RSS XML Sources
Gathering content
Find content that you are interested in from your favorite websites, blogs or wikis. See if they have a feed (RSS/XML button on the page). In some cases such as Google News you can make your own RSS feeds from search results. Sirsi Single Search through EPS Rooms allows this as well!
I will choose one from each of the various types:
- Website
- Blog
- Wiki
- Google News (dynamic)
Website
Go to a website you might like to monitor and see if they have an RSS/XML feed available. In this example we will go to alia.org.au and find a feed. usually look for an orange button on the page. Right click on the button/link and "Copy Shortcut".
Blog
Go to a blog you might like to monitor. Nearly all blogs have a feed so you can monitor any new postings. In this example we will go to yarraplentylibrary.blogspot.com. The feed for a blog will nearly always be accessible from the home page of the blog. Placing this address into a RSS reader will pick up the feed. Also on the front page there may also be a button that can automatically place the feed into your reader without you having to do anything else. We want to collect the feed, so again right clicking on "Copy Shortcut" will capture this.
Wiki
Go to a page on a wiki that you are interested in. In this example we want to follow what is happening with Unconferences and want to know when a page on Wikipedia gets edited and updated or if people are talking/discussing content on the page. Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconference and select the "history" tab up the top. Now on the left hand column index there is a link for RSS. Right click and "Copy Shortcut" again to catpure this link.
Google News
Let's say we want to monitor news stories on a current debate such as Nuclear Power and Australian politics. Go to Google News and pick the "Advanced search". Place the word "Parliament" and "Nuclear Power" as search terms. Narrow your search to Location = Australia and limit the date to the last month. Sort the results in date order. Run the search and on the left hand side menu will be a linkfor RSS. Again right click on this link and "Copy Shortcut".
I have copied the link to here. Clicking on this will automatically query the Google News database and return a feed of up-to-date news on this topic every time its clicked.
Each of these at the moment is a seperate feed. Now that we have a few feeds to work with we can combine these together to create new feeds (create a mashup) and from there publish these into other applications, websites or our OPAC.