Developing a current awareness service using really simple syndication (RSS)

Introduction

Current awareness services alert scholars, researchers, and health care practitioners to recently published literature in their fields of specialization. Librarians who provide these services use various methods to keep current with academic and professional literature. Traditional methods include routing print journals, distributing photocopied journal tables of contents, and simply browsing professional publications. Newer methods include conducting saved searches in preferred databases and creating email table of contents alerts. Each of these methods has disadvantages: Routed print material moves slowly, distributing photocopies is labor intensive, and browsing material requires extra time and active participation. Saved searches involve expert users and continual search amendments. Email alerts flood in-boxes already brimming with unread items. The increasing availability of publisher- and vendor-supplied really simple syndication (RSS) feeds provides another option for current awareness services, one that addresses many of the problems of traditional means. While RSS is not a new technology and feeds have been commonly available for news and blogs for many years, journal content providers were slow to follow suit. Moreover, the benefit of RSS for journal content in the dispersed digital environment is limited, as the identification, location, and management of new journal articles from multiple feeds can frustrate and overwhelm even the savviest user.

While library literature on RSS feeds has been plentiful in recent years, few articles discuss services that fully leverage the “push technology” power of RSS. The idea of providing a convenient and time-saving service to library users by collecting journal feeds and then bundling them into outline processor markup language (OPML) files categorized by subject has not been developed in the literature. Only one 2007 article describes using OPML files to access information from multiple content providers without multiple subscriptions, thereby simplifying user access to the material [1].

Librarians at the Ebling Library recognized the challenges patrons face in keeping current with the literature, as well as the potential of new services utilizing RSS. While the volume of tables of contents feeds supplied by publishers and vendors have increased markedly, feeds were still not readily recognized by, or easily accessible to, Ebling Library's patrons, few of whom reported using RSS as a means of staying current with the literature. The use of OPML was well outside the mainstream of librarianship, and, even among colleagues who were aware of OPML, few had considered how it could be used to easily share groups of feeds between users and readers. The value of identifying, collecting, and categorizing new journal articles as a service to Ebling Library's clientele became apparent. After acknowledging this need, a group of six librarians set out to develop and promote a new kind of RSS-based current awareness service that would save time, minimize effort, ensure quality, and allow customization. Inspired by the Feed Navigator developed by the National Library of Health Sciences at the University of Helsinki [2], a working group was formed and charged with exploring possibilities for an RSS current awareness service.

Methods

Open source and freely available feed-finding tools and homegrown input forms that fed into the library's existing journal database structure were employed to create an initial collection of 1,900 journal feeds (now exceeding 2,400). Because the group had neither the time required for individual title review nor an established taxonomy necessary for categorizing the journal titles according to discipline, the group leveraged the category assignments in the SFX knowledgebase, the library's OpenURL link resolver software, which has an internal taxonomy for electronic journals. Although the taxonomy is not particularly refined, the group deemed it adequate for the task. The group exported the SFX categories for the library's active subscriptions, matched them against the library's electronic journals database, and reviewed the assignments for accuracy.

The categorical lists of RSS feeds comprehensively presented the titles available to Ebling Library users, but the extended length of most of the subject-based lists was cumbersome. Moreover, the alphabetically arranged categorical lists did nothing to signify the influence or popularity of a journal within the categories. To resolve these usability and qualitative concerns, the group selected core journals in each category to create much shorter, more relevant “top journals” lists. The group compiled the lists using librarians' subject expertise, liaisons' core lists of titles, journal usage statistics, and the impact factors from Web of Knowledge's Journal Citation Reports. To save users' time and to allow easy import into feed readers, bundled OPML files were created for both these top journals lists and the comprehensive lists. Step-by-step instructions were provided to simplify the task of quickly populating users' feed readers with high-quality journal information.

With the feeds gathered, categorized, and bundled, the group's focus moved to bringing users to the current awareness project through multitiered educational and promotional activities. The obvious first target group for these activities was Ebling Library's own library staff, whose understanding of the project's purpose as well as the process of creating personalized RSS-based current awareness services would be essential to the project's success. A “proof of concept” session was held in which various feed readers were configured with feeds from library professional journals. This was contrasted with the system of routing journals among staff for current awareness purposes that had been used internally but had become bogged down and impractical. Staff members were also offered individualized sessions to help them choose readers, set up feeds, and become comfortable using RSS feeds. Liaison librarians were encouraged to prepare themselves to be able to actively promote the value of RSS for current awareness among their liaison groups.

