Current Awareness and RSS Feeds

We have recently been investigating the different ways in which people offer Current Awareness Bulletins. We started off by emailing out the bulletins to a list of contacts in each speciality. However, we would like to offer people a range of options for reading the current awareness, in order for it to be as widely available as possible. Whilst some people prefer receiving information directly to their inbox, other people might prefer to subscribe to it via an RSS feed and access it using a feed reader such as Google reader.

I emailed two mailing lists to see what other people have been doing with current awareness, both in and outside the health sector.

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of enthusiastic responses. There seems to be people across different sectors interested in RSS feeds and current awareness. It was mentioned by several that this was something that they were looking at setting up. Netvibes was the most popular choice as well as using blogs and Google Feedburner and Yahoo pipes to create code. You can create code for users to subscribe to the blog via email as well as RSS. A couple of people commented that RSS Readers do not seem to be that popular with their library users. Therefore the subscribing by email option could offer an interesting alternative. You can use Google Feedburner to create code so that you can embed your blog on your library website. It seems to be a good tool if you do not know how to manually create code and it is also free. Some software that creates code does charge. Other issues were people on locked down computers being unable to download any free code creating software.

Zinepal was also mentioned but the free features are limited.

• Brian raised the issue that people can subscribe via email as an alternative (or possible additional option) to RSS. You can read a blog post he wrote on this matter here.
• Netvibes is very popular. Here is an example from the University Hospital of North Staffordshire – I like the way the layout is easy to navigate. 
• Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries have done an informative wiki about using Google Feedburner, Yahoo pipes etc 
• Here is an example of how Keele University Libraries have displayed latest evidence
• Quite a few people emailed me to tell me about the Current Awareness service offered by CASH – who offer an RSS option for each of their bulletins.
• A law firm library have purchased a specific product which creates RSS feeds and live news streams for them:

The most popular options within health libraries seem to be using Netvibes or setting up a current awareness blog. Are you offering your current awareness via RSS or otherwise? Please do get in touch or comment on this post if you have more to share on current awareness and RSS!

Bye bye Bloglines

I have to admit, I switched to Google Reader a couple of years ago, but I do think the demise of Bloglines should be lamented. I found it incredibly useful when I did use it, and I can't actually quite remember why I switched anyway. I do remember it being fairly easy to export all of my RSS feeds, so hopefully anyone having to make the switch now won't find it too onerous.

It appears RSS feeds are on the way out, but why? Twitter is fine, but:
1. I had to get special dispensation to be allowed to use it at work.
2. It's a bit of a jumble with professional/personal crossover, and I don't want to deal with more than one account.
3. Sometimes it just moves too damn quickly! I'm not permanently plugged into it, I have other things to do.

I like the option to dip into my RSS feeds two or three times a week and find everything there, just waiting for me (I also really liked being able to publish useful stuff on my own Bloglines blog, but I didn't think anyone else was looking, so wondered what the point was). I've built up my RSS feeds over time, and don't know where else I would be able to find that wealth of information just waiting for me to read it when I'm ready. The Krafty Librarian agrees.

Google Reader does a decent enough job for me to keep up with all of my feeds in one place, although as the Health Informaticist points out, it has an annoying habit of asking me to upgrade my locked-down, NHS-issue IE6 browser on a regular basis. I'd love to dear, but I can't!

The blogosphere

I've been doing a little bit of handholding with a friend setting up her RSS feeds, and in return, she's been sending me links to some really good resources she's found.

I'll be perusing this list of medical library blogs this afternoon, and will be logging myself in to add this blog!

I'll also be having a look at the wealth of medicine-related RSS feeds on Medworm to see if there's anything I should add to my own feeds. This is a search engine of RSS feeds, so it may be something I add into my protocol for searches on new and emerging clinical techniques. There's also Libworm too!

As I also do a lot of current awareness (is the right term anymore? I have heard it's outmoded) work, I am going to try saving some of my PubMed searches as RSS feeds. I'm told it automatically updates the search everytime you log into your aggregator, which sounds interesting. I can't believe I hadn't investigated it before now - I've really taken my eye off the ball!

How to use web 2.0 in your library by Phil Bradley is a book that's been sitting on my desk unread for months. I need to schedule myself a catch-up on all this new stuff!

New version of TRIP

I'm really quite excited about the new version of TRIP being launched. I use the database for almost every search I do, often as a scoping search, sometimes after having already searched the primary biomedical databases & Cochrane Library.

Here's what John Brassey has been saying on the TRIP blog:

• Much improved search algorithm, more relevant results at the top and less 'noise'.
• 26 specialist search engines. 26 today and more in the near future. These specialist search engines allow users to simultaneously search the core TRIP content plus the top 10-15 journals specific to that area. I see it as a bridge between users having to go from TRIP to the full, difficult to use Medline.
• New content, we've added a load of web 2.0 content, wikis, podcasts and webcasts.
• A trial of linking to UK-approved education. Today the UK but if the trial works we'll introduce education from around the world.
• A new category 'More' to house the new content.
• Ability to arrange results by relevance or by year.
• We've removed the big google ads banner.

There's more, but those are the main improvements.

I think I'll be using TRIP even more in future!