How could RSS be better used by National Libraries?

Get on those lists!  My first suggestion would be to combine whatever RSS feed options are available with other web 2.0 features to get the library name out there and get users subscribed to feeds.  Social bookmarking and social networking sites could be used to increase the visibility of the feeds, and the library itself.

Secondly, none of the sites I reviewed showed the number of users subscribed to the feeds.  Browsing a site and seeing how many subscribe to their feeds is something that can increase the popularity of a feed.

And lastly, National Library sites could also benefit from subscribing to other site’s RSS feeds on their page.  For example, many government website provide RSS feeds which would fit in on the news pages on National Library sites.  The advantage of RSS technology is it provides a way for many different websites to pull in the same content without the need for repetitive updates to each of them on every change to the content.

National Library of New Zealand

The National Library of New Zealand (NLNZ) feed options are pretty extensive, maybe too extensive.  Although some feeds, like ‘news for libraries’, have a self-evident target audience, other generic “workshops” feeds are so broad that how would a person know if they want to subscribe?

Finding the feed options from the landing page is not easy.  Interestingly, the page explaining the available RSS feeds does not employ the feed functionality itself, nor does it give a brief explanation of what is in each feed like the British Library.  This results in the web page being a list of links to subscribe to lists that a user won’t even know what the lists are about!  For example, if I was looking at the available lists, I might see the list about the exhibition tours and think this looks like a great idea.  But I won’t realize until I subscribe to this list that it isn’t at all relevant because it is just looking at private tours.

My overall reaction to these feeds is that there are too many choices that aren’t clearly explained, therefore I would unlikely subscribe to any of the feeds as a resident from New Zealand.

National Library of Australia

Even though I haven’t posted about the National Library of Australia yet, I have to admit that it is one of the first ones I looked at.  With an aussie husband, I’m always on the lookout for comparisons that will give him fuel for a “rant” about Canada.  Since Canada’s site had no indication of RSS in use, I wasn’t looking forward to digging in to the implementation of RSS at National Library of Australia (NLA).  But it seems like the Canucks and the Skips might both have been ‘chucking a sickie’ on the day when the Brits learned all about a good implementation of RSS feeds because although the National Library of Australia does have a number of RSS feeds available – the implementation is far from user friendly.
Finding the email lists, that can also be received using RSS feeds, from the NLA home page takes far more clicks and much more guessing than it should.  From home page to feed subscription takes 5 clicks but in reality, that is only if you know where to click and turns out to be more like 30 clicks when you count all the back and forth trying to guess where they could be.  In the end, I only found them by a google search outside of the NLA!
When I finally tracked down the feeds, the organization of them is, well, nonexistent.  What you find is an alphabetical list of all the email listservs available starting with a list for “dealing with deteriorating cellulose acetate collections in Australia” to the final list “NLA education development.”  Yeah, because an Australian parent is really going to see the “childrens programs at the National Library” list in the middle of those other lists!  It would even be challenging for a local public library to track down these feeds to add them to their website – and we are information professionals!
Now, before any Aussies out there spit the dummy at me, let me talk about the upside… The NLA does have a new wiki called Library Labs which is a social space for “friends and colleagues” to comment, question & provide feedback about the NLA’s plans to redevelop their digital library services.  RSS feeds can be found on this site as well to monitor new pages, updated pages, new comments and new news posts.  So they got is right with the wiki project – now let us hope that the redeveloping of the digital library services includes a revamp of the feeds used on their main website.
Looking at a direct comparison of Canada’s vs. Australia’s implementations of RSS begs the question: is it better to implement poorly or not implement at all?
 

National Library Board of Singapore

Being a library board, the National Library of Singapore has a dual role and serves the public more than is seen in other national libraries.  The different audience is evident in the types of feeds available through the National Library Board of Singapore.
All of the feeds available through NLBS can be found on the home page which makes them very easy to locate but crowds the homepage making the rest of the content seem cluttered.  On the RSS page itself, we can see the different options available for all feeds with some interesting differences from other national libraries.  Most national libraries wouldn’t bother to customize feeds specifically for Young Adults or Kids because these audiences are traditionally served by the local public library.  The way the list of feeds are organized doesn’t seem to follow any logic with the feeds simply divided up into two groups: RSS feeds & Lee Kong Chian Reference Library RSS feeds.  The later group looks at events, latest arrivals, and programmes at that particular branch library.  The former list of feeds includes news, latest arrivals, events, high browse online, digitalk, moving on: library@orchard in transit, Y.O, and Library@esplanade.
All the fees can be found on the landing page and on a separate feed page with general instructions.  Although clear to an user experienced with technology, beginners would probably require additional information to know how to set up a RSS reader and subscribe to the feeds.

