Thing 2 - Add the RSS feed of the Cam23 blog to your iGoogle page.

Welcome to Thing 2!

After completing Thing 2 you will have...
Added the RSS feed of the 23 Things Cambridge Blog to your iGoogle page and explored other RSS feeds.

What is an RSS feed & is it relevant to libraries?
RSS (commonly known as Really Simple Syndication) allows you to view new content from web sites, blog entries, etc in one place, without having to visit the individual sites. A fuller and more technical definition can be found on Wikipedia. Newspapers, major news channels (such as the BBC), and journal providers have RSS feeds available, to name but a few. Libraries also have feeds from their web pages, such as the OU and the British Library - some local examples can be found at the UL, Faculty of Education Library and the English Faculty Library.

Step-by-step instructions
1. Go to the 23 Things Cambridge Blog.
2. Under the Subscribe to 23 Things Cambridge heading on the left hand side, click on Posts
3. Select Add to Google from the list

4. Google will offer you 2 options - choose Add to Google homepage (you may wish to add to Google Reader at a later date).
5. You will then be taken back to your iGoogle page and you should now have a box called 23 Things Cambridge.
6. Find other RSS feeds which interest you, including some libraries, and add them to your iGoogle page.

Further reading
10 ways libraries can use RSS
What is RSS and how can it serve libraries?

Optional extra
Take a look at Google Reader as an alternative to managing RSS feeds. If you follow a lot of blogs this is a good tool for keeping up-to-date with them. The following video explains how it works:



Next time...
In Thing 3 (due to be posted Monday 31st May) you will be shown how to create your 23 Things Blog which you will use throughout the programme.