Welcome to Lesson 4 of the 2009 Montana Library 2.0 Challenge. In this lesson we’ll be exploring two powerful information tools– tagging and RSS. Tags are keywords that people use to categorize web content in personally meaningful ways. RSS is a tool that tracks new content as it is added to a website. If you haven’t learned about or used these tools yet, you have a little catching up to do before you start this lesson. (You can review last year's Lesson 3: RSS Feeds and Lesson 8 Tagging & Social Bookmarking and then you should be ready to go.) We’ll dig a little deeper into RSS and tagging for this lesson, exploring related productivity tools and features, and then we’ll put them together to create powerful discovery tools.
RSS
During last year’s Challenge we learned the basics of RSS and the use of aggregators such as Bloglines and Google Reader to subscribe to feeds. This time around we’ll learn how to bring the RSS to the desktop (homepage) or a webpage instead of having to go out to a reader to find it.
RSS to Webpage Tools
These tools allow you to take an existing RSS feed and customize the display the way you want it. They generate html code for your new feed that you can copy and paste to embed it on a web page. There are many RSS to webpage tools available; some of the most popular ones include Rapid Feeds , FeedFeeds , and Feed2JS .
For example, we used Feed2JS to create this RSS feed of new titles that are added to the online catalog at North Valley Public Library during a training workshop. This feed display allows viewers to see the three latest titles that have been added to the catalog and the list is updated automatically. If desired, a feed can be set up to display more items or more information about the items, too. In another example, we used Feed2JS to bring feeds for several of the most popular professional blogs to the same page so a viewer can quickly scan the headlines of all of them at once.
Here's your first assignment for this lesson: Push a feed on your blog. You can use Feed2JS - it’s really easy and you don’t even need an account. Follow these easy steps:
1. Get the feed URL for a favorite blog or news site (click on the RSS icon on the page or on your browser, then copy the feed URL from your browser address bar)
2. Go to http://feed2js.org and click on the “build” tab
3. Enter the feed URL and select your desired options (for example, show channel = title, number of items = 3, show/hide descriptions = 0, target links = y, and leave all the other defaults)
4. Click on preview to see what your feed will look like (then change options if you want to)
5. When you like the look of your feed, click “Generate JavaScript” and highlight/copy the code
6. Open your blog to create a new post and give your post a title
7. Click on the “Edit Html” at the top of the posting window
8. Paste the code in the window and click publish
9. Take a look at the feed on your blog – you can click on the links to individual posts or click on the feed title to view the entire blog/website.
10. (p.s. when you do your next post on your blog, make sure to check that you’re back in compose mode)
Other RSS to webpage tools do even more, like allow you to combine your favorite feeds and display your feed digest in a widget. There are many digest tools you can use; some of the most popular ones are Feed Informer , Feedo Style , and Grazr .
Many web 2.0 sites allow you to easily add widgets (or “gadgets”) for RSS feeds. The MLA Intellectual Freedom Committee blog uses a gadget to display the RSS feed for the ALA Intellectual Freedom Committee in the left column.
If you are using Blogger, for example, it’s this easy – why not try adding a gadget for an RSS feed?
1. From your blogger dashboard, click on “Layout” for your blog.
2. Click “Add a Gadget” then scroll down and select the + to add a feed
3. Enter the feed URL, continue - select your options, then click save
4. Presto!
This sample blog shows a live RSS feed embedded in the main content window that was created using Feed2js. The same feed was created using a gadget at upper right. Remember, the gadget in the column at the right is a permanent feature, so the updated feed will always be visible. The post that you created in the main window will move down the page when new posts are created.
