the same as RSS– May or may not support images

• Do it yourself– Only blog highlights or the most popular titles– You have more control over how much content

there is, but it’s a lot more work

New Books Feeds

• There are also many library services on the web that offer RSS and javascript updates including images– LibraryThing– GoodReads– Shelfari

• Some are only free to small libraries or personal collections

Small organizations and libraries can use LibraryThing to as a catalog for their collection.

You can be a goodreads “Librarian” if you have over 50 books in your profile (cheaper than a MLS)

Actively feed to a Powerpoint presentation

• Requires purchase of software– Presentation Point add-on for Microsoft

Powerpoint

• Allows the updating of a file during real time– You can display streaming database information– Has additional Datapoint and Newspoint functions

to show SQL data and RSS feeds

Example: Plasma Screen Displays including RSS Content

• Static content– Information about the library– Pictures of library staff

• Database driven– Library instruction class times of the day

• RSS Feed driven– News feeds via third party software