All about Blogging and

RSS Feeds
Michelle Breen
For LNSS Project
March 12th 2009
A little bit of history from the 1990’s

www.vlib.org
 In the mid 2000s
• 7% of the 120 million U.S. adults who use
the internet have created a blog.
• 40,000 new blogs added every day
• Still 62% of online Americans do not know
what a blog is
 What is a blog?
• Website, listed chronologically, with
written content and links.
• Most use software for easy publication.
• Calendars, Permalinks, Archives, RSS,
blogroll, comments.
• Easy Easy Easy Easy Easy…
 What’s a blog?
A Web Log, a log being a diary
• A blogger = you
• Journal | Newsletter | diary online that is
frequently updated, and displayed in reverse
chronological order. Most have rss feeds.
• Blogroll- collection of web log feeds.

• Examples:

• Bebo | myspace | http://www.librarystuff.net/

• Brooklyn College Library on MySpace
• Hennepin County Library on MySpace
 What are Blogs?
• These bits of writing, perhaps called “entries” or
“posts,” generally 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. The most often cited history of
weblogs is Rebecca Blood’s.
 Types of Blogs
• Personal
– Personal diaries published on the web
where people share their personal life
experiences; friends, family, books, music
and more – sometimes…
• Commercial
– Business blogs that are used to publish
press releases, manage job boards, share
information between internal project teams,
develop deeper relationships with
customers and more.
• Professional
– Businesses and professionals who decided
 Types of Blogs
• Political
– Blogs dominated by the discussion of political
news and events
• Internal Communication
– Project management, class discussions,
sharing commentary, news, and/or links about
a particular topic that is of organizational
importance
 Blogs in Organizations
• Improves distribution of information
throughout your organization
• Captures information for short and long
term reference
• Fosters cross-discipline communication of
information
• Localizes information and increases
findability
• Accommodates collaborative discussions
 Blogs in Everyday life
• Breaking, shaping, spinning the news.
• Used by political candidates to recruit
volunteers and money.
• Eyewitness testimony.
• Used as an information source in
mainstream journalism courses.

http://www.nickfinck.com
 Why blog in a library?
• Students want faster access to information

• How many of you have ever updated a

website?

• How many of you now have a blog, that

only you can update!
 Why should your library have a
blog?
• They’re an easy way to provide
information about what’s happening in
your library.
• Little to no (X)HTML experience
necessary.
• Combined with RSS feeds it’s another way
for patrons to receive timely information
about the library.
 Why use blogs in a library
• Easy to distribute content
• Communication within the building
(reference desk)
• Great for Library Web pages.
 Why use blogs in a library
• Library News
• Reference Desk Discussion (FARQs,
patrons, etc)
• New Acquisitions.
• Consortia
• Book Clubs
• Backend CMS only
 What are blogs good for?
• Communication
• Circulating documents/files/photos
• Reducing emails
• Issue logs
• Posting information on the web without
web design or programming knowledge
 What Blogs are not good for
• Two way/dynamic communication
• Reaching users who lack internet access.
• Private or secure information
 Why not? (Disadvantages)
• Information Overload?!
• Have to continuously update them
• Takes time on behalf of the writer
• Crossposting
• Subjective
• Reliability of content
• No Rules
Library Needs
• One or more authors?

• One or more blogs?

• To host or not to
host?
 Blog features to consider
• Calendar
• Customizable Templates
• Search feature
• Spell-check feature for authors
• RSS feed
Congratulations!
You are now
a) using Web 2 point oh

and b) part of the “Blogosphere”

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

• Weblogs
– Create a library weblog
– Additional or new library resources
– Introduce members of staff
– Use it as a repository of data and information by using
categories and tags
– A blog can be more than just a diary – it’s an important website
in its own right…
Anyone can be a blogger but to be
a good blogger,
• Don’t get me wrong. Blogging isn’t for everyone,
and I’ll be stressing this when I give this actual
talk Monday after next. It does take certain
qualities in a person to be a good blogger:
• - good communication skills; be able to talk
easily
- ability to be consistent
- ability to be articulate in speech
- passion about something, be it sport, music,
etc.
- ability to give a block of time each time to the
writing and upkeep of your blog
This is an the blog of the guy who
runs the Irish Blog Awards
One of the 2009 winners
Best newcomer at Irish Blog
Awards 2009
 Sample library blogs
• Waterboro Public Library (
http://www.waterborolibrary.org/blog.htm)
• Georgia State University Libraries (
http://www.library.gsu.edu/news)
• Rosedale Public Library Blogger Book
Club (
http://www.roselle.lib.il.us/YouthServices/Book
)
 More sample library blogs

