Oh So Simple

This week's blog covers RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. An RSS feed allows for you to subscribe to a web site and get information and updates delivered to you. This allows you to scan the information more easily by just giving you brief summaries, so you don't have to go through so much information to find what it is you were looking for or are interested in.


A lot of sites use RSS feeds, and not just official sites, like ones for the government or the local newspaper. Many fan sites also use them, such as FanFiction. Net, allowing you to subscribe to a feed of your favourite fandoms. In order to read the feeds, you need an aggregator. Some web browsers allow you to read the feeds online. You can also purchase software that might give you more options than just a browser.


Before this blog, I had never used RSS feeds before, and wasn't really sure what they were for. Now that I have a better understanding of them, I think that they can be extremely useful tools. The feeds that I am following (found to the right -->) are all from the Library of Congress, and follow not just the general news from the institution, but more specific feeds. Such as the one for Collections Preservation, or Library of Congress: Web Archiving. I think this shows just how useful an RSS feed can be for a library.


The general news gives you an idea of what's happening at the library in general, such as events, closures, etc., and can target a very wide audience. Whereas a more specific feed might target a smaller,more select audience. In this age of information and "web surfing" however, a person might easily be looking for just general news, and notice a different, interesting looking feed. They subscribe to and find out that, hey, there's some really cool stuff out there. So then they go back and look for more feeds, until it snowballs into following multiple feeds and maybe getting their friends. family and coworkers to follow some of them as well.


It's like subscribing to three different newspapers, but only getting the comics and sports sections from each one. People don't want to waste their time sifting through information they aren't interested in, and an RSS feed allows them faster access to more relevant data. Which is really helpful for a library, a place where people come looking for information and expect to have it at their fingertips.


I'm looking forward to going out on a search for more feeds to follow.