Science Library Pad

RSS and enterprise notification architecture

One aspect of Enterprise 2.0 is the ability to monitor, discover and share content from a variety of sources.

We don't have a lot of "glue" to enable this from the user perspective - basically you can search (Google or enterprise search) or follow (email, Twitter, Facebook, Yammer, RSS).

There is a line that breaks this approach, which is the line (actually usually multiple layers of firewalls and policies) between the intranet and the Internet.  In general, many of the rapidly evolving, inexpensive tools for web and mobile "live" on the Internet - they can't see intranet content.  Which means you can't get a search alert about your internal blog, nor can you follow your internal blog's RSS feed on Google Reader, or on Reeder on your external-network iPhone, or on an external-network Blackberry RSS feed reader.

The stiles that will get you over the intranet fence are pretty limited: email or authenticated RSS (if there are other options, I'd be interested to know).  So there are basically three options:

* have two completely separate working environments, one with Internet tools for public content, and one with intranet tools for internal content

* open access so that Internet tools can receive internal content, whether by allowing emails of content e.g. from internal blogs or (preferably) allowing authenticated RSS

* provide an internal feed reader service (website) which can see both internal and external feeds, allow it to be used through e.g. user/pass login from outside the intranet

Unfortunately, this usually breaks down in multiple ways:

1) Internal environments often have multiple levels of silos, rather than a single unified intranet. This means authentication challenges (simply being within an organisation may not provide the credentials needed to access a particular departmental feed) as well as policy challenges, as different sub-organisations may have different access policies.

2) The internal environment often lacks a notification strategy (e.g. a policy that all sites should provide RSS), as well as lacking tools and training for internal monitoring of RSS (desktop apps, Outlook, browser plugins etc.)  Let alone a set of OPML lists of organisations feeds, or activity aggregators like FriendFeed can do externally, or PlanetPlanet can do internally.  Even when the tool itself has support for RSS (e.g. Outlook) organisations often are running very old versions of the tool, before full RSS support was implemented.

3) Often organisations choose monolithic all-in-one integrated "collaboration suites" rather than many pieces loosely joined using e.g. RSS and JSON.  Visibility into these integrated sites from outside apps or web tools is often limited.

4) Authenticated RSS is very weakly supported (including not being supported at all in Google Reader)

5) Mobile devices are often on external networks and come with only basic tools and support (email reader and web browser) rather than pre-installed RSS readers.

I don't actually know how to solve this problem.  One approach is to gateway everything to email, but that just turns everything into a mailing list, and I hate mailing lists.  Plus which most organisations don't want their internal content flowing out unauthenticated over email.

The short term solution would seem to be to educate organisations about RSS, ensure their internal services provide RSS, and make sure their desktop, mobile and remote (e.g. home VPN) users have RSS readers AND access to internal RSS.   (There are other notification infrastructures e.g. XMPP, but these are not as widespread as RSS, although they could always be supported by gatewaying/converting from RSS.)  You can also consider, rather than providing desktop & mobile clients, providing an internal RSS reader server website, that users can log into from inside and outside the network.

The long term solution I think is for organisations to both think clearly about how much of their content absolutely must sit hidden from public view in the intranet, and to provide widespread RSS authentication support so that users are able to access their work feeds from familiar web and mobile environments.

On a related note, similar issues apply to enterprise search, where you usually need a separate internal search portal in order to discover all internal content, and you have the same issues when e.g. you need to discover enterprise content when you're on your external-network iPhone.

I have focused on integration between systems as done by users reading and searching, but there is of course a similar issue about machine-to-machine integration both internal-internal and external-internal.  We have a bit more mature infrastructure there though, e.g. providing JSON and Web Services.  But it still requires an organisation that understands that its internal services should provide APIs.

Does your organisation have this issue?  How to do you manage alerting on internal content?  Do you provide internal RSS tools?  How are you handling internal search?

Jon Udell blogged about this issue in 2007, and the comments on his Authenticated RSS feeds post provide useful additional information.

OPML Reading Lists

As best as my addled morning mind can parse, OPML Reading Lists is simply the idea of subscribing to someone else's (RSS) subscriptions (their "Reading List").  It's just subscribing to the OPML list itself, rather than to individual feeds.  As their set of subscriptions changes, your view is also updated.  Anyway, that's the nugget of knowledge I excavated out of the jargony paragraph

Reading lists are OPML documents that point to RSS feeds, like most of the OPML documents you find, but instead of subscribing to each feed in the document, the reader or aggregator subscribes to the OPML document itself. When the author of the OPML document adds a feed, the aggregator automatically checks that feed in its next scan, and (key point) when a feed is removed, the aggregator no longer checks that feed. THe editor of the OPML file can update all the subscribers by updating the OPML file.

from Next steps in RSS, Reading Lists - October 13, 2005
There is a howto of sorts at http://www.reallysimplesyndication.com/howtoReadingLists

You're supposed to keep your reading list small, e.g. 15 items or less, apparently mostly for technical reasons.  But I don't see why we can't fix that with a layer of technology.  I've already got all my 100+ feeds in tidy categories containing most-15-or-less items within Bloglines, why can't it just suck up that, then let the subscriber select which categories they want within the big file?

