What is an RSS and why do I need one?

What are RSS feed readers?
RSS feed readers (also know as aggregators) allow you to read blog entries, site updates and news items in one place, without having to check all of the websites to see if there's anything new. With a feed reader, you subscribe to each site's feed - as they update, the entries are automatically pulled into your feed reader, creating a personalized online news magazine for you. You can subscribe to all sorts of content - news, weather, blogs, flickr and youtube posts, book, movie and music releases and more.

The two most popular feed readers are Google Reader and Bloglines.Subscribing to content is very easy - all feed readers allow you to enter URLs or keywords to search for sites, or when you are at a site that you'd like to follow, just look for the RSS symbol:

Clicking on that symbol (or sometimes just on a link that says "SUBSCRIBE" or "FOLLOW") will allow you to add the feed to your news reader.

Discovering feeds on our catalog and website
Now that you've had a chance to explore RSS and feeds we're going to take a look at how our new catalog and website uses feeds to send information out to our patrons.Once you're familiar with it, you'll start to see that bright orange RSS logo popping up all over the internet and our catalog is no exception.The catalog incorporates some popular RSS feeds all in one place for our patrons to easily browse without having to sign up for an account with a feed reader service such as Google Reader or Bloglines. The drawback of this ease of use is the inability to adjust which feeds they read.Our website also has RSS feeds within the site that allow a patrons to subscribe to popular content such as upcoming programs, new books and new DVDs using their own feed reader (Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.). In this manner all of the frequently updated content on our website is automatically being pushed to the patron without the patron having to search our site for the information.Try It Out!
Go to the catalog and review our feeds.
Now spend some time browsing our new website. Can you find the feeds? What other interesting content can you find on our new site?
Using the account you set up in the previous exercise, subscribe to a feed you found.

Fun with Pictures - Lets use FLICKR!

Explore Flickr
Flickr is an online photo management and sharing website that has been around since the 90’s. It is a place for social networking through images. Flickr is one of the fastest growing photo sharing sites on the web in part due to its organization tools. A popular feature of this site is the use of keyword tags to create associations and connections between photos and users of the site. In addition to photo sharing, Flickr has now partnered with Picnik, a photo editing program known for its ease of use.

For this exercise, you will need to explore Flickr. Check out the site to learn all about tags, groups, and Picnik. Don’t forget to have some fun too!
Find Out More:
Flickr tour
Flickr Tutorial
Flickr Services

Try It Out!

In this discovery exercise you have 2 options…

Explore Flickr and blog about an interesting image. In your blog, be sure to include a link to the image.

--OR--

Challenge yourself. Create your own Flickr account. It is completely free of charge and is very simple. Use your digital camera to capture a few pictures. Upload these images to your Flickr account and tag at least one of your images “MMSCL Learning” and mark it public. Then create a post in your blog describing the photo. Be sure to include the image in your post. Once you have a Flickr account, you have two options for doing this: through Flickr's blogging tool or using Blogger's photo upload feature.When uploading images, please be aware of Flickr’s community guidelines.

Let’s Go!

Here’s your chance to have some fun. Go explore Flickr. If you’re interested in looking at some other photo hosting sites, check out this list at Wikipedia.

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