RSS rationale - why get into RSS?

RSS rationale - why get into RSS? Anne Welsh Frank Norman

Anne Welsh

2005 was the key period for DrugScope as it was in September that I created DrugData Update, our blog, as a way of providing a feed for our members.

Based on experience, the 5 main reasons I would give you to feed-read are:

1. feed-reading = speedreading - I can skim-read 200 feeds in 15 minutes, saving relevant posts to be dealt with later
2. feeds, blogs, and Web 2.0 generally are pull-technology: you sign up for them and pull them to you when you want them (cf. e-newsletters and discussion lists that pop up throughout the day)
3. as well as coming when you want, feeds wait for you, sitting in your reader till you decide to access them.
4. you choose what to keep (cf. email, where you choose what to delete)
5. feeds for print journals include online before print

All these reasons to feed-read are reasons your users are likely to share, which is probably why so many people who start reading feeds end up creating them too!

My top five reasons to blog are listed here and, if you missed the workshop DrugScope ran on blogging and creating a newsfeed last year, you can see the slides in pdf here.

Frank Norman

1. A rush of enthusiasm after attending a course
2. The Library blog came from a desire to streamline communications from the Library to our users, amalgamating different things and allowing all team members to contribute
3. A political need

   Political need During a visit in late 2002 Ian Gibson MP said that NIMR scientists should ensure they are well-informed about politics of science.   This inspired me to search regularly for relevant news items relating to scence policy and soon I had a regular daily headline on our Intranet. This grew and grew and became still more relevant when NIMR's future came under scrutiny.

4. Efficiency gain

5. Efficiency gain I regularly found items on specialist topics and emailed these to individuals I knew woudl be interested. RSS provided a way to streamline the whole process, convert these specialist topics into feeds and share them more widely, also to share all the feeds with the research community outside NIMR.

   To cope with non-bibliographic news related to Influenza
6. Because we could - it's a widely adopted technology
7. To enhance NIMR Library's role and NIMR's reputation by producing relevant information services for the wider community

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