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Week 4: Reflections on RSS
Why should libraries take advantage of RSS feeds? People are suffering from information overload. Never before has so much information been available at the click of a button. Who doesn’t feel overwhelmed by it all? By using an RSS aggregator, individuals can consolidate information from multiple sources in one handy reference point, as Luke Rosenberger points out in Hot! Fresh! Delivered to You! RSS Tutorial. Any tool that can simplify life is a huge plus today. I love the fact that RSS allows us to stay on top of the most current news and information. Steven Cohen reminds us that “currency is key” (Using RSS: An Explanation and Guide); and indeed, being knowledgeable about the latest news, information, and trends is no small feat in today’s ever-changing environment.
But the biggest advantage of RSS technology is that it allows people to select the information that interests them. It empowers users by helping them “filter and organize the vast amount of information on the web.” (7 Things you Should Know About RSS). To be able to personalize information is a huge deal – something libraries should take full advantage of. The time has certainly come for a tool that filters, organizes, and personalizes timely information.
I agree with Robin Good that one of the drawbacks of RSS is the difficulty of popularizing the concept of feeds (The Future of RSS: Is E-Mail Publishing Dead?) Some of the library sites this week did a great job of not just outlining the process of using RSS feeds but also explaining why a patron would want to bother with them at all. The Tacoma Public Library and Lone Star College were great at doing this. The Western Kentucky University Libraries site was the worst – what a cluttered web page!
In both Hot! Fresh! Delivered to You! RSS Tutorial and 7 Things you Should Know About RSS, the authors point out how useful RSS feeds are for keeping academics and researchers on top of the latest developments in their fields. University of Oklahoma Libraries site is an excellent example of a great resource for academics. This is a wonderful user-friendly site that organizes feeds into three main categories – “news and announcements,” “new books,” and “new electronic resources.” The new books section is further subdivided into LC fields. If I were a student at this university, I would love to be able to add feeds for the “PR” and “PS” books to my aggregator. The ability to customize user needs in such a way is awesome. The Tacoma Public Library has an equally impressive page, customizable by various genres. I can envision a big audience for this service.
Lone Star College uses RSS feeds that target specific journals. What a plus for researchers! And I liked the Hennepin County library’s idea of having a feed for “My Account” – a convenient way of keeping track of all those overdue books.
The one downside of RSS is that an aggregator can quickly become a crowded place if you subscribe to a number of feeds. I guess we can’t entirely escape the information overload problem!
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Hi Pauline,
After reading your post I decided to take another look at the New Books feeds on University of Oklahoma Library's website. I actually thought it was kind of strange at first, as I wondered whether most students would be interested in knowing when individual books have been added to the collection. I looked at the end of the list just now, however, and there was a feed for library science! I would totally sign up for that! The blog posts were kind of neat, because when you click in the book image it takes you right to the catalogue record for the book. As a graduate student I love it. I still wonder if the average undergraduate student would be interested in such subject specific feeds though.
Aysha - many students might not be interested in these subject-specific feeds, but I sure would have been in my undergrad while I was working on my thesis, and in some of my honours courses. It could have saved me literally hours of research time, trying to find that great new book that my professor heard about the library buying - searching the catalogue, the stacks, talking to librarians to find out if the book was still in cataloguing, etc. A feed like the ones offered at Oklahoma Universty would have been welcome - if I had found out about it in time (one of the issues with this new technology being used in libraries, I think - people just don't know about it, or know enough about it to use it).
Excellent points, Pauline. Especially your last one! As Jen said (http://lis9763.blogwithoutalibrary.net/node/138), RSS will only save you time if you are selective.