Syndicating Content Through RSS

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Syndicating Content Through RSS

• MedBiquitous Annual Conference April 7, 2005
• Allan Bell
• HighWire Press
• Stanford University Libraries

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RSSWhat is it?

• Real Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF
  Site Summary
• Simple XML format designed for sharing headlines
  and other Web content
• RSS feeds bring automatically updated information
  straight to your desktop.
• You can monitor news, tables of contents,
  articles, jobs, personals, classifieds, blogs,
  and more

3
How people are using RSS feeds

• RSS provides a standard format for sharing
  information between sites
• Integrate current titles/headlines from other
  information sources
• Society/Association site and Journal site
• Facilitate information aggregation for example,
  subject portals
• RSS is becoming a standard way for individuals to
  access information of personal relevance
• Email is a saturated channel, and even useful or
  requested mass mailings can be blocked by spam
  filters
• Notifications of changes to multiple websites are
  handled easily, results are presented to you well
  organized and distinct from email.

4
Enabling technologies

• Published standard for interoperability
• RSS aggregators or readers
• Browser support
• Firefox and Live Bookmarks
• Opera Mail

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RSS feed example (Structure)
Channel information (data about the feed and
publisher)
Item information (title, link, description)
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RSS feed example (Items)
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NetNewsWire example
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Standards?Multiple versions of RSS
Simple Plain XML
Extensible RDF/XML
2000
2005
Hammond, et al The Role of RSS in Science
Publishing D-Lib Magazine.
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1.0 (RDF) vs 2.0 (plain XML)?

• HighWire chose 1.0 for extensibility
• Dublin Core, PRISM, RDF
• Very little activity in 2.0 when we were
  considering our implementation
• Now wide-spread uptake (blogs)
• Formats are very simple
• 1.0 is the best general option for our customers
  business models
• Customer requirements drive our implementations
• Provide 2 feeds
• 1.0 and 2.0
• All RSS readers/aggregators can process either
  format

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Links of Interest

• Specification
• 1.0 http//web.resource.org/rss/1.0/spec
• 2.0 http//blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
• Aggregators
• http//blogspace.com/rss/readers
• Validator
• http//www.feedvalidator.org/
• JCB example
• http//www.jcb.org/rss/
• Hammond, et al The Role of RSS in Science
  Publishing D-Lib Magazine. (doi10.1045/december2
  004-hammond)
• http//www.dlib.org/dlib/december04/hammond/12hamm
  ond.html
• Hammersley Content Syndication with RSS. March
  2003.ISBN 0-596-00383-8

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Why provide RSS feeds

• Customer requirements
• Expose content to more users
• Enhance possibilities for inbound links
• Provide access to content away from email clients