RSS or blogs: week 4

We seem to be back at blogs and there seems to be some confusion about blogs and RSS. Almost any Web content can be shared as an RSS feed and the fact that it makes most sense to syndicate regularly updated sites shouldn't lead to confusion between RSS feeds and blogs. I wouldn't call the NYTimes news feed a blog. Referring randomly to RSS feeds as blogs makes me feel like we're going backwards. I'm experiencing deja vu and not enjoying it much.

I managed to add a Flickr site -- the "interesting, new photos" feed but not the main page -- to the feeds on MyYahoo. Again, not a blog (as far as I can tell) but still an RSS feed. I already mentioned adding the 23 Things blog to MyYahoo. Oddly, I can't add my own (this) blog. It tries and says it can't do it and suggests I try again later. So maybe it is just some temporary issue at Yahoo's end.

Setting aside my hairsplitting, I think that the potential for RSS in the library is enormous. I think blogs by themselves are pretty tedious if the user needs to seek them out and read them. Coupled with the RSS feed capability where they can be published to a space the users already visit it is an entirely different matter. I mentioned finding a Jewish studies library blog -- the selector at a library communicating news about the collection and services to his constituency -- and can see adding this tool to our kit just as it is. It would be even more useful if it can be syndicated and therefore fed to another site. We do have feedsplitter on the Library's Web site that allows displaying RSS feeds within a Web page. I don't know if any live sites are using it but I've been experimenting with it for a project . You can see an example at http://library.ucsc.edu/~ldjaffe/admin/educ.html

One question is where the potential for RSS publishing exists within the tools we have. Does cruzcat or melvyl allow syndication? Wouldn't it be cool to feel a canned search (e.g., most recent titles on a particular subject)? Can we feed from wiki or RT or cruztime? I know Zope supports RSS in both directions.

The other item is publishing outside info within our sites. On a simple level it maybe just a matter of including the RSS address with the sources we list. But if we can include (feedsplitter, again) live content within our pages that's so much better.