"Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a
fire hydrant." Mitchell Kapor
"One of the Internet's strengths is its ability to help consumers
find the right needle in a digital haystack of data."
Jared Sandberg
Spend a few minutes with other delegates considering how you work at the moment, considering what works well within your organisation and what doesn't. The following is a list of pointers to give you something to think about:
Take a look at some (but not all!) of the following weblogs, and make a note of any particular characteristics that they have; what makes them different to other webpages?
The first place to go should be the UK library weblogs wiki at
http://uklibraryblogs.pbwiki.com/
Gary
Price ResourceShelf at http://www.resourceshelf.com/
Phil
Bradley's weblog at http://www.philbradley.typepad.com/
My
'I want to...' weblog at http://philbradley.typepad.com/i_want_to/
Freedom
of information blog at http://foia.blogspot.com/
Tom Roper's
weblog at http://tomroper.typepad.com/
Karen
Blakeman's blog at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/
Ian
Snowley's weblog at http://snowley.typepad.com/ian_snowleys_weblog/
The
Information Overlord at http://www.informationoverlord.co.uk/
UK
School Librarians Unite! http://ukschoollibrarians.blogspot.com/
(this has now died, but worth a look)
The librarians tangents at
http://www.wibsite.com/wiblog/kercal/
SLA
weblog at http://www.sla.org.uk/sla-blog.php
Google
group for British librarian bloggers at
http://groups.google.com/group/britlibblogs
There
are also dozens more at
http://www.pageflakes.com/philipbradley.ashx?page=4541261
Reporting back - what characteristics and criteria did you spot that makes these weblogs? How could you use these weblogs?
Technorati at http://www.technorati.com/
Blogpulse
at http://www.blogpulse.com/
IceRocket at
http://www.icerocket.com/
Google
Blogsearch at http://blogsearch.google.com/
Ask
at http://www.ask.com (on the top menu, but
only once you've run a search)
Social Mention at
http://www.socialmention.com/
Who's
talking? at http://www.whostalkin.com/
Samepoint
at http://www.samepoint.com/
Google Directory of weblogs at
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/
Yahoo
Directory at
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Weblogs/
Library
weblogs http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html
This site is primarily designed to list weblogs by, for or about librarians.
Weblogs http://www.weblogs.com/ Huge
collection, though not well arranged or organised
Livejournal popular
interests http://www.livejournal.com/interests.bml?view=popular
Acme Book News http://www.acmebook.com/
BookNews
http://futureofthebook.com/
Research
Buzz search engines and databases
http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/
Liszen
at http://www.liszen.com
LibWorm at
http://www.libworm.com
Diarist at http://www.diarist.net/
is more for people who want a diary type weblog
LiveJournal at
http://www.livejournal.com/ is very
highly regarded
Xanga at http://www.xanga.com/ is an easy to use
blogging tool
Blogger at http://www.blogger.com is the package that I
used to use, and it's owned by Google, so is integrated into the Google
Toolbar
MSN Spaces at http://spaces.msn.com/ is Microsoft's
offering for blogging. Again it's easy to use and simple to set
up.
WordPress at http://wordpress.org/
is blogging software that you download onto your own system or you can use
their system to host your weblog
TypePad at
http://www.typepad.com/ is the system
that hosts my current weblog, but it is a commercial product.
Vox at
http://www.vox.com/ is a new package, still
at the requesting an invitation stage, but it's free and for personal weblogs,
from Sixapart, who brought us TypePad.
MySpace at
http://www.myspace.com/ is widely used in
the United States, often by teenagers.
For this exercise we'll start by using Blogger. Visit the website at
http://www.blogger.com.
Click on
'Create your own blog'
Choose a user name - usually your own, or if you're
writing one for your organisation, perhaps that instead.
Set a password and
confirm it.
Choose the display name, which is the name that will come up on
blog entries - this will probably be your own name, or perhaps if you wish to
remain slightly anonymous, your title or position.
Add an email
address.
Click to accept terms of use.
Give your weblog a name.
Choose an address for the weblog (unless
you host it on your own site)
Verify your choice
Choose a template - don't worry about this, since Blogger takes care of everything - just go with something you like, because you can always change it later. Congratulations - you've just created your own weblog!
Google has created a whole wealth of different gadgets that work both on webpages and on weblogs. A list of them is available here: http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open
First of all, RSS is really simple - it has to be, it's used widely by a lot of different resources for a lot of different purposes by a lot of different people, and if it was complicated it would have failed miserably. RSS is an acronym, but depending on who you ask and what version of RSS you are speaking about, it may stand for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, Read Some Storiesor a variation on one of those. None of that matters to you anyway; you don't really need to know that stuff.
