Simplify your life: Or why I stopped bookmarking and love RSS

Today, I’m going to explain how RSS can help you live your best life online.

We're all busy people: Jetting to class, meeting with advisors, working, taking care of family responsibilities. One of the fun parts of my day is surfing my favorite websites. And yes, I can hear you all laughing out there, "well duh! of course our Califonia grown librarian loves to "surf" everyday." In fact, I do not surf and that's probably due to the fact that I was chased by a baracuda when I was 10. But that's another story completely! Anyway, web surfing is fun but it can take hours going to visit every single website you like, and sometimes they don't even update! Wouldn’t it be great if you could just get all the headlines and stories from all your favorite websites in one place?

Well you can! and it is called RSS feed. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. For us non-techies out there it is just a fancy way of saying you can get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place online.


Suppose you have 30 sites and blogs that you like to visit regularly. If you go back to your bookmarks for each one, everyday, it will take you hours. With RSS, you can “subscribe” to a website or blog, and get “fed” all the new headlines from all of these 30 sites and blogs in one list, and see what’s going on in minutes instead of hours. Thereby simplifying your life! TaDa!

That one place where your RSS list is created is called an RSS Reader, and it gathers all the headlines from all the websites and blogs you have subscribed to. We at Shake Library use Google Reader because it's free, easy to use, and easy to view via a smartphone (but there are lots of others out there). If you already have a Gmail account you can use the same login and password to get into your own Google Reader. 

So how do you add a RSS feed to your RSS Reader? Well first head on over to your favorite website and look for one of these icons (above on the left) or the most traditional one (above on the right). Once you see this button click it and follow the directions given. If none are there go ahead and copy the URL from the search box and add the subscription directly into Google Reader by logging in and then clicking the "Add a Subscription" button on the top left corner.

(Circled in Red below)

So now, all you need to do is log into your Google reader and check out all the updates on those websites. Simple! 

Now because we're in college, i'd like to share with you how you can use this for school as well as for fun. Lets say you're taking a class on Homeland Security or Computers or Nutrition. This makes it really easy for you to keep up on current events because you can just "subscribe" to RSS feeds from places like the Department of Homeland Security, or TechCrunch.com or Nutrition.gov. Then, when your professor brings up current events in class (Which they WILL! Trust me!) You're going to be familiar with the topic or people in the news. You'll impress, they'll remember, and you're that much closer to getting that perfect grade! Simple!

If you do decide to use Google Reader head over to the "Browse for Stuff" link on the left hand side navigation once you're logged in. There you will find some bundles that have already been put together by subject. It's a great place to start! and if you want... you can stay on top of lots of Homeland Security News by following the Shake Library created bundle called Homeland Security Feeds. It's managed by your friendly librarian. 

Got questions on using this type of resource? ask! 

and leave us a comment on what types of bundles you'd like us to create for you next!