15 things you can do with RSS

Posted on May 11, 2005
Filed Under Cool tools, RSS Feeds |

Update: changing the link to Tim Yang’s wiki about “things you can do with RSS.” There’s now 39 things you can do with RSS, and I’ll bet that list continues to grow. Check it out!

Found this on Tim Yang’s Geek Blog: 15 things you can do with RSS (it was supposed to be 10, but I got carried away).

His list of 15 things includes some fun stuff like ebay notifications, weather reports, ego feeds, and software update notifications.

What’s missing in this list would be our library-specific stuff, like:

16. RSS feeds from the library catalog - searches to watch, favorite subject headings, favorite authors, new books, etc.

17. RSS feeds from library databases - searches to watch, etc.

18. That “what I have checked out” thing…

19. Library Calendar of Events feed

20. RSS feed of area happenings, coming from the library’s website

Can you think of other useful feeds?

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Comments

11 Responses to “15 things you can do with RSS”

  1. Robin Hastings on May 11th, 2005 3:59 pm

    We have started up an RSS feed that goes beyond the “announcements” sort of thing that shows up on most lists of things you can do with RSS. We’ve got a blog that is specifically focused on the our library building project. So far we’ve gotten a couple of comments from the public, but the whole reason the blog is there is to solicit public input on our project. We are hoping that this will be useful for us when we start hitting people up for money for the building!

  2. Tim Yang on May 11th, 2005 7:20 pm

    Thanks for the suggestions, Dave! If you have any feeds from any library catalog, could you let me know about it please. I’d really love to find something like that. In the meantime, please do check out http://evdb.com/. It is a free events calendar website that generates an RSS feed. Many people have been using it to make a calendar of events for their city, their church, their school and I expect their library too.

  3. Glenn Peterson on May 13th, 2005 12:47 pm

    Hi Dave -
    Timely post! We just added a customizable library events feed this week at http://www.hclib.org/pub/events/. You can subscribe to events at your local library, events by age group, events by type (book sales, storytime, multicultural) or any combination.

  4. Anonymous on May 14th, 2005 4:26 pm

    Glenn,
    Thanks for posting your comment. I am very interested in offering a similar service to our patrons. Could you write me and let me know what software is supporting this service? steven.butzel at nashua.lib.nh.us. Thanks!

  5. Rikhei on May 16th, 2005 11:55 am

    One thing I noticed was not on either list was the use of RSS to collect photographs; Flickr automatically sets up RSS feeds for individuals’ photos and groups’ photos.

    I’m not sure what usefulness this would have for libraries? - perhaps a feed of photos of building construction?

    I’ve noticed that Flickr has “memes” of a sort - such as the Librarians’ Desks photo pool, and the What’s in your bag? pool. Could this have further use in libraries? Maybe we could start a “What library books do you have checked out?” pool or the like.

  6. Brian Gray on May 17th, 2005 9:49 am

    Tim Yang asked about library catalog blog postings…The Kelvin Smith Library of Case Western Reserve University is using blogs and RSS feeds in several ways, including promoting new books by subject category.

  7. Fiona on June 29th, 2005 1:48 am

    - Receiving tables of contents from the latest scholarly journals

    - Receiving updates on saved database searches such as Google, PubMed (ie HubMed), Factiva, Proquest, etc and so on.

    At least, that’s what we want to add to our Library page …

  8. Tim Yang on July 31st, 2005 1:42 pm

    Hi Dave

    The link to the old post has been unfortunately erased. But people have been posting new entries in the wikified version at http://timyang.com/wiki/doku.php?id=lists:thingsyoucandowithrss.

  9. Andrea on May 17th, 2006 6:12 am

    Hi, Dave
    Thanks for spreading the word about RSS feeds in your workshops. I am a big fan of RSS feeds now. I hope our library soon has RSS feeds to the “New Items” subject guides.

    Andrea Allen

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