RSS is a text-based format, a type of XML. You only need to be aware of the as RSS files are often labeled as XML. RSS version 1.0 is also RDF (whatever), which, again, is important only because an RSS file may be labeled as RDF. RSS files (which are also called RSS feeds or channels) simply contain a list of items. Usually, each item contains a title, summary, and a link to a URL (e.g. a web page). Other information, such as the date, creators name, etc., may also be available. The most common use for RSS files is for news and other reverse-chronologically ordered websites like blogs.
When a website has an RSS feed, it is said to be syndicated. There are various other syndication formats besides RSS (such as Atom), but RSS is by far the most widely used and supported today. RSS files do not have a common file extension, although they frequently end in one of .xml, .rss, or .rdf (note that other extensions may be used also). The term scraping refers to creating an RSS feed for a website that doesnt provide one itself (i.e. scraping the text off of the page). That is, scraped feeds are not created by the same people who created the content within the feed. Scraped RSS feeds may stop working if the page changes its layout.
My weblog is at http://www.philbradley.typepad.com/ and it's the version that human beings look at. The syndicated version is at http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/index.rdf which is absolutely meaningless. However, this is used to create a different type of data set on my own website at http://www.philb.com.
To be clear; YOU do not use RSS directly. You use a resource that uses
RSS to deliver information to you, or to allow you to do something else with
it, such as putting a feed onto a website (as with my site), or to use a news
aggregator to allow you to read weblogs and news feeds more quickly and
effectively.
Get news as it happens, using RSS mix at
http://rssmix.com/ or from the BBC at
http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/rss/newsonline_world_edition/front_page/rss.xml
Collect
email from your email (GMail) account using the link "https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom"
or try out http://www.mailbucket.org/
http://www.rssauction.com/ allows you to
keep up to date with eBay auctions
Get ticker feeds from Yahoo!
http://edit.ticker.yahoo.com/config/slv4_page?.p=ticker
Check
the weather for the UK, or indeed anywhere else at
http://www.rssweather.com/dir/Europe/UK/
See what people are saying about you or your company using PubSub at
http://www.pubsub.com or Technorati at
http://www.technorati.com/
Music,
radio and tv clips from Podcast Alley at http://www.podcastalley.com/
Create
a calendar so that people can keep up to date with what you're doing via RSS at
http://www.rsscalendar.com/rss/
Find
out what other people are looking at using Del.icio.us at
http://del.icio.us/, Feedmarker at
http://feedmarker.com/, FURL at
http://www.furl.net/index.jsp or
Wists at http://wists.com/
Keep up to date
with software downloads and updates at http://www.download.com/
See if people
are adding any interesting photographs to Flickr groups:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/librariesandlibrarians/
Keep
current with searches from Live.com at http://www.live.com/
Create Google searches
that you can turn into RSS feeds with Feedmysearch at
http://feedmysearch.com/
All of this is done using utilities often known as:
For anyone that reads a half dozen or more pages that have RSS feeds, an aggregator is a necessity. RSS aggregators are set up to periodically check for new items in the feeds you are subscibed to, commonly once every hour. In other words, the news comes to you, rather than you having to go to the news. This saves a tremendous amount of time. Or conversely, you can read many more feeds in the same ammount of time. Many people read several hundred feeds. That just wouldnt be feasible without an RSS aggregator. Additionally, you avoid all the non-new information on a web page, including the ads, menus, etc.
Bloglines at http://www.bloglines.com Bloglines is a
web based service that is fast, efficient and effective. My personal
favourite.
Google RSS Reader at http://www.google.com/reader/view/
AmphetaDesk
at http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/
is software that you download onto your own machine.
NewsIsFree at
http://www.newsisfree.com/ allows you
to set up an aggregator for keeping up to date with current news
NewsMonster
at http://www.newsmonster.org/ is
software you can download that runs in your browser.
Syndirella at
http://yole.ru/projects/syndirella/
is also a software download.
Wildgrape NewsDesk at
http://www.wildgrape.net/ is yet
another software download
PubSub at http://www.pubsub.com/ is an excellent
resource for finding new information for you.
The package we will use for this is Bloglines at http://www.bloglines.com. Please see the second handout for screenshots. If for some reason you are unable to use Bloglines, I would suggest exploring Google RSS Reader instead.