• Construction Diary (
http://urbanafreelibrary.org/bldgblog.html)
• University of Minnesota Libraries (
http://blog.lib.umn.edu)
• Wisconsin Library Association (
http://wlaweb.blogspot.com/)
• Suburban Library System (
http://www.sls.lib.il.us/)
 Who? (LIS Specific)
• Peter Scott’s List (
www.libdex.com/weblogs.html)
• LISBlogsource – (
http://www.lisblogsource.net)
• ODP Library Weblogs – (
http://tinyurl.com/ew7o)
• Blog Without a Library - (
http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links.html
)
 Why having a blog is good for you
professionally
• Stand out in the crowd.
• Best way to publish without trade publications
(on your own terms)
• Finding your niche (
http://marylaine.com/exlibris/xlib185.html)
• Write everyday
• Marketing the Librarian – (
http://www.liscareer.com/cohen_marketing.htm)
 Blogs in a nutshell
• Web based
• Instant
• Reverse chronological
• Links, within entries and
collected separately
• Community participation
• Types: personal, political,
community, academic,
corporate, professional,
subject specialists,
institutional, news,
service
• Bloglines and blogrolls
Examples
• Slashdot
• LISNews
• Librarian Avengers
• Librarian's Rant
• Librarians & Library staff in the UK
• Kept-Up Academic Librarian
• Lorcan Dempsey's weblog
• Librarian in Black
• Mesoj
• PLA Blog
• Radical Reference
 What’s 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.”
 www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm

• and in my words…

• 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.
 How does RSS work?
• The author creates an RSS file.
• Users subscribe to the file via an
aggregator.
• When the author updates the RSS file, the
user is automatically notified of the new
items and may read them on their
schedule.
 RSS 101
• Content from the Web which is
parsed into a file (.xml or .rss or
.php)
• Can’t be read in a browser on its
own.
• Look for the orange button!!!
• Steven’s Personalized Page
(DEMO)
 Examples of Companies that Syndicate
Content via RSS

• Chronicle of Higher Education

– http://chronicle.com/help/rss.htm
• Reuters
– (http://www.reuters.com/newsrss.jhtml)
• New York Times
– http://www.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/index.html

• Christian Science Monitor

– http://search.csmonitor.com/rss/index.html
 Why RSS feeds are useful for a
library
• Subscribe once, constant updates then
fed to you
 RSS- How to Read
• Special piece of software - Called news reader,
feedreader, or aggregator to display rss feeds.
Download one or access online.

• They gather all your feeds in one place.

• Like a newspaper - more personalized, with all

your feeds displaying within its pages.
 How can I read these feeds?

You can download and install a news reader. Or, you can
use a Web based reader such as My Yahoo! or Bloglines.
Follow the instructions in your reader to subscribe to the feed
of your choice. You will usually need to copy and paste the
feed URL into the reader.

Use MS Outlook
 Subscribing to an RSS feed

• The following icon means that a RSS feed is

available on a website:

For example, on the BBC Health

News website
 To subscribe to a RSS feed
• Click on the orange icon and following webpage appears

There are several ways to subscribe to the RSS feed. For

example cut and paste the RSS URL into your reader/aggregator
 RSS Readers/ Aggregators
RSS Feeds can be read in:

• Web-based aggregators – 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

• Web browser – feeds can be read in a web browser

• Personalised start pages

 Web-based Aggregators

• Bloglines
(www.bloglines.com)

• NewsGator
(www.newsgator.com)
 Google Reader
(www.google.com/reader)
 Desktop Readers

