davidrothman.net

The UK Biblioblogosphere is a blog by Keir Hopwood. From Keir’s announcement:

I wanted to announce my new blog, which details my MSc ILM research project on UK academic (i.e. university) library blogs:

http://ukbiblioblogosphere.blogspot.com/

On this blog I will

a) detail the progress and any interesting milestones in the research andwriting process itself

b) keep a list of relevant online resources, including openly available scholarly literature and related blogs

c) keep an updated “directory” of UK academic library blogs at http://del.icio.us/ukbiblioblogosphere

I warmly invite all readers of this list to follow my progress, leave comments and especially alert me to any new or closing blogs so that I can keep the list up to date.

I hope it contributes to research and practice in this field.

Keir, I expect to plunder your del.icio.us account for blogs not yet added to LibWorm- good luck with your project and thanks for making your collection available to others!

June 18th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, LibWorm, Technology | Comments (3)

David Rothman

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May 26th, 2008 | Category: "Library 2.0", "Social Software", 3rd Party PubMed/MEDLINE Tools, Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, LibWorm, MLA2008, Mashups, Podcasting, Presentations, RSS/Feeds, Technology, Web Applications, Wikis | Comments (3)

[edit]

• Added a feed from Google Blog Search (which uses a fairly narrow search) to the Superfeed.
• Added filters to the Superfeed to screen out a handful of false positives.
• Embedded Grazr widget (see end of post)

[/edit]

[edit2]
Wouter has made the Superfeed available in Dutch.
[/edit2]

To make sure I don’t miss any online chatter about Computers in Libraries 2008 (which starts next Monday), I’m subscribed to the following feeds:

• LibWorm
  [LibWorm feed]
• Feed for Twitter “CIL2008″
  http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/10313522.rss
• This feed aggregates all tweets from CIL08 and from various CIL-related searches in tweetscan.com:
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/AllCil2008Tweets
• CIL 2008 Wiki feed
  http://cil2008.pbwiki.com/rss2.php
• Technorati tag: CIL2008
  http://feeds.technorati.com/tag/CIL2008
• del.icio.us tag: CIL2008
  http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/cil2008
• YouTube: CIL2008
  http://www.youtube.com/rss/search/CIL2008.rss
• SlideShare tag: CIL2008
  http://www.slideshare.net/rss/tag/cil2008
• Flickr tag: CIL2008
  http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=cil2008&lang=en-us&format=rss_200

If you’re like me, you’d rather subscribe to one feed than several, so all the feeds above are included in the feed below:

Single feed that combines all of the above:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Cil2008Superfeed

Grazr widget below will let you browse the Superfeed contents:

April 2nd, 2008 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, How to, LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Technology | Comments (4)

LibWorm has been bookmarked 700 times in del.icio.us.

February 19th, 2008 | Category: LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments Off

CollegeDegree.com lists LibWorm as one of its “25 Awesome Beta Research Tools from Libraries Around the World.”

24. LibWorm: This beta helps you “search the biblioblogosphere and beyond.” When you want to start your search on the Internet but only want to find library-related material, this tool can help. By pulling information from over 1500 RSS feeds in categories like academic libraries, government libraries, law libraries, podcasts: librarianship, medical libraries and more.

Thanks to Paul Pival for the heads-up!

February 13th, 2008 | Category: LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments Off

The Krafty Librarian has assembled a number of useful resources on OvidSP that should be helpful to those still working on transition plans.

You can also check out what other medical libraries are doing by searching the Medical Library CSE for ovidsp.

You could even seek out specific instructional materials by searching for Ovidsp (handout OR instructions OR “how to” OR training)

For what the biblioblogosphere has had to say about OvidSP, see this LibWorm search.

January 19th, 2008 | Category: CSEs, For Medical Libraryfolk, LibWorm, Medical Librarianship Blogs, Search, Teaching/Training, Technology, Vendors | Comments Off

I got a great email from a friend who is currently in library school months ago that I never posted about. Bad, BAD David!

I love her description of how she used LibWorm to search the biblioblogosphere as a part of her research for a library school assignment:

…I was required to write a brief piece related to an assigned search tool. The point was to share with the class the latest news related to a particular site (I had the Librarians’ Internet Index). I used LibWorm to see what people were saying about LII. Julie Shen’s blog pointed me to a piece about Wikipedia’s plan to start Search Wikia, a community-based search service. I ended up using the article from the blog to discuss the niche LII has created in the market. Your site was really useful because the BBC article never mentions LII so I don’t know that I would have found the article without LibWorm.

This makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

January 18th, 2008 | Category: LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments Off

Okay. To my great surprise, it looks like I actually have a chance at winning this award (previously mentioned here and here).

At the moment, I’m trailing Berci’s ScienceRoll- but not by a great margin.