The following are some examples of how libraries are using RSS to
promote their own activities. This is a step beyond where we're going today,
but it illustrates what can easily be done with RSS feeds.
Events offered by
Hennepin County Library at http://www.hclib.org/pub/events/.
Choose your library and program-type (or run a search) and a personalized feed
will be displayed along with the information.
Reference queries from KLS
Reference Blog at http://blog.case.edu/orgs/ksl/reference/
and they also have an RSS feed for new services at
http://blog.case.edu/orgs/ksl/services/.
RIT
Library Feeds at http://wally.rit.edu/feeds/ for their
new book acquisitions, including one for 14 day books, which is an interesting
use of catalog data.
University of Oklahoma at
http://libraries.ou.edu/rss/ has
feeds for new announcements and resources. Not only do they have a new
databases feed, but their new book feeds (broken down by subject
classification) is searchable.
CILIP at
http://www.cilip.org.uk/AboutRSS/
also has RSS for news.
US Government feeds at
http://www.firstgov.gov/Topics/Reference_Shelf/Libraries/RSS_Library.shtml
Use
of weblogs in educational environments at
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/best_practices
Sandaig
Otters Primary School http://www.sandaigprimary.co.uk/PIVOT/index.php
Hope
CE School weblog http://hopeblog.ethink.org.uk/
Yahoo! provides content for a variety of services in RSS format at
http://developer.yahoo.net/rss/
IceRocket
has an RSS builder and it provides a simple interface that lets you add topics,
links and content, and then publish the RSS (v2.0) feed to your web server with
one click! http://rss.icerocket.com/
Google alert
generates RSS feeds for Google http://www.googlealert.com/
My Live
at http://my.live.com/ looks like a standard
MSN search until you click on the "show" link over on the left. The show link
expands an interface to read RSS feeds. The feeds are divided up over several
tabs, including business, entertainment, news (hey, Yahoo News is at the top),
and health.You can add your own feeds as well, either importing an OPML file,
or adding feeds individually. Your information is saved via cookie or you can
get a specialized URL which will work from any computer and contain your saved
configuration.
MSN Search weblog at
http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/default.aspx
Google
weblog at http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
Yahoo!
Weblog at http://ysearchblog.com/
Ask
weblog at http://blog.ask.com/
Live Search from Microsoft: Run your search at
http://www.live.com and then append
&format=rss to the URL and that'll give you a feed.
Feedmysearch at
http://feedmysearch.com/ allows you to
turn a Google search into an RSS search. Nothing new in that of course, since
you can do that at Google anyway, but this makes things a little bit easier and
gives you a lot of different ways in which you can save your search - to
Pageflakes, Bloglines and so on.
Delicious RSS feeds information at
http://delicious.com/help/rss
Google
Searchs - Start at Google News http://news.google.com/ and run a search.
Click on the RSS link on the left bottom of the menu and subscribe.
A start page is a utility that you can use to create a page (indeed several interlinked pages) that contains a variety of modules, such as links to preferred resources, RSS feeds, a notepad, to-do list and so on. Since the page resides on the internet it's exactly the same wherever you are, which is useful for continuity. Examples of these are: Pageflakes at http://www.pageflakes.com, Netvibes at http://www.netvibes.com, iGoogle at http://www.google.com/ig. There are dozens of these utilities and a more complete list is at http://www.philb.com/iwantto/startpages.htm
Syndic8 at http://www.syndic8.com/
is very comprehensive and provides data in a variety of different ways,
including categories
Blawg search at http://www.blawg.com/ covers legal
weblogs
Technorati at
http://www.technorati.com/help/using-technorati.html
is another of the major search engines, highly regarded.
Intelliseek's
BlogPulse at http://www.blogpulse.com/
is a search tool, but also keeps you up to date with various
trends.
Blogdigger at http://www.blogdigger.com/index.html
provides access to weblogs
RDF Ticker at
http://www.anse.de/rdfticker/findchannels.php
assists in finding weblogs in subject areas that are of interest
Globe of
Blogs at http://www.globeofblogs.com/ lists and
indexes 23,000+ blogs.
Library weblogs at
http://www.libdex.com/weblogs.html
covers exactly what you'd expect
Blogarama at
http://www.blogarama.com/ has a good
collection of weblogs, arranged by category
Blog Search Engine at
http://www.blogsearchengine.com/
does what you'd expect, really!
MindBranch at
http://www.mindbranch.com/catalog/rssfeeds.jsp
has feeds for market research
Daily Rotation at
http://www.dailyrotation.com/ is an
excellent way of keeping up to date with information.
