j’s scratchpad

I’ve been asked to write an article about RSS for some librarians. While I was mulling over what to cover in the article, it suddenly dawned me on that I could use my blog to solicit ideas, since many of you use RSS in one form or another–either by having a feed on your blog or subscribing to feeds. Surely some of you have had to explain RSS to someone else.

What do you think is important about RSS? If you were learning about RSS for the first time, what would you want to know about it that you learned on your own?

For those of you who don’t know what RSS is, what would you like to know about it? What would your ideal article about RSS cover?

Here’s some things I’m considering including:

1. What’s RSS?
2. How can we use RSS feeds to stay informed?
3. How can we use RSS feeds to inform others? How can publicatons and libraries use RSS to reach readers/subscribers/clients?
4. What kinds of things (blogs, publications, etc.) already use RSS?
5. How can we receive/read RSS feeds?
6. Is there a way to create an RSS feed for something that doesn’t have one?
7. Is RSS just another tool that’ll fade in a few years or is it
   something that’s going to be around for a while?

I’m aiming for an introductory article about it. I get the impression that many of my colleagues have heard of RSS, but don’t really know what it is or how they can use it. I’m hoping that someone who reads the article will understand what it is, get excited about it, and go explore some of the tools I’ll cover to subscribe to their own feeds.

My deadline is in January.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 26th, 2003 at 12:18 am and is filed under Feeds. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.