• FeedReader
(www.feedreader.com)
 Web Browsers

• Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 will store and display RSS

feeds
 Personalised Page Starters

www.pageflakes.com www.netvibes.com
 RSS Feeds - homework

• Use Google username and password to open

Google Reader
• Subscribe to some BBC feeds from their website
• Set up a PubMed RSS feed on a specific topic
• Create a Dialog Datastar search feed
• Try a Google News/Yahoo News RSS feed
 Advantages of RSS
• Cutting edge technology
• No advertisements to deal with
• More and more join RSS every
day
• Saves lots of time (4 hours  30
minutes)
• Can be syndicated onto a web site
• Syndication works well for
frequently and infrequently update
sites
 Disadvantages of RSS
• No filtering by keyword
• Can become unruly, quickly
• Not Everything is RSSified
• Difficult to synchronize aggregator
between multiple computers
(but...)
 Top RSS Readers-
Microsoft Survey Sept 2006
1. Bloglines

2. Zhuaxia (Chinese) • Access from any computer:

3. Google Reader • Bloglines, Google Reader
4. GreatNews
5. FeedDemon • From My computer:
6. NetNewsWire • Download: Greatnews
7. IE7 • Online: ie7
• Addon: Sage (Firefox)
8. Sage
9. SharpReader
10. Firefox Live Bookmarks
 Some Relevant Feeds
• http://www.powells.com/rss/rad.xml (Powells Review a Day)
• http://info.sciencedirect.com/news/title_changes/title_alerts.xml (Science
Direct Title Alerts)
• http://www.ireland.com/feeds/rss/newspaper/sciencetoday.rss (Irish Times)
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/rssfeed/0,,15,00.xml (The Observer)
• http://timescolumns.typepad.com/stothard/atom.xml (Times Literary
Supplement)
• http://www.lisfeeds.com/ (Library Feeds)
• http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/rss/catalogablog.xml (Catalog a blog- all
about cataloguing)
• http://hurstassociates.blogspot.com/atom.xml (Digitization feed)
• The Geek Librarian http://bonariabiancu.wordpress.com/feed/
 Want more help?
RSS For Non-Techie Librarians:
http://www.llrx.com/features/rssforlibrarians.htm

Amigos Website RSS Feeds: what, why &

how:
http://www.amigos.org/rss/

So what are you waiting for?

Now that you know what RSS feeds are . . .
it’s time to start using them!
 How blogs and RSS are linked
• Use the weblog RSS feed on the site
home page as a news feed
• Encourage people to add the feed to their
start page or RSS reader
• Create a different weblog for a different
subject area – invite other authors
• Use it in a different way, on a different
page
From RSS to aggregator

A typical RSS feed in XML…The Aggregator

translates this
From RSS to aggregator

Viewer-friendly display of the RSS feed

How are Weblog pages made?
• Entering a Blog “post” via the form saves it
in a standardised format, usually as an
RSS file.
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a
lightweight XML format designed for
sharing headlines and other Web content.
Think of it as a distributable "What's New"
for your site.
• Show a weblog and then also show it’s
RSS feed on a website and/or in a reader
 RSS as a means of
communicating
• Email is burdened with:

– SPAM - messages are often deleted or are filtered because of cluttered

mailboxes
– Viruses – more and more legitimate messages are not reaching their destination
due to the proliferation of viruses.

• Benefits to RSS:

– Opt-In – users elect which feeds which they subscribe to.

– Syndication – RSS is a defined standard for syndicating content, feeds extend
reach
– Content – steady stream of fresh web content
– Aggregation – users can quickly scan multiple content streams and click on
items of
interest saving time
– Traffic – increased exposure and traffic for web sites
 News aggregators
• Single place to “collect” and read RSS
feeds

• E-Mail “without the spam”

 More about RSS
• An RSS file (or “RSS feed”) is a text file
that doesn’t have any information about
colours, fonts, layout, or any other
graphical issues. It’s simply text in a
standardised (XML) format.
• If you look at the RSS file for Phil Gyford's
site, you can see what they look like.
 What is RSS for?

• There are two main uses for an RSS file.

