Brief Display

February 15, 2008

Frequently Asked Questions about RSS

What is an RSS reader?
An RSS reader (also called an aggregator) is a software application that allows you to read blogs and Web sites that publish RSS feeds. There are a number of RSS readers available freely on the Web, check this site for a comprehensive list. If you are looking for a free, Web-based reader that does not require a download, we recommend Google Reader and Bloglines.

What RSS feeds does the library offer?
You can subscribe to an RSS feed for your search results from the Library Catalogue (more details here). In addition, the Library News & Events blog publishes the following RSS feeds:

• All Library News: all posts published to the blog (includes everything below)
• Mills: Mills Library (Humanities & Social Sciences) news
• Innis: Innis Library (Business) news
• Thode: H.G. Thode Library of Science & Engineering news
• Health Sciences: Health Sciences Library news
• Alerts: interruptions in service (like an unexpected library closure or downtime of an e-Resource)
• Archives and Research Collections: Archives and Research Collections news
• e-Resources: pertaining to e-Resources (for example: announcements about new e-Resources)
• Events: upcoming events in the libraries
• Hot Docs!: government resources in the news
• Instruction: upcoming library instruction & orientation sessions
• Maps/Data/Gov Pubs: news and resources from Maps, Data, and Government Publications
• Mills Learning Commons News: news about the Mills Learning Commons
• New Books: new books in the libraries
• Research @ McMaster: new collections and services to support research at McMaster
• Trial e-Resources: e-Resources being evaluated for possible purchase
• Web Resources: free Web sites of interest to the academic community

How can I use the library's RSS feeds?
To subscribe to a feed from the Library News & Events Blog or the Catalogue, right-click on the button, select "Copy Shortcut" (or "Copy Link Location"), and paste the URL of the feed into your RSS reader.

How else can I use RSS?
There are a number of major organizations and publishers that offer RSS feeds that can be useful current awareness tools. Here are a select few:

• McMaster Daily News: feed for campus news & events
• Globe and Mail: a feed for each section of the newspaper
• New York Times: feeds for different content areas of the paper
• Nature Journals: provides table of contents feeds (with article abstracts) for all Nature journals.
• IngentaConnect: table of contents feeds for the latest issues of Ingenta journals
• BioMed Central: feeds for the latest articles published in BioMed Central journals.
• PubMed: feeds for PubMed searches.
• Oxford University Press Journals: OUP provides current issue feeds for all their journals.
• IEEE Computer Society: offers current issue feeds for all magazines and transactions.
• Government of Canada News: feeds by province/territory, audience, or department/agency.
• To locate more feeds, use an RSS search engine like Feedster, Yahoo! (select "RSS/XML" in "File Format"), or Bloglines.

How do I find out more about RSS?
Check out these resources:

• RSS in Plain English (video)
  
• 7 Things you Should Know About RSS, Educause Learning Initiative
• Hot! Fresh! Delivered to You! RSS Tutorial, Luke Rosenberger

Syndicating Our Headlines
The Library's RSS feeds are freely available for anyone who would like to display our headlines on their Web page. There are no restrictions, but we ask that you display headlines only.

Category: All Library News, Health Sciences, Web Resources Contact: Amanda Etches-Johnson | Permalink