Searching the blogsphere at
http://www.alpern.org/weblog/php/blogsearch/writeup.html.
This tool allows you to put your own feeds onto a weblog page.
2RSS at
http://www.2rss.com/ is a complete
solution.
Feedroll at http://www.feedroll.com/rssviewer/
is a service to provide feeds to a webpage
Active Web Reader at
http://www.deskshare.com/awrc.aspx
allows you to distribute an RSS reader yourself, complete with your own
feed
Firefox at http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
is an excellent tool for getting the most out of RSS feeds.
Nextaris at
http://www.nextaris.com/ is another
resource to share webpages and information.
Yahoo! My web at
myweb2.search.yahoo.com/ is a new
venture from Yahoo! Details on the advantages of it at
http://myweb.search.yahoo.com/myresults/benefits
More
interesting things that you can do with RSS is on my website at
http://www.philb.com/iwantto/rss.htm
The following resources are not part of this course, and will not be covered. However, they are closely associated with weblogs and RSS feeds and you may find it interesting to take a look at them if you have a few minutes to spare. It is not essential reading however.
A wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. A good example of the software is TWiki at http://www.twiki.org/, with another example being the WordPress version at http://wiki.wordpress.org/. The Wikipedia is a good example of how these things work, and you can find it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and a collection of public wikis is located at http://www.worldwidewiki.net/wiki/SwitchWiki. A good introduction to how to create and use a wiki is at http://distance.uaf.edu/dls/resources/present/cc-aug-04/wiki/index.cfm. Essential characteristics of a wiki are that:
Some examples of how a wiki could be used internally by an organisation are:
If you are interested in starting your own wiki there are some good
instructions and advice at
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wiki_Science:How_to_start_a_Wiki
Mediawiki
at http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/
is a software package you can download to create your own.
Increasingly these days simply storing pages in a list of favourites or
bookmarks is of limited value. There are a lot of other resources that allow
you to catalogue and file data on external servers and allow access to them by
others. A good example of this type of site is FURL at
http://www.furl.net. Details on using FURL
will be given during the day, but a useful page on adding a FURL icon to your
toolbar is at http://www.furl.net/buttonHelp.jsp
There's
a nice article about some of the things you can do with FURL at
http://blog.contentious.com/archives/2004/06/22/10-cool-things-to-do-with-furl
My
FURL collection is at http://www.furl.net/members/Philb
There are other resources that you can use, such as Del.icio.us at
http://del.icio.us/
SPURL at
http://www.spurl.net/ which is very similar
to FURL, but also has access to a useful search engine
Surfsave is a
commercial product at http://www.surfsaver.com/
Connotea is a
similar service, designed for scientists at http://www.connotea.org/. There is more on
Connotea at
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2005/05/16/connotea-academic-bookmarks/
My
Bookmarks at http://www.mybookmarks.com/ also allows
you to store bookmarks and Backflip at
http://www.backflip.com/login.ihtml
allows you to store and share bookmarks.
Another good listing of bookmarking
services is at http://www.emailaddresses.com/email_bookmarks.htm
Net
Snippets at http://www.netsnippets.com/basic/index.htm
is a free tool (there are commercial versions available) that you can download
and use to save and share webpages that you find.
There are various image saving resources as well - probably the best known is Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/, and a UK resource that works in a similar way is at Fotopic at http://my.fotopic.net/. You can see my (small and boring) collection of photographs at http://philbradley.fotopic.net/
There are a number of search engines that allow you to share search results, one way or another. Eurekster at http://www.eurekster.com/ allows for group work. (More details on it can be found at http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3301481). Google now has a service where you can log in and save your searches; if a number of people used the same login it may allow joint usage, though I've not tried this myself.
News Aggregators at
http://zillman.blogspot.com/News%20Aggregators%20on%20the%20Internet.pdf
is a short .pdf that provides a lot of useful background
Using blogs and
wikis in a company environment
http://www.gilbane.com/gilbane_report.pl/104/Blogs__Wikis_Technologies_for_Enterprise_Applications.html
Nice
introductory article on RSS from a Washington Post journalist
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051100481.html
Staying
ahead of your patrons with weblogs and RSS at
http://www.stevenmcohen.info/yale02152005/
written as a weblog.
RSS - cool tool for marketing at
http://www.pandia.com/sw-2005/17-rss.html
RSS
for non-tecchie librarians at
http://www.llrx.com/features/rssforlibrarians.htm
All
about RSS from http://www.faganfinder.com/search/rss.shtml