Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary? This is apparently what RSS stands for, the first definition means absolutely nothing to me, whereas Rich Site Summary makes more sense. While I know what RSS feeds do and the main reasons why they are are used, I'm convinced that most people sign up to feeds but then never actually look at them! For example most libraries have RSS feeds for new books, but do our customers use them and find them useful. From personal experience I would say they are mainly used by academics, to see when a book they ordered has come in, not by the students themselves.Its very possible to get overloaded with news and information that comes our way on a daily basis, whether its listening to the news, reading a newspaper, magazine or blog, receiving email, to having news items retweeted. To me RSS feeds seem to be an attempt to channel the masses of information produced by organisations and websites each day into manageable digestable chunks for the reader.
Therefore, I can see a use for Google reader, if you subscribe to lots of blogs and RSS feeds, keeping all the information in one place. This reduces the information flow from a raging torrent to a more manageable drip.
I suspect the rss feeds for new books are more of interest to research students than undergraduates (a PhD student commenting on my site about this topic said he found that useful). As a researcher, I would certainly very much like a subject-based feed for the UL collection, because I don't have the time to go there and check its (unhelpful) new books display regularly.
ReplyDeleteYour quite right I missed out research students alongside academics, who may use RSS feeds as a current awareness service to keep up to date.
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