This sort of contest is really about how many people one can motivate to go vote for one’s own endeavor- so the fact that I’m closing on Berci is probably due in no small part to bloggers like Michael Stephens, Wouter Gerritsma, Blake Carver, Zagreus Ammon (blogging under a pseudonym at Physician Executive) and Steven Cohen for encouraging others to vote for my blog.

If you haven’t yet, please head over to vote for davidrothman.net?

Thank you!

January 14th, 2008 | Category: Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, LibWorm, Personal, Technology | Comments (5)

[Updated: 8/28/2008]
_______

(My emphasis here is on free and low-cost resources)

Explaining RSS

• Introduction to RSS for Librarians by Luke Rosenberger
• How to Explain RSS the Oprah Way by Stephanie Quilao
• Five Best Tips for Reducing RSS Information Overload by David Rothman
• Video: RSS in Plain English
  

Resources to help you choose a feed aggregator

• RSS Compendium-RSS Readers
• A Directory of RSS Aggregators
• Comprehensive List of Aggregator Options
• 20 Free Aggregators Reviewed and Compared

(My favorite is Google Reader)

RSS Plugins for Outlook

(2003 or earlier- Outlook 2007 has a feed aggregator built-in)

• RSS Popper
• BlogBot for Outlook
• Inclue!
• IntaVnews
• NewsGator Inbox (Now Free)

Google Reader Tips and Plug-ins

• Two more ways to trick out Google Reader
  (Includes Greasemonkey Userscript for Google Reader Subscribe and Google Reader Notifier Firefox extension)
• More toys for tricking out Google Reader
  (Includes Gordita, Google Reader Optimized userscript, and Controlling Google Reader with a Bluetooth Phone)
• Unofficial Google Reader Notifier (for OSX)
• Unofficial Google Reader Notifier (for Windows)

RSS-to-Email tools

• SendMeRSS (formerly R-mail)
• RSSFWD
• Squeet
• FeedBlitz
• FeedBurner
• ZapTXT (Also does neat things like RSS-to-IM)
• Feed My Inbox
• Turning Feeds into Emailed Alerts by David Rothman

Publishing RSS content on Web Pages

• Screencast: Using RSS to Add Currency to the Library Web Site (via streaming server – faster for those on slow connections | via blip.tv) – Melissa Rethlefsen, Education Technology Librarian, Learning Resource Center, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
  Web page to supplement presentation.
• Live examples of various tool outputs

Web-Based RSS-to-Web-Page tools

• BlinkBits
• Feedo Style
• Feedroll
• FeedSweep
• Rss2Java
• RapidFeeds
• RSS to JavaScript
• RSSxpress-Lite
• Feed2JS Build JavaScript and Preview
• FeedTwister
• Grazr

Hosted RSS-to-Web-Page Tools

• Feed2JS
• JSMFeed.pl
• rss2html.com
• rss2html.php
• SimplePie
• zFeeder
• RSS-PHP

Feed mashing and filtering tools

• BlogSieve (mashing and/or filtering)
• FEEDblendr (mashing)
• FEEDcombine (mashing)
• FeedRinse (mashing and/or filtering; step-by-step tutorial here)
• RSS Mix (mashing)
• FeedSifter (filtering)
• FeedTwister (mashing)
• FilterMyRSS (filtering)
• FeedSifter (filtering)
• ReFilter (filtering)
• Yahoo! Pipes (Massively versatile and powerful feed manipulator, much beloved by David)
• Microsoft Popfly (Microsoft’s answer to Yahoo! Pipes)

Creating feeds for pages that don’t offer them

Sometimes called “scraping”

• PonyFish: Perhaps the easiest and most intuitive to use
• Feed43: May be among the most powerful, but has a steeper learning curve. Detailed walkthrough available here.
• WotzWot
• Feedfire
• Feedwhip
• Feedity
• Page2RSS
• Dapper
• FeedYes

Creating feeds from PubMed

• PubMed RSS Tutorial (From the NLM)
• How to: Generate a Custom RSS feed from PubMed
• How To: Create an RSS Feed for a Feedless Journal with PubMed
• How to: Create a PubMed RSS Feed for 30 Journals

Creating feeds from LibWorm (/MedWorm)

Although structured slightly differently, MedWorm and LibWorm have similar interfaces and identical search operators.
LibWorm FAQ
LibWorm-Fu for Beginners
Intermediate/Advanced LibWorm-Fu (Power Searching)

Okay, your turn: What good stuff did I miss?

January 14th, 2008 | Category: LibWorm, Mashups, RSS/Feeds, Technology | Comments (8)

Berci asked:

David, do you know how can we subscribe to searches on Youtube? I mean, I’d like to follow the RSS feed of the search term genetics on Youtube, for example.

Jan answered:

You can create RSS feeds for tags. FI: rss for genetics will be http://www.youtube.com/rss/tag/genetic.rss.

For search related rss-feeds on YouTube you could try referd.info.