National Diet Library (Japan)

Looking at the National Diet Library, Japan’s national library, on pages translated into English we can find the option to subscribe to the RSS feed for ‘What’s New‘.  The RSS option is one of the things done by the National Diet Libray to move away from being a research library and towards being a “people’s library.”

Take a look at these notes from the 2006 IFLA Conference for more information about this transformation in the National  Diet Library:

• http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla72/papers/117-Uetsuki-en.pdf

National Library of Scotland

Much like I saw at the British Library, the National Library of Scotland has very basic RSS feeds available for subscription with just a basic news feed.  The news page has an obvious option to subscribe with the feed but no instructions about what the RSS feed is and how to subscribe to it.

One thing that stands out for the National Library of Scotland is the series of articles written about new technology by the library.  One of the articles they’ve written has to do with explaining RSS feeds in the clearest language I’ve come across. 

Trouble is, good luck finding the article!  It isn’t accessible anywhere on the pages where there are RSS feeds available for subscription, nor are these instructions found on a search of the website.  In fact, the only reason I know this article exists is because I googled the National Library of Scotland and RSS and found it that way.  Really, it is unlikely that a resident of Scotland would have seen this article unless they were already subscribed to the RSS feed when this article was released – in which case, they wouldn’t need the article!!

Interestingly, in addition to the implementation of RSS (although a bare minimum), the National Library of Scotland is obviously working to develop a strong web 2.0 presence with a facebook profile, a flickr page, and slideshare videos like:

| View | Upload your own

The glance of the web 2.0 services at the National Library of Scotland shows that they have made a conscious effort to include as many different services as possible. However the depth to which they have implemented RSS feeds is just scratching the surface of what could be done. However, I did say when starting this project that one of the most important things about RSS feeds it to make sure they are updated often so that subscribers see regular updates showing the value of the subscription. Therefore, if the news area of the National Library of Scotland is the one area where there are frequent enough updates to justify an RSS feed, then the implementation is as extensive as it should be.

British Library

I would never refer to the British Library as simple but the implementation of the RSS.  The three core feeds are for the press releases, podcasts, and blog updates. From the landing page of the British Library it isn’t immediately obvious that there are any options for subscribing to the website for updates, either by email or RSS feeds.

It is obvious that there are three different sections of News (Press Releases, Podcasts, Blog) but in order to subscribe to the RSS feeds the user has to actually visit the News section.  Although I’m not a fan of having RSS icons plastered already over the landing page of a website I do think there needs to be some way to indicate quickly to the user that there are additional options available, which is what I appreciated about the Library of Congress website.

The trouble with the simplistic approach to the RSS feed implementation is that they aren’t taking full advantage of what could be done with RSS technology.  Sure, some people probably want to know what the latest press releases are from the British Library, but as Juned points out in afeedisborn, wouldn’t it be great if we could get more?

National Library of Congress

Perhaps a bit behind the crowd, the National Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov) only recently implemented RSS feeds.  ResourceShelf.com mentioned the arrival of this service to the National Library of Congress in a blog posting on Feb 16, 2008.  Even though the National Library of Congress may have been slow to jump on the RSS bandwagon, their implementation is extensive.

From the Library of Congress landing page a user is easily able to view all RSS feed and email subscription options by clicking on the ubiquitous RSS icon.  The list of feeds available are grouped into categories with a brief description available for each one without needing to drill down further to find more information about the feed.

The challenge with presenting such an extensive list of feeds is categorizing and grouping the feeds in a logical fashion.  Ironic isn’t it, that Library of Congress has the RSS feeds classified under multiple headings?  This is a great example of where tagging could be used to make a simpler interface for website users to browse and choose the feeds to subscribe to.  With the sheer number of feeds available on this site, there really needs to be a mechanism for the user to search without needing to review the long list of feeds on the one page.  Obviously, we still need the ability to show the full list for people who prefer to see them all, but having a choice of tagged keywords to navigate the list of feeds available would help people to quickly find the appropriate lists to subscribe to. In terms of how the list of feeds are organizations, the sections ‘For Teachers’ and ‘For Librarians’ are found at the bottom of the list of feeds.  Despite still feeling like a tagging mechanism would make more sense than a hierarchical list, having the teacher and librarian lists at the bottom makes sense because these professional will be willing to hunt a bit further for the feeds.  Therefore the lists aimed at the general population should be listed first. On the RSS feed and email subscriptions page, the Library of Congress provides a simple, brief explanation with a link to a separate page for more detailed information. Each of the feeds displayed in the list shows an icon for each of the RSS or email subscription options when available.