Along with a collection of instructional materials, including video, an hour-long “Keeping Current with the Health Literature Using RSS” class has been added to Ebling Library's regularly scheduled drop-in instructional sessions. The class emphasizes RSS as a convenient alternative to more traditional methods of staying on top of professional literature and includes hands-on activities for participants to set up a feed reader, select and import individual feeds and OPML bundles, and view and edit feeds in a feed reader. Brief introductions to the concept of current awareness using RSS have been incorporated into many of the various presentations provided to Ebling Library user groups in other instructional settings.

Results

Access is provided to the individual feeds, OPML-categorized feeds, and tables of contents from current issues listed in alphabetic order and by discipline. Recently, the current table of contents view in the portal was enhanced to include automatic subscription options for popular feed readers and the ability to export individual articles into a variety of social bookmarking and online citation management systems. A tighter and more reliable integration with full-text retrieval, both in the context of Ebling Library's own portals and with external readers, has been realized. While links to full text from the table of contents of licensed resources are proxied, access to the tables of contents themselves is not restricted. This provides full-text access for university-affiliated users, while also allowing unaffiliated users the ability to view the table of contents. In addition to providing the A–Z and topic-based pathfinders on the main feed page, relevant current awareness content is increasingly being fed to areas of the library's site targeted to specific user groups.

While Ebling Library's portal was never intended to serve as an exclusive point of access, it was the only location where immediate access to full text could be provided to all affiliated users, including those off-campus, because vendor-supplied feeds typically did not allow users outside of the campus Internet protocol (IP) address range to directly access the full text of an article. This issue has been overcome, as the freely available Yahoo Pipes provides a simple means to automatically convert links in vendor-supplied feeds to proxied links. The result is a modified feed that users can use as they would any other, while they gain the ability to subscribe to feeds in the reader of their choice and to obtain streamlined access to the full text of licensed resources through the modified feed link even when they are off of the campus network. Additionally, composite feed-based widgets have been developed for Google personalized pages. These widgets provide a clean, tabbed interface to access the current contents of top journals (selections being made from the core OPML bundles). Users can easily customize these widgets, adding to and modifying the default selections to include additional titles of interest and remove those that are not.

While this project has been framed in terms of a particular technology, the group's goal was to revive a traditional library service with improved efficiency to save users' and staff's time. The newly revived traditional service also contained a value-added aspect, specifically the ranked “top journals” lists. These lists are the end product of a timeless process performed by librarians: collection, organization, selection, and dissemination of resources to meet user information needs. In this project, the items being processed are RSS feeds, but in the past the same process has occurred with books, print serials, and audiovisual materials.

The value of having thousands of health sciences journal feeds categorized and bundled through this project is not limited to affiliated users of the Ebling Library. While the route to full text will differ for unaffiliated users, the ability to import health sciences journal feeds and scan tables of contents is available from the Ebling Library website to all.

Discussion

This project was conceived as a creative application of tools and resources to develop a flexible current awareness service of value to a wide range of potential users. It was not intended to be a research project. No effort has been made, and none is currently planned, to formally gather quantitative or qualitative assessment data; however, response from users has been enthusiastic locally, nationally, and internationally. The RSS web pages are among the top 3% visited on a site of more than 300 pages. Project data have been shared with and reused by other libraries of all sizes, from one that serves a major academic medical center to another that is a small private hospital library managed by a solo librarian.

Work on the project continues to improve on both the existing RSS portal and site-wide integration. Maintenance and growth of the feed collection has been absorbed into the routine tasks that are used to manage the library's electronic journals database. Promotion of and instruction in the potential uses of the bundled feeds will continue indefinitely to clinicians, researchers, and other librarians. Group members have been solicited by librarians for educational sessions as well as informal advice on developing similar projects of their own. Consequently, group members have made presentations to hundreds of health sciences librarians at conferences and webcasts to share the ideas and processes used in this project, as well as to encourage librarians to use the collected, bundled, and categorized feeds for services to their own user groups. In response to these inquiries, a web page has been developed with information and tools for librarians interested in creating their own RSS-feed resource <http://projects.hsl.wisc.edu/rss/>. Interested colleagues are encouraged to contact any of the authors.