RSS? SOS!

I consider myself to be fairly technologically advanced. I mean, I grew up around computers, learning about them as early as first or second grade. However, until I started this class, I had no idea what RSS even stood for, never mind its purpose in Web 2.0.

RSS, or Rich Site Summary, is a feature on blogs and news Websites that enable the user to follow, or 'subscribe' to a blog or news feed that they find particularly interesting.

There are two basic steps that a user needs to complete before they can subscribe to an RSS feed. First, they must sign up for an RSS reader, which acts as a commonplace for the feeds to gather, where the user can easily check for updates.

Second, the user needs to find blogs and news sites to which they'd like to subscribe, and click on a small icon that signals that the blog can be followed via RSS. Once they've subscribed, when a blog or news site adds a new post, they will receive an email in their RSS reader, usually with a link to the new post.

RSS icon

I do like the concept of RSS feeds. I find them to be easy to use and understand, as well as very convenient to navigate through recently updated blogs.

Libraries often take advantage of RSS feeds in a couple of different ways. They may have RSS on their own blog, or they might find news feeds pertinent to a library setting and subscribe, posting interesting articles on their own website for patrons to look over.

Now that I know what RSS feeds actually are, I think I'll be using them a lot more in the near future.