RSS & Alerts

The Powerpoint from this session is available at https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/ewlarson/web/lili/RSS/RSS_alerts.ppt

Ben Conklin and Eric Larson from UW-Madison's Wendt Library explained about why and how to set up an alert or RSS feed.

Setting up an alert triggers email updates to be mailed to a specific email account.

Setting up an RSS feed usually routes the feeds to a feed reader or aggregator (such as Bloglines).

Either type of feed allows you to keep up to date on topics you identify and helps you filter out just the information you need.

Both presenters have moved from keeping their information locally to "on the web". When hosted "on the web", the information is available anywhere you can access the web and space considerations are different.

It sounds like RSS setups are in the development phase, with enhancements and new programs sprouting up. Blogger and Feed2JS are both popular. RSS feeds into the Refworks citation program from PubMed are great. Some other databases need some code inserted to work well with Refworks. WordPress allows plug-ins for more "structured blogging", an even more focused approach.