What does RSS mean?
Peggy Johnson, AUL of Access Services, is providing weekly "DId you know's" for Libraries staff about new technologies impacting libraries. Here is her latest snippet.
RSS is a format that supports delivering regularly updated Web content (e.g., news feeds, blogs, podcasts) as soon as it is available, without requiring the user to visit a Web site to look for new content. The initials "RSS" are variously used to refer to the following standards: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, and/or RDF Site Summary. To set up an RSS "feed," a user subscribes to a feed by using a "feed reader" and supplying links to the desired feed (e.g., news feed, blog, etc.). The feed reader then checks the selected feeds to see if new content is available since the last time it checked. If content is found, the feed reader retrieves it and presents it to the user. A list of feed readers is available at http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Internet/Clients/WWW/Feed_Readers/. Many sites have an orange RSS button, which will allow you to set up an RSS feed. See, for example, Lorcan Dempsey's weblog on libraries, services and networks at http://orweblog.oclc.org/; look in the bottom left corner.
For an introduction to an RSS feed, go to the Library of Congress site http://www.loc.gov/aba/. In the lower left corner, you will find an orange button labeled RSS. This will take you to: http://www.loc.gov/rss/. Here you will find various topics from which to select.
--Peggy Johnson, Associate University Librarian