At times it feels as if there is an incessant avalanche of information pervading our internet enabled connections – reliable, newsworthy, peer-reviewed, personally useful, just for fun and/or blatantly irrelevant to personal communities or lifestyle interests.
RSS, “Really Simple Syndication”, sometimes referred to as “Rich Site Summary” (USYD 2011), provides easy and relevant access to timely updates available through one interface, on a variety of platforms, (desktop, mobile, tablet, cloud stored, calendars et al). RSS readers are powered by XML and Atom standards. My current preference is delivery direct to MS Outlook.
Ellis (2011, p. 59) quotes the Wikipedia definition in his work Managing and growing a cultural heritage web presence:
“Syndication benefits both the websites providing information and the websites displaying it. For the receiving site, content syndication is an effective way of adding greater depth and immediacy of information to its pages, making it more attractive to users. For the transmitting site, syndication drives exposure across numerous online platforms. This generates new traffic for the transmitting site – making syndication a free and easy form of advertisement”
Paraphrasing Ellis, M (ibid), in a library context, RSS updates are a particularly useful delivery system for changing content such as: press releases, news articles, positions vacant, catalogue updates, event, guest presentations, and new additions.
Stephen Downes developed a “hybrid” RSS tool, as described in Digital Habitats (Wenger, E., White, N., & Smith, J.D. (2009), named Edu_RSS 0.2. His application “harvests” XML allowing personalised development of RSS feeds defining specific communities. As the Edu_RSS 0.2 tag implies, this specific hybrid tool aggregates disparate educational blogs and content lists such as (Educational) bloggers, News feeds, Media, Design, Cyberculture and Ideas. The current feed list can be found here.
In terms of usage, according to Ellis, (2011, p. 60), RSS content delivery has reached critical mass. Whether this forebodes its demise, currently the ability to access updated content – at your convenience – via the above mentioned readers or a widget such as is implemented by the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam: availing embeddable code for fast, easy and relevant on-site delivery. The Rijksmuseum widget is also available as an iPhone App enabling users to admire a different painting from the Rijksmuseum’s collection every day; one of the museum’s 1,000 masterpieces can be displayed upon pressing the screen icon or further Museum information can be viewed on the website.
The Australian CSIRO publishing page lists deliverable feeds here. Content of interest in 30 subject areas (17 December, 2011), the CSIRO refers to their RSS as “early alert”.
Developing an RSS feed strategy for the Ecological Agricultural Association Australia (EAAA) posits the possibility for subscribers to elect feeds from only specific ‘pillars’ of the EAAA community. For example, interest feeds from only the foodpillar or farming pillar.
Implementable through numerous website and blogging platforms, where the aggregated or curated content comes to you, RSS use by libraries share cross-platform momentum of its activities and content easily front of mind, enhancing the interlinking, research sharing, trans-linking, discoverability; sustaining and evolving community environments seductive to interaction and timely advice. Discoverable by both humans and computers, RSS is convenient user-selected content essentially providing free advertising for library collections, businesses, organisations and media streams anywhere, anytime.
Is your organisation into RSS?
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REFERENCES:
CSIRO Publishing. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.publish.csiro.au/home.htm
Downes, S. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.downes.ca/edurss02.htm
Ellis, M. (2011). Managing and growing a cultural heritage web presence: a strategic guide. London: Facet
RSS. Retrieved from http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/about/rss.html
Wenger, E., White, N., & Smith, J.D. (2009). Digital habitats: stewarding technology for communities. USA: CPsquare
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