Week 4: RSS Feeds

I was very impressed with some of the examples we were given this week.  Some libraries have used RSS in very creative ways that I had never thought of!  Allowing patrons to subscribe to updates on their favorite book genres is genius.  If a patron wants to know when the next mystery will arrive and what it will be, they can just subscribe to the RSS feed.  UCLA's Custom Feed Wizard was interesting as well, though a little complicated.  It is also great that some libraries will allow a user to customize a homepage using RSS.  Very cool.

One thing I would worry about when using RSS for a library (or any) website is letting patrons know about it.  If they don't already use RSS, they may not know what that little orange button means.  A couple of the sites had handy "what's this?" links to explain things, which would probably answer in many cases.  But others had nothing, assuming that users would already know how to subscribe.  Another problem I encountered was actually finding the icon on some sites.  A tiny orange button at the bottom of the page is easily overlooked, unless you're specifically looking for it.  I'm not saying that the RSS link be a giant orange blight on the page, but some thought about placement may be in order.  There was also some ambiguity concerning what I was actually subscribing to.  Many of the sites had specifically labeled RSS feed buttons, but some did not.  On the sites without labels, a subscriber wouldn't know what information was being updated until it showed up in his or her reader.

Overall, I was surprised with the number of uses for RSS libraries have come up with.  But when RSS is used, the button should be findable and specifically labeled, and guidance should be available for the uninitiated.