NEWSFEEDS AND MORE ….

A mini-workshop

presented by Ingrid Thomson, UCT Libraries

IS THIS WHAT YOU FEEL LIKE?

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http://blog.vecci.org.au/2010/10/20/surviving-the-information-deluge

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OUTLINE OF WORKSHOP SOME STRATEGIES FOR STAYING

ABREAST OF CURRENT INFORMATION (A brief discussion)

WHAT ARE NEWSFEEDS? WHY USE NEWSFEEDS? FINDING NEWSFEEDS HOW TO GET STARTED (and getting

started) FINDING THE ‘GOOD STUFF’

Use the technology which is available to turn the latest online content into a subscription which can be delivered to one place.

SO HOW TO STAY ABREAST

RSS = Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary or Atom or XML or Feeds or Newsfeed or Webfeed or Channel or Blogfeeds or Ready for Some Stories.

AND THE TECHNOLOGY IS …

WHAT IS RSS? Technical or Geeky explanationXML-based standard for sending information over

the internet Looks something like this … <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><rss version="2.0"><channel> <title>RSS Title</title> <description>This is an example of an RSS feed</description> <link>http://www.someexamplerssdomain.com/main.html</link> <lastBuildDate>Mon, 06 Sep

2010 00:01:00 +0000 </lastBuildDate> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000 </pubDate> <item>

<title>Example entry</title> <description>Here is some text containing an interesting description.</description> <link>http://www.wikipedia.org/</link> <guid>unique string per item</guid> <pubDate>Mon, 06 Sep 2009 16:45:00 +0000 </pubDate> </item> </channel></rss>

WHAT INFO CAN I GET VIA FEEDS?

Many bookmarked web sites that you check regularly

News headlines, weather and any other news – real time news

Latest podcasts, videos Web search engines and databases you use provide

feeds for your search results Journals in your research fields or areas of interest

provide feeds to new issues as they are published.

ADVANTAGES OF USING FEEDS Fewer emails in your email box Users do not disclose their email

address when subscribing to a feed and so no spam, viruses, phishing, and identity theft.

Users do not have to send an unsubscribe request to stop receiving news. They simply remove the feed from their aggregator.

Keep the items you want to keep, share the items you want to share

You choose when to look at your feeds.

Have you ever seen icons like these?

middlesexjobsearch.wikispaces.com

GET A FEED OR RSS READER OR AGGREGATOR

Different types of readers from desktop based, internet based or mobile-phone based.

Windows, OS, Linux, mobile phones, and web-based.

Browsers like IE can be used as readers as well.

Check out the Ultimate RSS Toolbox at http://mashable.com/2007/06/11/rss-toolbox/.

FORMAT OF A FEED

Updated feeds

Link to story

Title

Brief descriptive content

OPTIONS FOR WEB-BASED READERS: BLOGLINES

OPTIONS FOR WEB-BASED READERS: GOOGLE

Google Reader

Login

SO WHERE DO I FIND FEEDS?Two places:-

Many internet browsers e.g. Firefox, IE, Google Chrome now have the ability to find and subscribe to RSS feeds built right into them.

On websites (which could be search engines, directories of feeds [e.g. Syndic8.com], academic databases amongst other places).

ADDING FEEDS

BROWSERS

Google Chrome Internet Explorer Firefox

GOOGLE CHROME

Need to add a special Google Chrome Extension

GOOGLE CHROMEFeed

INTERNET EXPLORERFEED

Will add to your IE B

rowse

FIREFOXFeed

Choose your reader

DIRECTORY OF FEEDS

SEARCH ENGINES

RSS feed for alerting to new updated information

NEWS HEADLINES

RSS Feed for Health Stories on IOL

HOW DO I ADD FEEDS?

Choose your reader

Table of ContentsUse library resources such as Ulrich’s

Periodicals Database or the Journal Portal or individual databases to locate RSS feeds for latest table of contents

OR check out TicTocs.

OR look up the title on Google and add the words “RSS feed”

ACADEMIC JOURNALS

ACADEMIC JOURNALS

Select Informaworld

ACADEMIC JOURNALS

RSS feed

ACADEMIC JOURNALS

To have the alerts come via Google Reader

ACADEMIC JOURNALS

Feed is added automatically because I am signed in.

ACADEMIC JOURNALS

DATABASES Two ways to use databases Create journal alerts on

journal titles available from that database

Search-based alerts EBSCO, PROQUEST, PubMed,

Ovid

LIBRARY DATABASES

LIBRARY DATABASES

RSSFeed

LIBRARY DATABASES

Keyword search

Indicates RSS feed

Use this to grab the RSS feed

LIBRARY DATABASES

Click here to create an alert

LIBRARY DATABASESCopy and paste this feed url into your reader to subscribe to the feed.

LIBRARY DATABASES

Click on Add a subscription and put the feed in and click on ADD

LIBRARY DATABASES

Feed is added.

WEBSITES/BLOGS AND OTHER SCHOLARLY RESOURCES

RSS feed

REFWORKS AND RSS. Using RefWorks?

RefWorks has an intergrated RSS Feed Reader.

Simply add the feed URL which will be added to your RefWorks database

NO RSS FEED ON THE SITE?

STILL HOOKED ON EMAIL?

SOME USEFUL TIPS TO STAY IN CONTROL Results that have nothing to do with your keywords - use

site called Feed Rinse, add the feed and get the posts blocked that have that word in the post or title.

Subscribe only to the category’s feeds where that is an option.

Review your feeds regularly - you want to stay in control not the feeds