You may have noticed that the 2009 Challengers' Blogs are displayed using RSS widgets on a Netvibes page. Each widgets displays a link to most recent post on each blog, so it’s easy to see in a single glance what your fellow Challengers are up to. Netvibes is an example of another cool tool:
Personalized Homepages
Also known as start pages or personal portals, these web page creation tools let you cluster and group your resources and tools on a personal webpage. You can add blocks of content for everything from RSS feeds, social networking sites, email, web searching, calendars, photos, bookmarks, documents, and other web 2.0 tools. iGoogle, My Yahoo, Pageflakes, and Netvibes are just a few of the services that allow you to create your own personal information space.
What information would you include on a personal start page? On a library start page?
Check out this article on Creating a librarians’ information portal with Netvibes and RSS and an interesting example of a library start page from the Dublin City Public Libraries (note that additional pages are available under different tabs).
If you think you’d like to learn more about start pages, take a look at these articles to get an idea of what each service offers:
If you want some guidance on setting up your own homepage, check out these video tutorials.
Tagging
Delicious was one of the favorite tools of participants in last year’s Montana Library 2.0 Challenge. Librarians realized the great value of having access to bookmarks on any computer, being able to organize resources in multiple categories, and discovering new resources through social networking with other delicious users.
Social bookmarking sites like delicious, diigo, and stumbleupon depend upon user-generated keywords/tags to identify and organize resources, and we’ve also seen tags on our blogs, on Flickr, YouTube, Technorati, Library Thing – in fact, practically everywhere on the 2.0 web. Tags make user-generated web content searchable /findable.
Delicious: a powerful tool for resource discovery
There are a variety of ways to search Delicious from your browser address bar:
To view bookmarks tagged with a specific keyword: http://delicious.com/tag/keyword
To view bookmarks tagged with two or more keywords: http://delicious.com/tag/keyword+keyword
So for example, if you want to look for sites about libraries and blogs: http://delicious.com/tag/libraries+blogs
If you want to narrow the search even further, you can include three terms: http://delicious.com/tag/libraries+blogs+books
If you are looking for the most popular sites in any category: http://delicious.com/popular/TAGNAME
So if you are trying to find the most popular sites related to knitting: http://delicious.com/popular/knitting
You can also view bookmarks saved by a particular person: http://delicious.com/USERNAME
For example, check out the bookmarks saved by Helene Blowers, the creator of the original Learning 2.0 program: http://delicious.com/hblowers/ and then take a look at the items she tagged “learning2.0libraries” (or any of her other tags). You can keep up with all the items bookmarked by this Learning 2.0 expert.
Please note that you can get RSS feeds for any of these bookmarks, such as library book blogs, knitting, or Helene Blowers – and have the latest additions automatically delivered to your reader or webpage.
For more tips and tricks on using delicious check out The Several Habits of wildly Successful Delicious users.
The photo-sharing site Flickr also uses tagging to make content findable. Explore Flickr popular tags http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/ to see what kinds of content are most popular represented graphically in a tag cloud. In a tag cloud, the font size of a term is an indication of the popularity of the tag – with the terms in larger font representing the most often used. A tag cloud provides quick access to popular items as well as an interesting profile of the flickr community at any given time.
RSS feeds for flickr tags are available too; you can find a feed for photos of Montana libraries by going to http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/montanalibraries and getting the feed URL from the button at the bottom of the page.
You can even get an RSS feed for all the items added to YouTube with the tag computer skills . Now there's something useful!
Assignment 2: chose one of the following activities
Create a personal start page for yourself or a start page for your library. Create a blog post about what tool you used and what you learned. If your page is private, capture a screen shot and upload it to the post (save the image on your computer and upload the image to your blog). If you create a public page, please share the link in your post.
Select three favorite blogs or news sites (you might even want to use fellow Challenger blogs for this exercise). Combine the feeds for all three into a widget (use Grazr, Feed Informer, or another tool of your choice). Create a blog post about this exercise and embed your widget in the post.
Take advantage of a social connection: Find a user in delicious whose bookmarks are of interest to you. Create a blog post describing how you found this person and embed an RSS feed of his/her bookmarks in your post.
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.