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Information on RSS, SLIS Blogs & Podcasts

RSS Explained

What does the orange radio signal icon mean?

The simplest analogy for understanding RSS is that it lets you subscribe to an Internet source of information like you subscribe to a newspaper or magazine.

When the latest issue of a magazine is published, you could go to a local store to buy it, or you could save time and money by having it delivered in the mail.

RSS is akin to subscribing to the magazine rather than going to the store. You no longer have to visit a site every day to get all the latest content.

Perhaps you regularly visit Dr. Linda Main's SLIS 21 blog, and don't want to miss a posting?

Blog posts come at irregular intervals: some days there are more than one, other days there are none. Rather than check every day, RSS does it for you.

RSS will tell you when you have new content from:

Blogs
Podcasts
News Feeds

Which RSS for You

Subscribing depends on software, and your preferences:

Does the feed go to your email inbox, or will it be a favorite in your browser?
Browser: Firefox (recommended for security conscious web surfers) or IE7, or Safari for Mac users.

Tutorials: How to Get RSS

The links listed below give step by step instructions for subscribing to an RSS feed with various applications:

SJSU SLIS Blogs

At the bottom of every SJSU SLIS web page you will find a link to Blogs maintained by Dr. Ken Haycock and Dr. Linda Main. Dr. Haycock's blog is for faculty and staff only, while Dr. Main's SLIS21 blog is for all School of Library and Information Science faculty, students, alumni, and staff. For important announcements, subscribe to:

Dr. Main's SLIS21 blog.

SJSU SLIS Podcasts

The SJSU SLIS Colloquia Series Presentations are now available through either the Colloquia RSS Feed, or the SLIS Colloquia iTunes Portal. The iTunes Portal link requires that you have iTunes installed on your computer. Most podcasts are available in both audio and video versions.

See the iTunes tutorial for help in subscribing to Colloquia podcasts using iTunes.

See the Subscription tutorials for help subscribing to Colloquia podcasts using RSS.

Get Important General SLIS News Info Via RSS

Consider subscribing to the SLIS News feed, which is a limited selection of email sent to the SLISadmin list. The SLIS News feed has the textual content of general interest messages sent to SLISadmin. As a student, you must register for the SLISadmin electronic list to get everything, but you may want to also subscribe to the limited RSS feed below.

SLIS News Feed

Links to More Information

Wikipedia entry with XML examples.
GEEKZONE tutorial specifically for IE7 users.
Live Bookmarks instructions for Firefox from Mozilla.

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