RSS as a marketing tool: Strategies for increasing your

library's visibility Beth Roberts, Library of Congress

John Meier, Pennsylvania State University Internet Librarian 2007, Monterey,

California

Quick Review: What is RSS?

“Real Simple Syndication” Content delivery system

Advantages

• Feeds can be aggregated

• Saves time

• Brings information to one location

• Can merge with new technologies

Library of Congress

Library of Congress

Staff Virtual Resource Center, Scrolling Feeds:• Top Stories

Daily Report for Executives 10/01/2007 03:00 AM Second Fed Rate Cut in October Not Assured, But Most Likely Scenario CQ News: Top Stories 10/01/2007 01:10 PM 'Safe' Districts Give No Guarantees Against Primary Challenges to House Incumbents Despite public criticism of Congress as a whole, voters typically re-elect their own representatives

Useful Feed Aggregators for Combining Multiple Feeds

• Google Reader– Tag RSS feeds and Share as an Atom feed

• Bloglines– Create a feed of selected entries using “Clip

Blog”

• Feedjumbler– Merge/splice several RSS or Atom-based

feeds into one combined RSS and/or Atom feed

Penn State Aggregated Blogs

Penn State Library Podcasts

Plasma Screen Displays including RSS Content

• Static content– Information about the library– Pictures of library staff

• Database driven– Library instruction class times of the day

• RSS Feed driven– News feeds via third party software

Links

• http://www.presentationpoint.com/– Datapoint and Newspoint Software

• http://blogs.psu.edu/– Penn State blog project (Movable Type)

• http://www.loc.gov/rss/– Library of Congress blog and related feeds

Contact Information

• John Meier: meier@psu.edu

im/twitter/flickr: johnmeier1http://www.personal.psu.edu/jjm38/blogs/sciencelibrarian/

• Beth Roberts: eroberts@crs.loc.gov