Introduction to RSS

What is RSS?

RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication, offers an incredibly efficient (and free) method of keeping up with current news that interests you. Information from RSS is more current than results from a web search engine because RSS feeds are updated hourly. Search engines update their database biweekly at best. Thousands if not millions of RSS feeds are now available. To learn more about RSS, see: RSS: News you choose. On how to read RSS feeds.

Benefits of RSS Feeds

• You take control and determine which RSS feeds you would like to view.
• All of your alerts are in one place.
• You only view a headline and description making it easy for you to scan & identify the articles you want to read.
• The link will take you directly to that article.
• You are alerted when new content is available.

Using RSS Feeds

The Bioscience Library has some links to important sources to get you started in Keeping up to Date in the Biological Sciences. But first you need to set up an RSS newsreader to use them. Bloglines is the RSS reader we use, but many more exist. The RSS compendium hosts a nice collection of readers with descriptions and features.

See our tutorial movie:

• Adding an RSS Feed to Bloglines (2m:14ss)

Setting-up Bloglines:

1. Go to www.bloglines.com and set up a (free) account. You will need to input your e-mail address and access your e-mail to reply to the automated message in order to authenticate your account.
2. Log in to Bloglines with your new account.
3. Click the "Add" link on the upper left-hand side of Bloglines, under "My Feeds."
4. The right-hand side of Bloglines should say "Subscribe." Below that, you should see a box that says "Blog or Feed URL." copy (from another browser window one of the URLs from Keeping Current: RSS Feeds) and paste it into the box for the URL.
5. Click the "Subscribe" button.
6. The following page displays settings for the feed. Click "Subscribe" once more.