RSS Feeds - Information to Your Desktop

A while back we told you about how to use "RSS Feed" technology to bring the Library's list of new book titles in your area of the sciences directly to your computer. The list of these feeds in the sciences can be found in the right hand panel of this blog Science News from Massey Library. An RSS feed is often indicated by the use of the distinctive orange icon.

A feed link needs to go to some sort of reader and this is where things get slightly tricky. Personally I prefer to use a web-based reader like Bloglines or Google Reader because they are easy to use and you can access your feeds from anywhere. The downside is that you have to create an account and sign in. Users of Internet Explorer 6 might find the page of "html gibberish" they see when they click on a Feed slightly alarming but all you need to do is to copy the url address (e.g. http://library.massey.ac.nz/rss/agriculture-0.xml) at the top of the screen and then paste it into your reader as a new feed. Alternatively you can right-click on the feed link and then choose Copy Shortcut (IE) or Copy Link Location (Firefox) and then paste that into your Feed Reader.

RSS feeds can be used to alert you about new information in your field and they are beginning to replace emailed alerts in all sorts of ways. Most journals now provide contents page feeds of their latest issues and (providing you are on-campus) you can click through to the full articles of those we subscribe to. The good people at the University of Nevada Library have provided a very extensive list of contents page feeds - make sure you click on the orange RSS symbol rather than the blue links.

Many databases now allow you to use RSS for subject based alerts as well as journal contents pages. In the Web of Science database carry out your search and then click the Search History button. This will display the list of searches from your current session - click on Save History to see a box that looks like this



Give you search a name and then click on Save. Don't tick the email alerts box unless you want them as well - but with your feed the email shouldn't be necessary. When the confirmation appears click on the orange XML button to create your feed.




Once you have a good system set up for your feeds you can choose to look at them whenever you have the time - typically this may be daily or once a week. The big advantage of them over emails is that you go to them at a time of your own choosing. Happy feeding and get in touch with us if you need help!