Welcome to the RSS side of SPLAT 101! Here you will learn what RSS is, why it's important but not as important as what you can do with it, and how you can use RSS to put some order to the way you consume web resources--and be the coolest kid in the block to boot.

Let's get started by checking out a few quick videos on RSS:

Common Craft: RSS in Plain English

Another neat video about RSS/News readers, and how to use them:

By now you have probably heard of RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, or Rambunctious Sesquesentenial Salutations. Either way, RSS by itself is nothing but a bunch of code that makes little sense to anyone unless you are a computer or a computer geek. What RSS does is channel bits of data that a News Reader, or just "Reader" can, well, read. 

So, RSS looks like this:

Now, while RSS is important, what makes the data dance to your lordly whim is a news reader. A news reader can be web-based (like Google Reader, Yahoo, Bloglines), browser-based (Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, etc.), on a desktop, or via e-mail. If you visit more than one website or read more than one blog on a consistent basis, then using a news reader makes sense. Why? Because news readers automatically collect (via RSS) anything new that is posted from websites you subscribe to and display it, automatically, in the news reader. Simple! No need to bounce from place to place like a crazed hummingbird.

Below is a screenshot of my Google Reader. You can subscribe to hundreds of websites, keep them in folders or individually, and your choice of displaying every single feed or just the newest ones. The example below shows one post, picture included; podcasts and videos can be played within the news reader too: 

So we can see that RSS is really just a way to feed newly updated bits of code into a readable format using a news reader. To see if your favorite sites (be they blogs, wikis, Flickr photo stream, Twitter conversations, gossip columnist, etc.)  have RSS feeds, you can simply look for these kinds of icons: 

Once you subscribe to several websites you will only have to visit your particular news reader to see if any new content has been published. It's that simple. What's even better is that most of the advertising prevalent in a lot of blogs and websites is absent when you read the content in your news reader.

For additional information on RSS and/or news readers, please visit these sites:  

• How to explain RSS the Oprah Way
• LIS Wiki - Organizational Weblogs
• RSS: Try It, You’ll Like It
• Other ways to use RSS Feeds

Class Assignment

• Sign up for a free news reader account using Google Reader or Bloglines. You can use any kind of reader you want but with these two you don't have to download anything to your computer. 
• If you don’t want to use Google or Bloglines, have a look at other types of readers available (free, paid, desktop based, RSS via your e-mail, etc.) at this website: Feed Readers via DMOZ (Open Directory Project)
• Once you have your reader ready, subscribe to these two blogs: http://www.loc.gov/blog/ and http://libraries.idaho.gov/feed 
• You can find other library-related blogs at the LIS (Library and Information Science) Wiki.

So, using a reader will save you time, avoid excessive adverts, allow you to quickly glean what's going on in your favorite websites, keep up to date with the newest, freshest content, and you only have to visit one site--your Google Reader/Bloglines/[your choice]--to become an informed citizen. Truly, a cool thing!