ticTOCs: Journal Tables of Contents

I read in this week’s FreePint Newsletter about a grant-funded project called “ticTOCs. This a tool to bring journal tables of contents (the TOCs) from multiple publishers to patrons through an interface as simple as ticking off a series of boxes. From ticTOCs in a Nutshell:

In March 2005 there were 1,139 journal TOC RSS feeds available from 13 publishers, and by October 2006 this had risen to 7,042 feeds from 38 publishers. In addition, there are third party feeds from services such as Zetoc and Ingenta. Today, therefore, there are metadata syndication possibilities for TOCs. The way it works just now suits some people, however it requires some understanding of the concepts, and can be confusing. There are various publisher websites and feeds and aggregator feeds, various desktop readers and web-based readers, and various confusing icons.

While this project is still in development, it shows promise for standardizing the interface and content available from publishers (some of whom, we know, provide titles and links while others add abstracts, tagging, or other information to their table of contents feeds). ticTOCs will be a layer on top of RSS making it simpler for information-seekers to get the tables of contents they want, in a consistent and reliable format.

[Via Library Stuff.]

Users’ Views on Librarians in Facebook

Some colleagues here at the University of Michigan Libraries did a quick Facebook survey in which they asked (through Facebook’s polling tool) 200 people in the University of Michigan Facebook network this question: “What is your preferred method for getting research help from a librarian?”
A tiny fraction (1%) of respondents expressed interest in contacting a librarian through Facebook. A larger, but still small, minority (19%) said they did not want to contact a librarian at all. In-person contact was the largest vote-getter with 59%.
For more discussion and survey results broken down by age and gender, see Facebook Users Prefer In-Person Librarian Interactions over at User’s Lib.

RSS Focuses Site Readership

The French information service XiTi released results of a study exploring the effect RSS feeds have on site readership. They summarize their findings in Web 2.0 : impact des flux RSS sur les visites des sites Web (also available in an English version, Web 2.0:
Impact of RSS feeds on the visits of Websites). The study reviewed 53 websites audited by XiTi’s web analytics software from May 1-31, 2007. The list of sites is not provided.
They report that the impact of RSS feeds on site readership is mixed. Among the sites they reviewed, 1.8% of site visitors came to the site from an RSS feed. Users who came via RSS feeds accounted for fewer multi-page visits than those who came in from other sources (43% of site visitors who came from an RSS feed viewed two or more pages, while 51% of visitors from other sources visited two or more pages). The study also found that visitors who start with RSS feeds view slightly fewer pages overall (7.1 vs. 8.5 for those arriving from other sources), spend slightly less time on each page (50 seconds vs. 52 seconds), and somewhat less time on the site overall (5 minutes 53 seconds vs. 7 minutes 19 seconds).
The study suggests that RSS readers are more focused — they know what they are looking for and access those pages directly, from a feed — and visit more routinely than other users. They have perhaps already reviewed the site’s existing content and only want or need the new materials. The study does not draw any conclusions, but suggests that these figures bear watching as RSS becomes more prevalent.
The time spent on a page and the number of pages visits has significance primarily for commercial sites (especially those that sell advertising and who want to maximize both the number and duration of site visits). Libraries have a different focus, of course — we are, generally, more interested in getting the user to the single (or few) best resources to meet their specific needs — and not to have them spend time poking around the site. The sites included in XiTi’s survey are not named, but are presumably commercial in nature. A similar study for RSS feeds in academic/public libraries would be interesting.

Via Vtech.

Getting in Their Face[book]s

Facebook Librarian is an extremely useful application to bring Facebook users (for many of us academic librarians, that translates to the overwhelming majority of our user population) and librarians together. Facebook, as we all know, is a social networking site. Its audience is largely college and post-college people, although there are both younger and older members. Heck, I’m one of those older Facebook users having graduated from school several years before the Web was born.
Facebook Librarian is an application that any Facebook member can add to their profile. Once added, it provides links to a range of resources, including WorldCat, Google Scholar, Internet Archive, Amazon, and so on. But that’s not the really interesting thing — this is: there’s an “Ask a Librarian” link in the application that will either link to a librarian at the user’s school (if one has signed up through Facebook Librarian) or elsewhere (another school’s librarian who volunteered to take questions from all comers). Plus, if a library creates a very simple HTML page and provides the URL of that page to Facebook Librarian, that “widget” is displayed within the application.
This works because college-aged Facebook members are generally associated with an educational institution and Facebook makes that association available to application developers. So if anyone at the University of Michigan with a Facebook account goes to the Facebook Librarian application, they will be able to “Ask a Librarian” (me, in this case) or search our library catalog, journals collection, database collection, or web site from within Facebook. Any library can both register to be a contact for a particular school and/or provide a library widget.
This is a very useful and truly wonderful example of putting the library where the users are.
Kudos to Brad Czerniak, who developed this application, a student at the Library and Information Science program at Wayne State University. You can read more about Facebook Librarian on his blog: Hawidu. Or, to try it yourself, go to http://apps.facebook.com/fblibrarian and click “Add to my profile.”

RSS and the Media: Lessons for Libraries

A recent study by the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda focused on International News and Problems with the News Media’s RSS Feeds. While this study examined 19 major international news services, ranging from ABC News to The Guardian to Al Jazeera’s English service, it draws some lessons that are applicable to libraries as well.