In the midst of the list of feeds available for text subscription, the Library of Congress also has their podcasts available for subscription. Depending on how a user has their podcasting feeds set up, this could mean that the LC podcast will be directly added into itunes whenever a new one is available. How’s that for pushing out content! And they aren’t done yet… the Library of Congress also has a blog to which users can subscribe to the RSS feed for.  Overall, the integration with the other 2.0 technologies makes the feeds even more appealing for users of the website.

They types of users that might take advantage of the RSS feeds available from the Library of Congress ranges from the librarians, teachers and researchers to local residents interested in hearing about scheduled poetry readings.  The broad range of types of feeds available means that there is something that fits almost everyone’s interests. 

Really, the only thing that would improve the Library of Congress’ implementation of RSS feeds would be to restructure the organization of the list so that the feeds could be tagged and more easily searched.

Library and Archives Canada

Starting my whirlwind tour of National Libraries, I figured I’d start at home with the Library and Archives Canada website: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/index-e.html. 

Much to my disappointment there were no RSS feeds to be found on the Library and Archives Canada site.  In fact, I ended up having to search the site to even find the public email subscription lists.  It turns out browsing to find the subscription lists requires the following steps:

• From the left navigation menu on the home page, select ‘The Public’ in the ‘What We Do For’ area
• From the left navigation menu, select ‘Services for the Public from A to Z’
• From the list of Services, select ‘Discussion/Mailing Lists’
  The Public LAC Discussion / Mailing Lists page opens.

That doesn’t sound that hard listed out as three steps but imagine if a member of the public is browsing the Library and Archives Canada website looking for information about multicultural resources.  Would they ever find the ‘Multicultural Resources Discussion Forum’? It is unlikely. Even if I did find the mailing lists, how would I know how to use them?  The instructions are very simplified on the Discussion / Mailing Lists page linked to above.

Another page of Discussion / Mailing Lists, that is available under the Services for Archives, Libraries, and Publishers section, is specifically for Libraries.  This is just as hard to find by browsing the site and really only turns up in very specific searches (I searched for ‘listserv’).

Could RSS feeds could be used in conjunction with the subscription email lists?  Perhaps, depending on the purpose of the subscription list.  If this list is to elecit discussion and contibution from all members then a RSS feed would only be useful if the discussion was moved into a wiki rather than email based and the RSS feed reported on the changes made to the wiki.  If the purpose of a list is to disseminate information to the members of the group, then an RSS feed is the perfect alternative.

So without RSS feeds even being in use, and with subscription lists being so well hidden from the public that they essentially are not used, I think I need to move on to another Country.

Audience for National Libraries

Who would subscribe to an RSS feed anyways?  I suspect librarians would be the key subscribers but there would also likely be a smattering of teachers and professors in the mix.  They typical feed produced by a National Library isn’t the kind that we’d expect to see parents or teens subscribed to – really, anyone who is looking for local information would be subscribing to services at their public library.  Students would be looking to their academic library to provide feeds or email subscriptions, except maybe MLIS students who might be interested in the National Library content.

RSS can be used really in two main different ways: to send or to receive information.  So a library might use RSS to push content to its users or the library themselves may subscribe to a third party RSS feed to pull information in.  In the following review of National Libraries, I will be primarily looking for evidence of both RSS feeds being push from various National Libraries and discussing additional opportunities that each individual library could take advantage of.  Since pulling from external RSS feeds is pretty rare on National Library sites, I’ll be keeping my discussion to a minimum about each individual library but look at it from a general perspective once my reviews are complete – so please be patient!

How often an RSS feed is updated is a really important factor.  You have to assume that the person is likely subscribing to a number of feeds outside of your resources and the majority of these will be updated every day.  So if you aren’t updating the feed regularly, you really need to question if RSS is the best technology.

Finally, it doesn’t really seem fair to just talk about RSS feeds for National Libraries since many of them aren’t quite at the stage of using RSS and use email listserv subscriptions instead.  Since many libraries seem to use RSS to push content previously sent to email listservs, I will be touching on how listservs (although more a 1.0 technology feature) are used in conjunction with RSS.