RSS in action

In an effort to “deliver the library to its users”, an RSS can be offered for library patrons to subscribe to for Course Reserves or New Books on Display in the library.

In the Aleph Discovery tool Primo, RSS feeds are available for search results.  The library using the discovery tool can assign a special code for various course reserve materials such that a simple search in Primo will retrieve all reserve materials under a particular course. Library patrons can either subscribe to the RSS on the page displaying the search results or add the results page to “My Folder” after they have signed in so that they can keep a copy of the course reserve items. The course reserve list will be updated automatically if the professor adds or remove items from it. For example in Charles Sturt University Library, the course reserve list for the INF506 can be retrieved at

http://primo.unilinc.edu.au/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&frbg=&scp.scps=scope%3A%28DTL_CSU_UNLOCKED%29%2Cscope%3A%28CSU%29%2Cscope%3A%28CSU_SFX%29%2Cprimo_central_multiple_fe&tab=default_tab&dstmp=1391409962610&vl%2896177725UI0%29=any&srt=rank&ct=search&mode=Basic&dum=true&indx=1&vl%281UIStartWith0%29=contains&vl%28freeText0%29=inf506&vid=CSU&fn=search

Likewise, for updates of the weekly “New Books Display” in our library, the China Graduate School of Theology, all new books on display would be assigned a special code so that when library users click on the link, they can view the current list of new books and subscribe to the RSS for future lists at

http://primoapac02.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=1&tab=einunion&dstmp=1391417398713&vl(freeText0)=GADP&fn=search&vid=CGST&mode=Basic&fromLogin=true

Moreover, to supply a current awareness service on publishers' new titles for the professors and lecturers who could recommend materials for library acquisitions, the librarian can aggregate the RSS links of the new releases from various major publishers on particular subjects on a webpage in the institution intranet so that faculties can subscribe to the ones relevant to them and be updated of new materials for published. Further customization can be achieved, for instance, by using KickRSS (Bradley, 2007, p.40) or an XML- and RSS-based gAjax RSS Feeds Displayer which permits the display of combined results from multiple RSS feeds with the choice of sorting by date, title, or a description label assigned to each feed item, together with a set of scripts from Dynamic Drive. The resulting webpage may look like this one which collects and displays news from three different news sources. (Boudreaux, 2012)

Reference

Boudreaux, R. (2012, September 11). Aggregate multiple RSS feeds with customized display features. Web Designer. Retrieved from http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/web-designer/aggregate-multiple-rss-feeds-with-customized-display-features/#

Bradley, P. (2007). How to use Web 2.0 in your library. London : Facet.