RSS & Alerts

Kudos to Ben Conklin and Eric Larson on their RSS & Alerts presentation. Ben (the self proclaimed "average librarian" in terms of technical skill) ably discussed the ways in which alerting services and RSS feeds can be used by students and faculty in any library. Most databases currently offer an e-mail alert system that is relatively easy to set up. Students and faculty can be notified on a weekly or monthly basis when new articles in their area of interest are published. Some databases (PubMed for one) have started providing RSS feeds that can run the same kinds of searches and can be captured in RSS feed readers.

Eric spent a lot of time discussing the "geekier" aspects of RSS and the many places you can find RSS feeds. He demonstrated Bloglines, one of many RSS feed aggregators, that can be used as a collection point for RSS feeds. Eric also spent some time discussing the ways that RSS can be incorporated into library sites with very cool results.