In Practice

By Meredith Farkas
American Libraries Columnist

Distance learning librarian, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont
librarysuccess@gmail.com

May 2008

Syndicate to Communicate

Exert greater control of your web presence with RSS

Libraries are constantly changing—with new collections, technologies, services, and events. Consequently, a library’s website must be frequently updated to reflect these changes. Some libraries have no access to the server that hosts their website. Making a simple change involves working with people outside the library, and keeping the library’s web presence up-to-date may not be a priority.

Libraries in this situation often have websites that are rarely updated and don’t reflect their vibrant atmosphere. Fortunately, with RSS libraries can take control of their web presence without needing access to their server.

Really Simple Syndication

RSS is a format for syndicating content on the Web. Much like the syndication of a newspaper column, there is a central place where an RSS feed is generated, but the content can appear in many different places. People can subscribe to an RSS feed and receive the content through an aggregator, a personalized home page, e-mail, text messaging, and more.

There are many types of content that come with RSS feeds. These include news sites, blogs, social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, the tables of contents of many journals, and Flickr. RSS feeds can be found in some library catalogs and databases where you can search for a term and subscribe to the results. Based on XML, feeds can even be created from scratch.

RSS can also be displayed on a web page, where the content will dynamically update as soon as the RSS feed itself is refreshed. This means that libraries can pull timely RSS content onto their website without needing regular access to the server.

There are a number of applications that make it easy to display RSS content on a web page, including Feed2JS (feed2js.org) and Feed Digest (feeddigest.com). With these tools, users enter the URL of the RSS feed and a few parameters, such as how much content they want displayed. The application will provide a piece of JavaScript that needs to be pasted onto the web page where the content should appear. Pasting that JavaScript is the only action that is required of the individuals controlling the web server. From then on, the page will update whenever the RSS feed does.

Taking the reins

Many libraries use a blog that’s separate from their website to share library news, since blogs are easy to update directly from the Web. Using a tool that displays RSS feeds online would let the library display its blog content directly on the library site. That way, users don’t have to go elsewhere to find out what’s new at the library, and libraries can use the blog as an easy content publishing system. Library content could also be displayed in web spaces such as courseware and social networking software.

The Homer Township (Ill.) Public Library has pulled the headlines from its various blogs onto the front page of homerlibrary.org. Instead of people having to visit each individual blog, they can view them all in one place. If visitors are interested in reading the entire post, they can click on the headline and be taken straight to the full entry.

In a similar vein, libraries can pull content from outside sources onto their sites. This is particularly useful on subject pages, where you can pull in relevant journal tables of contents, news items, bookmarked resources, and more. It’s a great way to provide a current awareness service in a specific subject area.

RSS not only gives us more control over our web presence, but allows users to subscribe to our content and receive it however they choose, working the feed into their own routine. The flexibility of RSS makes it a key technology in any
librarian’s arsenal.

Latest Library Links

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Latia Ward writes: “One way to keep current with what students think of the library and its services is through Student Library Advisory Committee meetings. These meetings are a way to gather feedback and reinforce the library as a welcoming place. How do librarians create a welcoming environment within Student Library Advisory Committee meetings? Librarians create a welcoming environment through community, purpose, and dedicated space.” Also see part 1 of this blog post.

RIPS Law Librarian Blog, Nov. 13, Dec. 5
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Eleanor Hecks writes: “Few things are as frustrating to a user as when a site won’t respond. Unfortunately, it’s also an all-too-common scenario. Graceful degradation is a design approach that ensures the basics of a website will still function even if specific individual parts of it stop working. The approach removes single points of failure: just because one thing stops working doesn’t mean the system as a whole fails. A site following this principle fails in pieces instead of all at once, so the most important features remain available when some components encounter an error.”

Smashing Magazine, Dec. 6
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Camruinn Morgan-Rumsey and Lexi Lepof write: “On December 3, Knox County (Tenn.) schools received a list from the district of books to be removed from school libraries under Tennessee’s Age-Appropriate Materials Act. Knox County’s board of education voted in July, passing a policy to remove ‘explicit’ books from everyday student access in response to the new law. Some of the books on the list of nearly 50 titles might surprise parents. Among those to be removed are Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.”

WVLT-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.), Dec. 4
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Joe Foley writes: “Copyright rules vary from country to country and have changed over time. In the US, works created between 1929 and 1963 that gave notice and renewed copyright have 95 years from their first publication date. That means that on January 1, 2025, a host of works from 1929 will enter the public domain. This means that copyright will expire on Buck Rogers, Captain Easy, Horace Horsecollar, Tintin, Hal Foster’s first Tarzan comic strips and, yes, Popeye.” Other notable works entering public domain in the United States include the Marx Brothers’ first film, The Cocoanuts, contralto Marian Anderson’s first record, and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms.

Creative Bloq, Dec. 7; Everybody’s Libraries, Dec. 3, Dec. 7; Public Domain Review, Dec. 10
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Brittany Adams writes: “The digital landscape of libraries is expanding rapidly, with an increasing shift towards electronic resources and online services. As members of the library community, we’re witnessing a transformative era where physical collections are complemented—and sometimes replaced—by digital ones. This transition offers new opportunities for enhancing accessibility and engagement, but it also presents challenges, especially for young patrons and their families. It is essential to equip children and their caregivers with the tools and knowledge they need to navigate this evolving space confidently.”

ALSC Blog, Dec. 9
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Karen O’Grady writes: “I am the embedded librarian for the Hahn School of Nursing at the University of San Diego. I am surrounded by nursing faculty, staff, and students rather than by librarians. This has proven to be an incredible gamechanger for the way I see things. Every student in my school knows me by name. I am often stopped in the hallway to answer questions. Every correct answer I give increases my authority and builds trust. Through these casual mini-lessons, this foreign animal called ‘librarian’ slowly becomes an approachable, knowledgeable person.”

College & Research Libraries News, Dec.
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ALA has selected 46 participants for its 2025 class of Emerging Leaders (EL). The EL program allows library staff and information workers to participate in project planning work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity early in their careers. The group will take part in a day-long session during the 2025 LibLearnX conference in Phoenix this January and work for six months, culminating in a poster session at ALA’s 2025 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Philadelphia in June, where they will highlight results of their project planning work.

ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment, Dec. 4

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