Tuesday, March 13, 2007

RSS for the rest of USS....???

Regarding the use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS), I'm not sure how much a general population of library patrons would get out of it. For me, RSS feeds provide a great source of up-to-date news at one easy spot rather than visiting multiple sights to find information. Maybe other tech-savvy individuals enjoy using an RSS reader to get access to all their news and friends' updates on blogs but many of the patrons I see daily seem a lot more interested in checking their email.

One way in which RSS would be helpful (and I believe other KCLS Learning 2.0 participants have mentioned this) is as an update for library events or better yet, topic-specific events within library systems. For instance, an individual might have an RSS feed for all the new author events in the Bellevue area on his/her reader. A way in which employees might find RSS updates useful is to subscribe to feeds regarding weather emergencies or other emergency closings, special events or even substitute openings at various branches. I see this as a way to avoid mass emails that often go to people who have no interest in the subject matter of the email.

Overall, RSS seems to overlap on a number of other web uses. In fact, it overlaps so much that I'm not sure that I find it all that useful at all. Grim ending but true for me.

1 comment:

KCLS Learning 2.0 said...

You can expect to see a wider implementation of RSS on our new website. It is looking like it'll be live in June...