OPAC EPS Rooms Integration
ATO News Room
The ATO News Room is a sub room of the main home page which aggregates various news content.
The EPS Rooms appliaction from SirsiDynix allows us to create a content module that can read an RSS feed and display this within the page. All we need to do in the back end content management is point to where the RSS feed resides. In this case we are pointing to the combined shared feeds from our Google Reader.
What if my OPAC can't render RSS feeds directly?
There are other ways to get the feeds onto your OPAC or any website you wish as long as you can access the HTML code for your site. When you click on the "Add a clip to your site" option you are presented with configuration information on how you want to display the results on your page. You can select colors, headings and other styles and then when you are happy with the format you just cut and paste the code and insert it where you would like on your own website.
The results looks like this.
Can I just rely on Google? How can I back it up?
A question that gets asked is "What about redundancy?"
There exists an XML format for exchanging feed descriptions for readers refered to as an OPML file (Outline Processor Markup Language). You can back up your Google one (export it) and import it into another online reader of you choice or even import it to a desktop application reader. It works similar to saving your favorites/bookmarks.