In detailed conclusions, the study noted several problems with RSS as implemented by the news organizations included in the study:

  • RSS is not well used for tracking specific news topics throughout the day — but it is well suited for a daily recap: “[I]f a user wants specific news on any subject from any of the 19 news outlets the research team looked at, he or she must still track the news down website by website.”
  • News services often only include their own content in feeds, not content drawn from traditional news syndicators like AP or Reuters. Relying on the New York Times’ feed, for example, would lead one to believe that nothing of note happens throughout the day, between the press time of one day’s issue and the next. USA Today, in contrast, includes other new services’ content in its feeds, providing a more frequently updated service. “[W]hat is lost by the Times not sending the wire service articles are valuable updates on stories—and a breadth of stories that the Times can’t hope to duplicate with its own staff … which is, after all, presumably why they make the stories accessible on their website in the first place.”
  • RSS feed items often do not provide sufficient attribution to identify where that partiuclar [sic] item came from. “All the RSS feeds from the news outlets previewed their stories with a headline and a line or two of description, but very few of the outlets gave additional important information: the date the story was from, the story’s byline (author) and dateline (where the story originated), and the time the story was posted.” Since RSS feeds exist to be widely distributed, not including this basic information in a feed item can mean that the reader of it may not recognize it as valuable or coming from a trusted source.

Libraries should take these — and the other conclusions in the full report — into consideration. RSS provides a wealth of benefits to libraries that use it: ease of replicating content across a site, getting the word out, sharing news and information with community groups. Yet that value can be diminished if a few common-sense actions are ignored. When you build your feed, make sure that the serendipitous recipient of a given item can easily discern who wrote it, when it was written, and who published it. Give your reader the opportunity to recognize your organization’s good name and reputation — and your feed the opportunity to build trust and confidence in you.

Databases with RSS Alerts

The University of Wisconsin libraries maintain a list of database vendors that provide RSS feeds as an alert option. With RSS alerts, once you save a search, you can receive updates via your favorite RSS reader (or embed the alert feed on a subject web page). You — and your patrons — will always have the latest database results. Where vendor provide help pages, these are also linked.

While some of the big database vendors — Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, EBSCOhost, ScienceDirect, and SpringerLink, to name a few — are included, it’s surprising how few are actually listed. Alerts by RSS should be on everyone’s wish list when it comes time to renew contracts with database providers. RSS alerts are an incredibly easy method to keep your patrons current on whatever interests them.

The Photogosphere

As noted in my previous post, I’m attending a conference in Columbus, Ohio. While getting my morning coffee, I noticed a photograph on the auditorium wall. This hundred-year-old photo struck me as a particularly apt visual metaphor for the blogosphere:

Photography class in front of Orton Hall, 1908
Image from The Ohio State University Archives.

Look carefully. Here we have photographers, the ‘bloggers’ of the early 20th century, documenting their surroundings. But what are they actually doing? They’re taking pictures of each other. And someone (the metablogger?) is taking a picture of the lot of them. It’s the photogosphere! Each photographer is creating something unique by building — in a very literal sense — on the work of other photographers. And isn’t that, at least in large part, what we bloggers do?

Library 2.0 Seminar at Ohio State University

I gave a talk at The Ohio State University’s Library 2.0 seminar today. My talk was titled “RSS Basics and Beyond: Tips and Tricks for Getting the Most out of Syndicated Content.” In it, I gave an overview of RSS, feed aggregators, and showed several easy ways libraries can take advantage of RSS to improve communication with their patrons, communities, and staffs. OSU has a copy of the handout.

If you’re an RSS4Lib reader and will be at part two on Thursday, introduce yourself!

UPDATE 5 July 2007: OSU taped and digitized the presentations at the conference. You can see mine (RSS Basics and Beyond) or link to any of the others on the Library 2.0 Seminar web site.

Google Reader Ends Vacation as We Know It

Those clever folks at Google have removed one more impediment to a ‘net-free vacation: Google Reader Offline. Now nothing can stop you from catching up on the hundreds of unread RSS posts while you’re camping in the far woods, traveling to Tahiti, or just getting away from it all.

I’m not sure if this is good or bad cleverness, but it’s definitely clever. To use Google’s Offline Reader, you must be using Firefox and have installed Google Gears. Once Google Gears is installed, when you log into Google Reader you’ll see a little green down-pointing arrow to the right of you Google Account name at the top of the browser window. Click the green arrow and Google Reader will download the full text of all your unread RSS feeds to your browser. The arrow turns blue (and upward-pointing); click it again to return to online mode. Going back to online mode synchs what you’ve read with Google Reader, so that if your flight’s not long enough to catch up on everything — or you take a nap — you’ll still have an accurate count of what’s truly unread and read.

This is perfect for laptop users who want to catch up on reading on a long flight or a visit to network-deprived relatives. And issues a challenge to Bloglines (my personal favorite aggregator): can you top this?

Academic Uses of RSS

The RSS Specifications blog has an article listing 15 uses for RSS in an educational environment. While many of these items fit within a broader academic context, several could be easily ported to the library. For example, a library could use RSS to publish a study guide. It might be general (i.e., one word aimed at a certain reading level each day) or specific to a user group (daily historical facts for a specific K-12 or higher ed course).

How is your library using RSS to communicate with your community?