How to Design a LibGuide part 3- RSS and Podcasts

Before getting to third installment of how to put together a LibGuide there are two matters I want to mention.

First, I wanted thank Springshare (the creators of LibGuides) for mentioning this blog and embarrassing me with some nice complements on their support blog. I hope people are finding my ideas somewhat useful (all 20 of you, lol).

Second, I wanted to point out that I have turned over the two LibGuides I created to the knowledgeable, wonderful librarians of Northeastern (Nancy Murillo and Bonnie Chauncey). I am sure they will do a great job improving/updating them (They better, I will be keeping an eye them).

Northeastern was kind enough to designate my LibGuides as private in order for them to have persistent URLs. Lisa, the web design librarian, copied the contents, republishing them and transferred the administrative roles to Bonnie and Nancy (job hunting is getting serious and I need things to point at such as LibGuides). The LibGuides have been transferred because my internship/practiucm is nearly finished (about 2 more weeks) as is my final semester at Dominican.

Enough housekeeping, lets get to part 3 of designing a LibGuide.

RSS

It is possible to add RSS feeds to a LibGuide. I highly recommend using them.

It is as simple as adding the URL of the feed and how many items you want displayed. The LibGuide will automatically retrieve the RSS summary and display it as a pop up balloon. I like to add as many or as few feeds as necessary to maintain balance between the two active columns of a LibGuide.

I used them to suggest research topics.

To covertly/subliminally explain subject headings. This is especially a good use of RSS feeds when it comes to an Ebsco based databases such as Academic Search Premier. I also like using this for PubMed to explain a MESH subject heading and a limiter e.g. only humans.

Another way I used RSS feeds is for news on a subject. It may be necessary to search the internet for this, but I suspect most subjects will have something along the same lines.

I also used the Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Day” RSS feed in the Lexicology LibGuide to help jazz it up. The picture below also contains the mouse over balloon pop up.

I tried (in fact I think this is the first RSS feed I grabbed) to get an RSS feed of Flickr images with the tag of “words” or “psychology.” I also tried to get a feed from a particular Flickr group, but this led to links to the images and not the actual images themselves.

I have considered using the RSS feature to grab a del.icio.us tag, but after brief consideration decided against it. If somebody else went ahead used RSS for this I would have no complaints, but I am was not sure how I could make this work for the two particular LibGuides I put together. The tags would either be too small or too large. A tag of “psychology” could grab anything, while the tag of “lexicology” may have to few. But as I consider this now perhaps I made a mistake and should have used del.icio.us in this manner. It is hard to put something you may not trust on a published pathfinder though. You can see my dilemma, if anybody is still reading that is.

I imagine that many more ways of using RSS feeds exist and I have only scratched the surface.

Podcasts

Podcasts are very much like RSS feeds. It is the same procedure to add them to a LibGuide. First type in the URL and then the amount of items to be displayed. Again, I use the amount to be displayed to even out the columns. Podcasts and RSS feeds are excellent for the left most column because they do not require much space for explanation in comparison to recommended print or online resources.

A podcast is just another manner in which to have the users engage with the subject matter.

I have not made a podcast for either of the two LibGuides I created (I would but time is limited as I mentioned earlier), but I imagine doing so would be useful. This would be doubly true if it was possible to get the students involved in the creative process (advice on assignments, giving synopsis of their papers, recommending topics, useful sources, etc.), or interviewing the professors, recording guests speakers, advice from subject specialist librarians, etc.

I will talk about embedded videos and del.icio.us clouds in part 4.

 

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