The feed that Jan suggests will only contain videos that have been tagged “genetic.” It won’t contain videos that have the word “genetics” elsewhere in their metadata.

To capture videos that have “genetics” anywhere in their metadata, try this feed:
http://www.youtube.com/rss/search/genetics.rss

Unfortunately, this simple way of creating a search-based YouTube feed (http://www.youtube.com/rss/search/[search terms].rss) will limit the search results to 20 items.

If we want to get more than 20 results in our feed, we need to use the YouTube API, which is powerful and not especially difficult to play with.

If we want a feed that captures the most recent 50 videos, we can use this feed:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/videos?vq=genetics&max-results=50&orderby=updated

Neat, huh? Still, I don’t subscribe to these sorts of feeds.
Unfortunately, both the feed for the tag “genetics” and the feed for the search term “genetics” are too full of junk (including spammy, awful ringtone advertising) for me to deal with efficiently. I once had search feeds like these from YouTube fed into LibWorm, but removed them because the results returned for the search term “library” were frequently inappropriate and wildly distant from Librar*/LIS topics.

If one was determined to make such a feed useful, one could use a tool like Yahoo Pipes to filter out the worst and most obvious of the junk items, producing a feed like this one. It is far from perfect, but most of the junk is gone and little of the good stuff is missing.

(Please feel free to copy this Pipe.)

However, a Pipe used for this purpose would probably need semi-routine maintenance and updates to its Filter module to keep the junk out.¹

Okay, that was fun! Any other feed questions?

November 26th, 2007 | Category: How to, LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology, Video | Comments (5)

Melissa Rethlefsen sent me a nifty graphic from Cloudalicio.us that shows the tags del.icio.us users have most frequently used when bookmarking LibWorm:

(Click thumbnail for full-size image)

There’s nothing very surprising here, but it sure is interesting.

Thanks, Melissa!

November 21st, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Technology | Comments Off

LibWorm has been bookmarked by 600 different del.icio.us users:

This makes us smile.

November 7th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments (4)

Steven Cohen was the first librarian to whom I revealed the existence of LibWorm- and he has been a wonderful supporter since.

Steven gave a presentation on “What’s Hot with RSS” at Internet Librarian 2007, and we’re tickled that LibWorm was included in this presentation- and at least a couple of bibliobloggers noted the mention.

November 1st, 2007 | Category: Blogging, LibWorm, Technology | Comments (1)

Need a hand keeping up with everything posted about Internet Librarian 2007?

Use this search and/or this feed.

October 28th, 2007 | Category: Blogging, LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Technology | Comments Off

I’ve been meaning to post a few notes about MedWorm for a while now.

First, my friend and LibWorm partner Frankie Dolan¹ has been blogging at Frankie Speaking Frankly and you should subscribe to its feed.

Second, registered users can now make use of MedWorm’s new subscribe-by-email feature. Writes Frankie:

It is now possible to receive updates to your favourite MedWorm medical feeds via email. First register with MedWorm by giving an email address, user name and password of your choice. Then subscribe to any of the thousands of feeds you see listed in MedWorm, by clicking on the My MedWorm chicklet next to a feed listing. Finally click on My Account to select how often you would like updates emailed to you.

Frankie has some thoughts on this feature that are worth reading.

Third, you can now discuss any item indexed by MedWorm. Writes Frankie:

It is now possible to open medical and health related discussions on MedWorm by clicking on the comment icon that appears next to every MedWorm item. You will be prompted to logon when posting comments – registering takes less than a minute and is free. All comments will appear in related discussion categories, such as by medical speciality or medical condition, which you will be able to view via the discussion links throughout MedWorm. Each discussion category is also accompanied by its own RSS feed. The link here shows all current MedWorm discussions.

Frankie rocks. Now I have to convince her to roll out some of MedWorm’s enhancements at LibWorm …

October 26th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", Blogging, For Medical Libraryfolk, LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments (1)

Need help keeping up with all the blog posts about Internet Librarian International 2007? LibWorm can help.

Try this query or this feed.

October 9th, 2007 | Category: LibWorm, Technology | Comments (3)

Check out which blogs the biblioblogsphere is recommending via this LibWorm query.

Of course, BlogDay isn’t over and there are usually late participants, so you might want to subscribe to this query’s feed.

August 31st, 2007 | Category: Blogging, LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments Off

I know it’s goofy, but I was tickled to see that LibWorm has been bookmarked just over 500 times in del.icio.us since the end of November 2006.

This makes me smile.

August 10th, 2007 | Category: "Social Software", LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments Off

LibWorm can help with that.

This query should show all blog posts about ALA 2007: +(ALA2007 “ALA 2007″ ALA07 “ALA 07″)

Even easier, you can subscribe to a feed for this search and have new posts delivered to you as LibWorm indexes them.

June 23rd, 2007 | Category: Blogging, LibWorm, RSS/Feeds, Search, Technology | Comments Off