RSS Feeds

I was posed two questions for week one of my CE course. They are:

1) How do you think you could use RSS feeds at your library?
2) How do you think patrons could use RSS feeds?
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The first thing that comes to mind is using RSS feeds to receive content information being published on discipline specific topics. I know that I use RSS feeds to keep me in the know of what other medical librarians or doing, what they are finding and how other libraries are using such feeds.

A second way libraries can use RSS feeds is to inform their patrons of newly acquired items in their collections/catalogs. This way students can keep up to date on the newly published literate be it a book, journal of other type of resource. SO, a med student interested in OB/GYN can set up a RSS feed to inform them of any newly acquired items relating to OB/GYN at their library. This can also fall under the second question of how patrons can use RSS feeds.

Another way is to as mentioned in our exercise, is to use RSS feeds for Table of Content services offered via the publisher. As an outreach librarian there are a few journals being published that relate more heavily on what I do at my institution. SO, for me to make sure I at least see what is being published, I or my institution does not have to subscribe to these journals, if I do not see any articles of interest I can delete the post I received or I can request an ILL for the particular article I am interested in. This too can be a way patrons use RSS feeds.

Enough babbling for now, I may post more later but I think this will qualify as a long enough post for my credit this week.

~Meredith