Now Technorati Favorites would seem ideally created for this, but inexplicably they have not provided OPML export.  You can leave feedback in Sifry's posting New Technorati Features: Favorites. And Reading Lists/OPML for Blog Finder (February 21, 2006).

UPDATE 2006-05-01: Technorati now provides OPML, see Technorati Favorites: RSS and OPML

ENDUPDATE

Thanks to Steven Cohen for pointing out reading lists and for putting me on his.

My Bloglines list is at http://www.bloglines.com/public/rakerman

And my TechnoFaves (currently quite incomplete) are at http://www.technorati.com/faves/scilib

blogging means business

On their website under "On Demand Business » Build customer loyalty" IBM has a presentation (available in Flash with audio and video or in just regular HTML) Blogging means business IBM executives Harriet Pearson and Willy Chiu discuss the power of building communities in the marketplace.

IBM reports they have over 12,000 active internal bloggers, in addition to their public blogs which are oriented around creating communities of technical expertise.

via Online Information 2005 conference blog

IBM and many others will be speaking in the track Wikis, Blogs and RSS on Day 2: November 30, 2005.
There is also a track Library and Publishing Developments on Day 1: November 29, 2005.  The esteemed Michael Gorman will be keynoting that track.

Previously:
2005-July-04  Charlene Li of Forrester Research in a video about corporate blogging

Council of Federal Libraries 2005 - 10:40 - Steven Cohen on Blogging and RSS

10:40 Communication With Your Constituency via Blogs and RSS
Steven Cohen - PubSub - LibraryStuff

http://www.stevenmcohen.info/CFL09142005.ppt (PowerPoint)

demo of PubSub sidebar using alerts on members of parliament e.g. Prime Minister Paul Martin

be aware of what technologies are coming

Google Blog search http://blogsearch.google.com/ is out

Georgia State University Library blogs
UThink
Simple Machines

* Marketing
- stand out in the crowd
- ease of use
- best way to publish without trade publications
- finding your niche
- write everyday
- Marketing the Librarian ( http://www.liscareer.com/cohen_marketing.htm )

My commentary:
Did not discuss major issue for federal blogging which is that it appears to be impossible to do
and comply with official languages (unless you have every single posting translated).
There would also be Common Look and Feel (CLF) issues, access to information and privacy implications, etc.

CLA2005 - blogging and RSS

I have probably missed some links, but here's what I found:

CLA 2005 blog:  Blogging & RSS: Applications & Technology

Presentations:

• Nine Reasons To Go Blog by Aaron Schmidt of walkingpaper.org and Thomas Ford Memorial Library
• Blogging and RSS: Applications & Technology - Examples from an Academic Library (PowerPoint) by Randy Reichardt of scitech library question - stlq.info and U of Alberta
• Blogging & RSS: Applications & Technology (PowerPoint) (alternative link) by Darlene Fichter U of Saskatchewan
• Blogging & RSS: Applications & Technology by Stephen Cohen of Library Stuff and PubSub

This reminds me, I am going to create a section on the ILI2005 wiki where people can post links to presentations.

Reported in:

• scitech library question
• walkingpaper.org
• Country Librarian
• Library Stuff

also see recent journal article:
Reichardt, Randy and Geoff Harder. 2005.  “Weblogs: Their Use and Application in Science and Technology Libraries.”  Science & Technology Libraries, 25(3): 105-116.
available at http://stlq.info/archives/blogstl.pdf

RSS mainstream

RSS: Moving Into the Mainstream

By now, many are using RSS feeds to keep track of weblogs, journal tables-of-contents, press releases, newspaper content, and more. In addition to following dozens of weblogs of interest, I use RSS to keep track of movie reviews from the New York Times, search engine alerts, and library-related weblogs and resources. The application of RSS feeds has moved into the library world, riding the wave of hundreds of library-related weblogs and other services. Amanda Etches-Johnston of McMaster University maintains the site, blogwithoutalibrary.net, (http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links.html), tracking what libraries are doing with blogs, and by extension, with RSS. It makes sense that you can subscribe to Amanda's lists, by category, using an RSS feed! Gerry McKiernan of Iowa State University offers a similar service with his site, RSS(sm): Rich Site Services, "a categorized registry of library services that are delivered or provided through RSS/XML, Atom, or other types of Web feeds." (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/RSS.htm) Library functions using RSS include announcements, cataloguing, collection development, databases, instruction, Internet resources, new books, new journal issues, news, reference services, reviews, and tables of contents.

