Presented at Centre for Education Technology (CET) Workshop at the University of Cape Town in March 2011

1. NEWSFEEDS AND MORE …. A mini-workshop presented by Ingrid Thomson, UCT Libraries

2. IS THIS WHAT YOU FEEL LIKE? / http://blog.vecci.org.au/2010/10/20/surviving-the-information-deluge

3. / 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’

4. 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

5. 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 …

6. WHAT IS RSS? Technical or Geeky explanation XML-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>

7. 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 .

8. 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.

9. Have you ever seen icons like these? middlesexjobsearch.wikispaces.com

10. 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/.

11. FORMAT OF A FEED Link to story Title Brief descriptive content Updated feeds

12. OPTIONS FOR WEB-BASED READERS: BLOGLINES

13. OPTIONS FOR WEB-BASED READERS: GOOGLE Login Google Reader

14. 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).

15. ADDING FEEDS

16. BROWSERS Google Chrome Internet Explorer Firefox

17. GOOGLE CHROME Need to add a special Google Chrome Extension

18. GOOGLE CHROME Feed

19. INTERNET EXPLORER Will add to your IE Browse FEED

20. FIREFOX Feed Choose your reader

21. DIRECTORY OF FEEDS

22. SEARCH ENGINES RSS feed for alerting to new updated information

23. NEWS HEADLINES RSS Feed for Health Stories on IOL

24. HOW DO I ADD FEEDS? Choose your reader

25. Table of Contents Use 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

26. ACADEMIC JOURNALS Select Informaworld

27. ACADEMIC JOURNALS RSS feed

28. ACADEMIC JOURNALS To have the alerts come via Google Reader

29. ACADEMIC JOURNALS Feed is added automatically because I am signed in.

30. ACADEMIC JOURNALS

31. 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

32. LIBRARY DATABASES RSS Feed

33. LIBRARY DATABASES Keyword search Use this to grab the RSS feed Indicates RSS feed

34. LIBRARY DATABASES Click here to create an alert

35. LIBRARY DATABASES Copy and paste this feed url into your reader to subscribe to the feed.

36. LIBRARY DATABASES Click on Add a subscription and put the feed in and click on ADD

37. LIBRARY DATABASES Feed is added.

38. WEBSITES/BLOGS AND OTHER SCHOLARLY RESOURCES RSS feed

39. 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

40. NO RSS FEED ON THE SITE?

41. STILL HOOKED ON EMAIL?

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

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