Librarian X

Google has announced that they’ll soon be offering RSS feeds for search results as a new feature of Google Alerts, which currently works only via e-mail.  Google has not yet given a date for the new feature.  I wonder if it’ll work with Google Scholar as well.

I wish I’d known this at my RSS presentation a couple of weeks ago!

Update: Chris Lang points out in the comments that Google already offers this feature for blog searches!

(via Search Engine Land)

Here are the slides from my presentation at Saturday’s Atlanta Emerging Librarians meeting, on “RSS Tools For Emerging Librarians.”  (Click the photo to download.)  I gave an overview of what RSS is, reading and subscribing feeds, easy ways to share and publish RSS, and how to incorporate RSS content into an existing page.

I tried to get an audio recording, but in the course of rebooting the laptop and hooking up the projector I lost my default microphone settings in Audacity, so the recording didn’t turn out.

I’m not uploading this one to Slideshare since I used so many layered images I don’t think it’ll convert very well.  The Powerpoint file includes my sketchy notes — I make no guarantees that they’ll make sense to anyone but me….

Before I unsubscribe from all these feeds, and in support of my RSS presentation this weekend, I’m sharing all the librarian job feeds that I’ve been reading for the last year or so during my search.  In no particular order:

Combined LIS Job Postings from Library Job Postings on the Internet and LISjobs.com.

LibGig’s job feed: searchable/customizable feed. I set it to search for Atlanta jobs, and only ever saw one posting here.  Maybe it just hasn’t had time to catch on yet.

ALA JobList: also has a customizable feed — enter your search and subscribe to new postings for your area/field as they appear.

As it turned out, I found the posting my new job not via RSS, but just by looking at the GSU website at the right time.  The posting did hit both the LISjobs feed and the ALA feed about a day later, though!

I’m very pleased to say that I’ll be presenting to the Atlanta Emerging Librarians group again on September 27.  I gave a 20-minute talk last month on Promoting Yourself With a Personal Website.  I was really sick that day, and I’m glad they liked me well enough to ask me back!  For 50 minutes this time, even.

Anyway.  I’m tentatively titling next month’s talk “RSS Tools for Emerging Librarians.”  The organizers have asked me to include discussion of blogs and podcasting, and I’m looking forward to making this more than just a 101-style basics talk.  I’ll probably do a 5-minute “What is RSS” bit at the beginning and then get into some nitty gritty examples of actual applications and what I think of as “stupid RSS tricks.”  (And by stupid I mean “clever,” of course.)

I love presenting to this group.  I feel like they’re my peers, and it’s informal enough that I can include LOLcat slides and dumb jokes to keep it fun, as long as I don’t sacrifice the good information.  I’m planning to record the audio and post it here, of course.

I’ve posted my RSS workshop materials. If you find them useful, please let me know!