At the University of Alberta Libraries, RSS feeds are available for library news, library instruction, and business and economic news with a Canadian emphasis.

via ResourceShelf

fun with RSS - plus new book

Tracking Packages with RSS

from the author of the upcoming (April 2005) Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom

RSS for library websites

Darlene Fichter from the University of Saskatchewan has posted her OLA 2005 Conference talk on the use of RSS in Libraries:

Always Fresh: Fast Content for Library Websites with Really Simple Syndication (RSS) [PDF]

from ref:blog:spot

OLA! more grumbles about conferences

In my dream vision, you easily are able to get all of the info related to a conference: blogging about it, blogging of particular sessions, presentations from those sessions, photos, etc.

I think agreeing on a standard and unique tag for each conference will get most of the way there.
Of course, there are a lot of conferences, and only so many three-or-four letter combinations.

Ontario Library Association Superconference.  OLA2005?  OLAS2005?

Anyway, this rant because it is human nature not to invest much time in something that's complete,
plus it's human nature not to do things that are complicated.

Conferences build these big static websites ahead of time, which after the event, I can see, who wants to go and update everything after you're already done, the event was a success, it's time to move on.

What they should have instead is dynamic pages or a wiki, editable by the presenters.

Anyway, you can find some of the OLA 2005 presentations by navigating through their various session pages.  There does not seem to be one unified all-sessions page.

(report that presentations have been posted via Inforumed)

So you will find some presentations by wandering around the site, but you will also for example find no presentation attached to e.g.

Session: 115
9:00 am - 10:15 am
Technology
HOW TO USE RSS TO KNOW MORE AND DO LESS
Jenny Levine, Internet Development Specialist; The Shifted Librarian.

despite the fact that she has already posted the presentations in her blog.

promoting your organization with weblogs and RSS

Darren Barefoot is a marketing guy, so he has a focus on how you can promote a corporation.  Check out his presentation

Building 21st Century Websites with Weblogs and RSS (PowerPoint)

One of the things to be aware of is that currently, Google likes weblogs a lot.
Which means it may rank weblog comments higher than the actual corporate site.

For example, I am the #2 hit for EJOS.
The vendor, Endeavor, is the #8 hit.

great info on blogs, wikis, rss, atom with library specifics

I discovered David Mattison has a great resource Blog and Wiki Technology Collaborative Document.  Lots and lots of information, with specific sections covering libraries.  As a bonus, RSS and Atom are also covered.

I also subscribe to his Ten Thousand Year Blog.

Future Tense audio - library RSS

Future Tense
Libraries get hip to RSS - direct link to audio (3:46, RealAudio)
January 21, 2005

via LibraryStuff

RSS Aggregator market share

Bloglines is tops.  I was surprised to see how highly Firefox live bookmarks placed.

RSS Market Share

via Moonwatcher

Ontario Lib Assoc. RSS primer

The Ontario Library and Information Technology Association has a Primer on RSS.

via Library Stuff

searchblog predictions for 2005

John Battelle's Searchblog A Look Ahead.

Via Lorcan Dempsey.

article on RSS

Basically an RSS overview/intro.
"RSS: the latest feed" in Library Hi Tech, vol. 22 no. 4, 2004, pp. 404-413.

Via Diglet.

advanced uses of RSS

RSS audio casting ("podcasting") is already being used.
Next up, additional media types.
Yahoo is developing Media RSS.
Now if I read this right, basically what's happening is in the absence of XML standards for publishing/notifying about multimedia content, RSS is being leveraged to create these kinds of information streams.

Yahoo Media RSS link via SearchEngineWatch.

UPDATE 2004-12-24: You can use FeedBurner SmartCast to turn regular postings into podcasts, if you don't have the ability or desire to build up RSS 2.0 feeds yourself.  You can get more info from Easier Podcasting with SmartCast.

RSS in science publishing

Confessions of a Science Librarian links to a number of interesting D-Lib articles including

The Role of RSS in Science Publishing: Syndication and Annotation on the Web
in December 2004 issue (Volume 10, Number 12)

enterprise RSS

Moonwatcher declares that it is "Tracking the emerging Enterprise RSS market."
The RSS feed is http://globelogger.com/moonwatcher/rss.xml

Via The Shifted Librarian who also tantalizes "I know of two major library vendors that will make big announcements about RSS in 2005".

the 21st century belongs to... blogs?

Darren Barefoot reports that "Roland and I did a little song-and-dance at New Media BC called Building 21st Century Websites with Weblogs and RSS"

DB links to his slides in PowerPoint and HTML format.  (Despite his note, the HTML worked fine in my Firefox.)

He's a marketing guy so it comes from that perspective.