RSS is a format that pushes new content from a website to an RSS feed reader, where the user can read and organise headlines and access articles. A feed reader can receive feeds from multiple websites and provide a single point of access to information. RSS is a growing alternative to email alerts for websites with regularly changing content, and is particularly popular amongst bloggers.

More and more of the library’s subscription e-resources are offering RSS feeds. As a minimum they usually offer new journal feeds. Some also offer subject-based feeds or even custom feeds, based on your own search criteria.

Why use RSS?

The advantage of RSS over email alerts is that feed readers are designed especially for news and research alerts and therefore include options ideally suited to managing this type of content. In addition, some people prefer to maintain a separate environment for managing research alerts (the feed reader), where new journal alerts are not mixed in with general emails, not to mention spam.

On the downside, RSS feeds can be a bit tricky to set up for novices and feed readers require a bit of familiarisation before you can make the most of them. The feeds themselves are not yet as widely available on the library’s electronic resources as email alerts, and they may be in an experimental phase, which may lead to occasional problems.

How to get a feed reader

To use RSS, you need an RSS feed reader. This can be a program that you install on your PC, or it can be a web-based reader that simply requires registration. Some browsers (e.g. Mozilla Firefox ) incorporate a feed reader. Most readers are free.

Here are some popular readers. Please be aware that none of these are endorsed or supported by IESE – they are for your information only:

Web-Based Feed Readers

  Bloglines  
  FeedBucket 
  Google Reader 
  My Yahoo! 
  NewsBurst 
  Personalized Google Homepage 
  Pluck 
  Rojo 
  YodPod 

Desktop Feed Readers

  BlogBridge  (Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux)
  Feedreader  (Microsoft Windows only)
  RSS Express  (Microsoft Windows only)
  FeedDemon  (Microsoft Windows only)
  FeedExplorer  (Microsoft Windows only)
  NewsGator  (Runs in Microsoft Outlook)
  NewzCrawler  (Microsoft Windows only)
  Vienna  (Mac OS X only)

How to subscribe to an RSS feed

When using a website or e-resource, look out for one of the following icons:   and click on it. Depending on the resource, you may see instructions to add the feed to your reader, or you may just see a page of code. In the latter case, copy the URL from the address bar into your feed reader.

If you use Mozilla Firefox, click on the  logo at bottom right of the screen, and confirm your subscription. A bookmark will be created automatically in your browser linking directly to the latest news from your chosen feed.

Example: setting up a feed to IESE Insight using FeedReader

1. Download Feedreader from http://www.feedreader.com/ 
2. Go to IESE Insight http://insight.iese.edu/ 
3. Locate the RSS icon at the bottom of the page
4. Click on the RSS icon
5. Copy the URL from the address bar
6. Open Feedreader and click File > New > Feed
7. Paste the copied URL into the Add feed box and click OK