RSS and Podcasting: New Tools for Communication and Information Management

By Paul L. Anthony, Business & Engineering Librarian at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He received his Master of Library Science degree from Indiana University in 1977 and his MBA from the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 1983. He has held library positions at Parks College of St. Louis University, Cardinal Newman College, and Louisiana State University.

What is that odd button-type symbol with the capital letters, "RSS," which seems to be on almost every information Web site now? Over the last one to two years, this 3-letter designation appears to have become a nearly pervasive feature of the online world. Also showing up more frequently is a side-bar type link to Podcasting. So what are these new online tools and what are their uses?

RSS, which stands for "Really Simple Syndication," "Rich Site Summary," or "RDF Site Summary," is a Web feed format that allows for the automatic syndicated delivery of news headlines, blog updates, content summaries, or other information links. Essentially it is a way to distribute alerts to users so that they don't have to be overwhelmed by emails or bothered by having to constantly check individual Web sites for updates. RSS feeds have to be used along with a piece of software called an RSS reader or news aggregator. There any number of readers available, many of which are free. They can either be downloaded to one's individual computer or used at a Web site. Once an aggregator is in place, you basically subscribe to feeds from chosen Web sites and the aggregator does the work of checking those designated sites for posted updates. It collects these updates as feeds and groups them under your chosen topics that you can then peruse at your leisure.

Although RSS feeds started out as a really efficient way to syndicate updated news headlines, it is increasingly being put to more extensive use. Libraries and information centers are finding it to be an effective vehicle for announcing various items and events such as new books and media, updates on cataloging, databases, research guides and instruction, and tables of contents for users. Some technical libraries are even making enterprise-generated technical reports and white papers available to researchers as RSS feeds.

Moving over more directly into the worlds of science and engineering, RSS feeds have become an important mechanism for alerting or, as information specialists used to call it, SDI. Typically, these feeds could be a journal's table of contents which allows researchers to quickly see what is new and what they might like to pursue and read in full. From the indexing/abstracting side, a major engineering literature database provides the RSS feed capability as an option on any determined search strategy. So the RSS feed has proven to be a handy tool for keeping up with research.

What about the commercial enterprises? How are they making use of RSS? In some of the intensive IT firms, RSS has been adopted as a tool for delivering information and other service content across the enterprise. Included in this are RSS feeds to internal company blogs, software updates, large PDF documents, and audio/visual content.

One of the more interesting developments in RSS is its growing use in corporate marketing, particularly in the E-marketing, B-to B-world of business information companies. With everyone frustrated by e-mail glut, RSS offers an effective alternative for communicating many types of information. Some examples would be corporate press releases; information updates to partners, customers, and prospects; corporate event announcements; organizing the informal but important "talk" about the company from blogs and other sources; and advertising, product information and promotional bulletins.

One interesting feature of RSS is that it is forcing corporations and other organizations to move content into the XML format which is the heart of open-source Web design. Additionally, with growing RSS use, analytical tools are emerging to track usage by customers and even competitors.

A subset of RSS that has more recently come on the scene is podcasting. Podcasting is an audio or video Web feed which offers additional potential for many organizations to distribute their content. Many different types of organizations, including libraries, non-profits, and corporate entities are beginning to experiment with this medium. As a Web feed, a podcast lends itself nicely to subscription. How extensively it will take off in the entrepreneurial online world remains to be seen, but there appears to be interesting potential as a versatile multimedia communication device.

In the ever-changing online world, RSS and podcasting are definitely taking their place as convenient and efficient vehicles for managing organizational information and communication. In the commercial world, the more consumer-oriented firms appear to be at the forefront, while other organizations are beginning to explore the waters. The phenomenon has also definitely taken hold in the academic/scholarly and nonprofit world, and will undoubtedly increase as everyone looks for new ways to position their institution's publishing and other electronic content. It will be interesting to observe how these tools will evolve in what will probably be an increasingly open-source internet environment.

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