Advanced Uses of RSS

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Advanced Uses of RSS
ticTOCS Gold Dust

• Lisa Rogers
• ticTOCs and Gold Dust

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About Me

• Research Associate at ICBL http//www.icbl.hw.ac.u
  k
• ticTOCs http//www.tictocs.ac.uk
• Gold Dust http//www.hull.ac.uk/golddust

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Use and Re-Use of RSS

• Viewed in RSS Reader/Browser
• Individual Use
• Embedded into websites.
• Others displaying your news on their websites
• Machine to Machine Use
• Used by service providers and aggregators such as
  News Now, ticTOCs and Gold Dust.

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Categories of RSS Feeds

• General Feeds
• News, Blogs, Job Adverts, Events, Website
  Updates, etc.
• More Specific Feeds
• Journal Tables of Contents, Items in
  Institutional Repositories, Learning Resources,
  Calls for Funding, Conference Announcements,
  Industry News, Calls for Papers, etc.

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RSS Formats

• RSS 1.0
• Uses RDF
• Can be extended through use of Modules DC, PRISM
  etc.
• Provides more structured metadata
• RSS 2.0
• Simple format
• Generally used to provide textual updates, news,
  blogs etc.

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Journal Table of Contents

• Many Publishers are now providing RSS feeds for
  TOCs.
• Quality of data provided varies
• Little standardisation

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ticTOCs

• JISC funded Project Piloting a current awareness
  service.
• Collection of over 11,000 Journal TOC RSS feeds
  from over 300 publishers
• Allows users to find feeds to export to their own
  reader or view in ticTOCs
• Will produce guidelines for publishers producing
  RSS feeds.

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ticTOCs Demo
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Guidelines for Publishers of TOCs

• Use RSS 1.0 specification
• Use RSS 1.0 Modules (dc, prism)?
• Use well formed and valid XML files for your TOC
  RSS feeds
• Use the RSS Content Module to present HTML marked
  up content.
• Do not restrict access to TOC RSS feeds.
• Produce regular static copies of RSS feeds for
  fast downloading
• Provide a choice of feeds (e.g current issue,
  recent issues)?
• Provide up-to-date OPML files

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Ideal TOC
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Gold Dust

• JISC funded Research project investigating
  alerting users about items of interest based on
  usage of ticTOCs.
• Testing using 50 Engineers
• Push highly relevant items from other RSS feeds.

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Gold Dust Diagram
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The Future for ticTOCs

• Embedding ticTOCs into the research process
• Standardising TOC RSS feeds
• Increasing the number of TOC RSS feeds

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The Future for Gold Dust

• Develop auto discovery and delivery services
• Explore possibility of similar service in domains
  other than engineering.

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Any Questions?

• Lisa Rogers
• l.j.rogers_at_hw.ac.uk
• http//www.macs.hw.ac.uk/mthljr/