First, it makes it easy for one website to
include a list of headlines from another, a
process known as “syndication.” For
example, someone might want to include a
list of the BBC’s top news items on their
website, with each headline linking to the
story at the BBC.
• The second use for an RSS file is so people
What problem does RSS solve?
• Avoid repeatedly checking websites to see
if there is any new content: Content is
delivered to you
• Avoid clutter and spam in your inbox
• Handle notifications of changes to multiple
websites easily, while the results are
presented to you in a well organized
manner
 How does RSS work?
• The website author maintains a list of
notifications on their website in a standard way.
This list of notifications is called an "RSS
Feed".
• Special computer programs called "RSS
Aggregators" automatically access the RSS
feeds of websites you care about on your
behalf and organize the results for you.
• Hundreds of thousands of websites now
provide this feature, including major news
organizations like the New York Times, the
 Using an RSS News Reader
• You tell it the addresses of RSS files you are
interested in and it downloads them. The program
then displays the entry headlines, regularly fetching
the latest version of the RSS file.
• People use RSS news readers if they like to read lots
of weblogs or news sites because it makes the
process much quicker:
– the person no longer has to visit each site in turn
– the latest entries are fetched automatically
– the lack of graphics makes the process much quicker.
– It’s more like skipping through email messages rather than
viewing websites.
RSS and search
 How do I find blogs
• Bloglines
• Bl.ogs
• Blog Search Engine
• University of Saskatchewan - finding
blogs/rss page
 Finding Blogs, Managing
Content
Through Search Engines
» Google (blogsearch.google.com)
» Yahoo (Directory>Computers and
Internet>Internet>World Wide Web>Weblogs)

Specialized Directories
» Technorati (http://www.technorati.com)
» Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com)
How do I find feeds?
 How does RSS work?
• The author creates an RSS file.
• Users subscribe to the file via an
aggregator.
• When the author updates the RSS file, the
user is automatically notified of the new
items and may read them on their
schedule.
 Are there different versions of
RSS?
• Yes. In fact, there are currently nine
different versions:
RSS 0.90, 0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 1.0, 2.0,
3.0 & Atom Feeds
• Each has different features from the
author’s point of view.
• Today’s aggregators support all of the
versions transparently.
 What does RSS look 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.htm
l</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>
 What is an aggregator?
• “A news aggregator is a software or a
remotely hosted service that periodically
reads a set of news sources, in one of
several XML-based formats, finds the new
bits, and displays them in reverse-
chronological order on a single page.”
— Wikipedia
• It’s what you need to read RSS feeds.
 What are the different types of
aggregators?
• Standalone Clients
– FeedReader, Radio UserLand
• PIM add-ins
– Pluck, NewsGator, intraVnews
• Browser add-ins
– Firefox 1.0PR, Sage
• Web-based
– Bloglines, NewsIsFree
• A list is available @
http://www.lights.com/weblogs/rss.html
 How do I create a feed?
• Fully-automated

• You put the content in your blog and software

generates a feed based on that content.
 So, what else can I do with RSS?
• Add to content to webpages
• Add content to a news aggregator
• Add content to a start page
• Keep current with comments and updates
• In conclusion therefore… RSS brings data
to you, and allows you to send it out to
other places.
How do I find out if a website has a
feed I can subscribe to?
• Look for an orange icon:

• Depending on your aggregator, the

subscription procedure may range from
copying and pasting the link to right-
clicking and selecting “subscribe”.
 Notable library blogs & feeds
• Librarian.net • Unshelved
www.librarian.net www.overduemedia.co
m
• Librarian’s Rant
• Free Range Librarian
lblog.jalcorn.net
freerangelibrarian.com
• LISNews • Crime in the Library
www.lisnews.com crimeinthelibrary.blogs
• The Shifted Librarian pot.com
www.theshiftedlibraria • Tame the Web
n.com www.tametheweb.com
• Travelin’ Librarian /ttwblog
travelinlibrarian.blogsp • LibraryTechtonics
ot.com www.librarytechtonics.i
nfo
 Examples of RSS feeds
• Newspapers, Magazines, and • Government
Television – Us Copyright Office
– AP – Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau
– Milwakee Journal Sentinial – Firstgov.gov
– Badger Herald • Business
– Cell Press – Ebay, Fedex , Amazon
– ABC News – Edgar Index
– Financial Times – Realators
• Sports
• Libraries – University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Athlet
– UW Ebling library – ESPN
– Minneapolis Public Library • Education
• Job searching – UWSP Extension Courses
– work.com – UW Madison Computer Help Desk
– Feedster
 Using news aggregators
• Such as Bloglines or the Google Reader
• Keep up to date
• Up to the minute
• Create your own searches
• Use these to create your own news feeds
• Combine these and publish them for users
 To summarize…
• Blogs/feeds = content

• RSS = technology

• Aggregators = reader