Notes and links from the Blog/RSS workshop

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[edit] Blog/RSS Workshop Notes

[edit] Some quick definitions

A blog is just a website built around a front page which lists the most recent self-contained posts on it. As posts get older, they "fall off the bottom" and end up in the archives for that blog.

A comment is a response to your post written by a reader; it's a part of your blog.

A trackback or pingback is a way of letting another person's blog know that you're talking about a post on it. Your software calls their software, and your post ends up looking much like a comment. The advantage is that your own writing stays localized to your own blog.

An RSS feed or ATOM feed is just a file that's designed to mimic the basic structure of a blog (date-ordered posts) in a machine-readable format.

While blogs are a common source of RSS feeds, people also generate feeds for anything where you want to be notified when there's new information in a series. The most obvious of these are news feeds' (like those available from the New York Times) and recurring searches such as are generated by PubMed or our own New Books list.

We say you subscribe to an RSS feed when you give your feed reader (also called a feed aggregator) the URL of the RSS file for a particular blog, recurring search, news feed, etc. The feed reader (like Google Reader and Bloglines on the web) keeps track of what you've read and what you haven't the same way your email programs lets you know when there's new email by downloading each feed you've subscribed to and checking to see if it's changed every hour or so.

[edit] Using mBlog

  1. Get to mBlog at http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/; log in using your Cosign name/password.
  2. To configure a blog as we did in the class, from the Main Menu (link at the top of each page in the administrative interface):
    1. Click on Configuration next to the blog you want to configure
    2. Click on Preferences in the upper-right corner of the next page
    3. Adjust your settings to match this sample mBlog configuration page
  3. You probably don't want to bother with the extended entry when posting on mBlog.
  4. If you're writing a post in response to something on another blog, look for that post's "trackback URL" or "pingback URL" and include it in the appropriate box ("URLs to ping", at the very bottom-right of the editing screen) when posting

[edit] General information about blogs and blogging software

If you don't want to use mBlog (because you want to have authors outside of the university, for example) you might want to consider a free system. The best known are Wordpress and Blogger (now owned by Google).

Many bloggers maintain a blogroll, a list of blogs they read, somewhere on their front page. Once you find a blog that's relevant to you, check for a blogroll for more ideas on blogs to read.

All the major blog software packages are a little different, but all produce some sort of RSS feed and archives.

[edit] Recognizing feeds

rss feed icon
This icon will sometimes appear on a page indicating that you can get to the feed by clicking on it, but more often you'll see it in the URL bar at the top of the browser. This indicates that there's an RSS feed "embedded" in the metadata of the page, and your feed reader should be able to find it automatically if you just subscribe to the page you're looking at (e.g., the front page of the blog). This makes it easier for you -- you don't have to track down the actual feed URL.

This is the accepted standard, but that doesn't mean you won't still see other icons and text.

Some other icons you're likely to see: rss xml


People also use words to indicate feed links: "Feed," "RSS," "Syndicate," "Subscibe to," etc.

[edit] How to locate good RSS Feeds

RSS Feeds for Blogs can be found by using a blog search engine such as Google Blog Search or Technorati. Once you've found an initial blog, see where it links to find similar subjects and authors. You can usually just subscribe to the URL of the blog's front page and your feed reader will find the relevent RSS feed.

The "Browse" link on Google Reader brings you to a page where you can try to find blogs by topic or keyword (hint: search on journal).

Recurring searches as RSS feeds are available from lots of vendors these days -- look for any of the icons above, or the words "RSS" or "Syndicate." Don't be afraid to search their help for the term "RSS."

[edit] What databases allow you to save searches as RSS feeds?

The University of Wisconsin/Madison Libraries has a nice list.

[edit] How about journal Tables of Contents????

Watch this space for an announcement soon

[edit] A very short list of some library-related blogs

  • ACRLog
  • Consensus at Lawyerpoint
  • Copyfight
  • Curt's Comments
  • Lessig Blog
  • scott.elitists.net
  • Dilbert
  • Get Fuzzy
  • A Wandering Eyre
  • ALA Techsource Blog
  • C&I Updates
  • Catalogablog
  • chris blogs
  • Confessions of a Mad Librarian
  • Creating Passionate Users
  • dave's blog
  • Dilettante's Ball
  • eclectic librarian
  • Free Range Librarian
  • Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services
  • Information Wants To Be Free
  • j's scratchpad
  • L-Space: a librarian's blog
  • librarian.net
  • LibrarianInBlack
  • Library Stuff
  • Library Web Chic
  • LibraryCog
  • Lipstick Librarian!
  • LISNews.com
  • lis�dom
  • LITA Blog
  • Lorcan Dempsey's weblog
  • MaisonBisson.com
  • One Big Library
  • Open Stacks
  • oss4lib
  • panlibus
  • Pattern Recognition
  • Qu�dam cuiusdam
  • RSS4Lib
  • TechEssence.Info blogs
  • The Shifted Librarian
  • Usability in the Library's starred items
  • Walt at Random
  • Wanderings of a Student Librarian
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