23 Things @ UL

Blogs & RSS Colm Cunniffe

November 17th 2009Original version by Michelle

Breen, Glucksman Library

CONGRATULATIONS!

Participants in the 23 Things @ UL are now part of the “blogosphere”

…the collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network…”

Damien Mulley runs the Irish Blog Awards

Best Use of the Irish Language

Best Newcomer (Trust Tommy – My Life rocks)

Presdient's blog: Prof Ferdinand von Prondzynski, president Dublin City University

Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, DCU

What is a blog?

•A “web log”, mostly referred to as a blog

A journal | newsletter | diary online that is frequently updated, with entries displayed in reverse chronological order

•Contains information, opinions and links•Most use free software •Most have RSS feeds•Widgets

What is included in a blog

•The diary entries are called “posts”

•Most recent posts usually appear on the front page of the weblog, with the newest entry at the top, and older entries further down

•Entries are usually fairly short, maybe a sentence or a paragraph, but can be much longer

•Entries might be written about other websites, including links to them, but they might also be the author’s thoughts on events, politics, their own life… anything

Types of Blogs

•Personal •Commercial

•Professional

•Political•Internal Communication

A good blogger must

Communicate clearly Be consistentBe passionate about somethingBe web savvy Have a constant learning attitudeDevote time each day or week to your blog

Professionally, your blog allows you to . . .

•Market yourself •Stand out in the crowd and establish a reputation•Publish on your own terms •Write everyday•Put internet technologies to work for you

But you can remain anonymous too!

What use is a blog in a university?

•Students want faster access to information•When you come across some good information you can share it with a wide audience•Information is captured for reference queries•Archive facility allows people to get older material•Discussion is now possible•Department news•Advertise events

Why not to use a blog in your teaching/work

•Do you have the resources to back up two way/dynamic communication?

•What about your users who don’t go online?

•Team of contributors must keep it fresh

•Information overload

•Have to continuously update, takes time

•Message must be consistent, no ramblings

•It’s your presence on the WWW

Blogs at Irish universities

Celebrity blogs

Your blogs . . . .

Sample of 23 Things @ UL blogs

Part 2 – RSS (and how blogs and RSS readers are linked)

What is RSS

“…RDF Site Summary, or Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication – A lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.”

and simply put

RSS allows you to access information you are interested in from the one place. It is like customizing an online newspaper to only show news you want to read. The owner syndicates the data, and you subscribe to it. The data automatically updates. You use a browser , a browser addon or a program to view the data.

www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm

This is what RSS looks like

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><rss version="2.0"> <channel> <title>BCR: The Third Indicator</title> <link>http://www.bcr.org/publications/thirdind/</link> <description>The Third Indicator, published monthly, is a technical memo

focusing on OCLC products and services. It includes general OCLC news as well as detailed technical information on cataloging, reference and resource sharing. Announcements of new OCLC developments are also included.</description>

<lastBuildDate>Tue, 21 Sep 2004 21:37:39 GMT</lastBuildDate> <generator>ListGarden Program 1.01</generator> <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs> <item> <title>WorldCat Resource Sharing Training</title><link>http://www.bcr.org/publications/thirdind/2004/august/

augsharetrain04.html</link> <description>If you'd like to see what WorldCat Resource Sharing looks like

and learn more about it, visit the OCLC Web site at www.oclc.org/ill/migration/ or view the WorldCat Resource Sharing tutorial at www5.oclc.org/downloads/tutorials/firstsearch/sv/rsbasics/intro/index.html/.</description>

<pubDate>Tue, 21 Sep 2004 19:29:47 GMT</pubDate> <guid isPermaLink="false">thirdind-2004-08-21-19-29-47</guid> </item> </channel></rss>

So, we already know that

•Blogs = content

•RSS = technology

•Readers = Aggregators (software to display RSS)

RSS feeds - how to read

•Special piece of software called a newsreader, feedreader, or aggregator to display rss feeds.

Download one or access online.

•Gathers all your feeds in one place

•Like a newspaper - more personalized, with all your RSS feeds displayed

RSS Readers/ Aggregators

RSS Feeds can be read in:

•Web browser – feeds can be read in Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla Firefox

•Web-based aggregators – Google Reader, Bloglines, Newsgator, where you need a username and password, but can be read on any PC

•Desk-top readers – software installed on PC and feeds download when connected to the internet e.g. feedreader.com

•Personalised start pages like NetVibes or PageFlakes, iGoogle

To subscribe to an RSS feed from a website look for any of these icons

Depending on your aggregator, the subscription procedure may range from copying and pasting the link to right-clicking and selecting “subscribe”.

http://www.rte.ie/rss/news.xml

How you or your students can benefit from using RSS

feeds

•Subscribe once, constant updates then fed to you

•Avoid repeatedly checking websites to see if there is any new content

•Avoids clutter and spam in email inbox

•Handles notifications of changes to multiple websites easily

•Get results of a saved search from internet news sources displayed in one place

Finding Blogs & RSS feeds

» Google (blogsearch.google.com)» Yahoo (Directory>Computers and

Internet>Internet>World Wide Web>Weblogs)

» Technorati (http://www.technorati.com)» Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com)

» Irish Blogs Directory (http://www.irishblogs.com/)

FeedsPubSub (http://www.pubsub.com/)RSS Compendium (http://allrss.com/rsssearch.html

)

Thank you

Good luck in the blogosphere; go out and

start reading other people’s blogs through an

RSS aggregator