Are you suffering with information overload? Trying to keep abreast of the latest research papers, industry or educational news, updates from professional organisations, conferences, government reports, and ever-changing websites can be a challenge. RSS feeds are an excellent way of bringing relevant content to your desktop and keeping you up-to-date with new items of interest in your teaching or research subject areas, allowing you to control what information you access and how and when you access it. In this workshop, participants will learn how to use RSS feeds, and bookmarking and citation tools, to help organise and manage online research material. This practical session will look at how to find and use feeds from key journals, publisher websites, and online library catalogues, as well as how to make the most of Learning Centre’s electronic resources to export, tag, and share your articles and links.

1. Feed me! Using RSS and Web Tools Helen Curtis and Jo Alcock Learning and Information Services Staff Development 2009/2010

4. RSS feeds VS email alerts Adapted from: http://libguides.mit.edu/rss Aspect RSS Email Login/registration Usually subscribe to feeds with a few clicks and no registration required Set up account with each so may have to deal with multiple logins Segregate or integrate Segregates your news so it doesn’t get buried as you deal with more urgent emails Integrates your news with email so only one interface to check Managing new items Items automatically marked as read; much easier to manage if you fall behind with your reading Every new item that comes in has to be filed or filtered in some way Sharing and adding comments Easy to add tags and comments and share with others Forwarding emails to others. Inbox overload?

5. How does RSS work?

7. Getting started with Google Reader