Thing 9: Finding RSS Feeds

Now that you have a newsreader (your Bloglines or Google Reader account) and practiced the mechanics of adding feeds, let's spend a little time finding them by way of their subject content. This can be particularly useful if you are researching a specific topic and would like to see what other professionals are sharing or to keep track of any new articles that have been written.

There are several ways you can locate newsfeeds:

• When visiting your favorite websites it will indicate the ability to subscribe to its RSS feed by displaying either the icon show on the page of Thing 8 (which is now the international standarized RSS icon), or one of these to the right.

• Look familiar? All of these icons represent a different aggregator or feedreader that a person might use.

• When you click on the RSS icon it sometimes opens up a new screen that displays a bunch of computer HTML coding...don't panic...all you need to do is copy the URL of that page and paste it into the subscribe field in your reader.

• Other Search tools that can help you find feeds:
  
  • Use Bloglines Search Tool: it allows you to search by subject for news feeds, blog posts, citations and other websites. Use the Search for Feeds option to locate RSS feeds that might interest you.
    
  
  
  • Syndic8.com - Syndic8 is an open directory of RSS feeds that contains thousands that users have submitted.
  
  
  • Google Blog Search This one is limited to blogs and is a great tool for discovering those by people or organizations sharing information about a subject, such as a field of study or profession, that could be related to your own.
  
  
  • Technorati - Technorati is one of the more popular blog finding tool. Since RSS feeds are inherent to all blogging software (like Blogger), Technorati Blog Search can help you find RSS feeds for topic specific blogs you may be of interest. We will be working more in-depth with Technorati in Unit 14, but you don't have to wait until then to fiddle around with it. (Check out this Technocrati Tutorial on finding and adding your blog

• If you want to keep up with Academic related blogs, here are a couple of sources to get you started:

• Examples of Good Postgraduate and Academic Blogging

• The Academic Blog Portal (This one was created using wiki software, which we will look at during Week 5)
  

Discovery Activity:


1. Explore some of the search tools noted above that can help you locate additional newsfeeds by subject.

2. Add some feeds to your Bloglines or Google Reader account that relate to your particular specialty or about academia in general.

3. Create a blog post about your experience, and include the link to at least one blog or website that you would like to share.

Post Ideas: Which method of finding feeds was easiest - going to your favorite sites or searching for them? Which search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing? How can you see RSS feeds being used at Marymount? What kind of information would library patrons be interested in getting via RSS, if it were available?


FYI...You can also subscribe to feeds of your article searches or new issues of journals through the library's electronic databases Ebsco and Proquest. This is an excellent way for keeping up on any new information that is published on a particular topic of interest. Ask one of our librarians to give you a demonstration.