What are RSS Feeds?

RSS/Atom it is a great way for you to keep up with your research and saves you time. Users subscribe to RSS feeds using various services called "aggregators" or more simply "feed readers" which compile and organize your feeds together in a readable format. Otherwise the alternative would be going to each page every day to check on every single webpage. There are many feed readers (aggregators) to choose from. Here's a list of some possible choices:

• Bloglines
• Google Reader
• My Yahoo!
• News on Feeds list of aggregators

For more on RSS Feeds, see the Alkek Wiki entry on Using RSS feeds.

Setting up RSS Feeds from Databases

You can set up databases to alert by email you when a new article matches your search terms.  You can also set up an RSS feed so that you get notification of new articles matching your search in your feed reader.

This is the most commonly used icon to denote a feed.  Most databases will have this icon identifying feed addresses.  Add the address to your feed reader.

See the Alkek Wiki onSetting up Database Search Alerts & RSS Feeds for more detailed instructions.

• Databases that provide RSS feed services.

RSS Feeds and Refworks

RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic software package that enables you to:

• Import references from many library databases
• Organize imported references into folders
• Build a bibliography in a variety of formats

Did you know you can use Refworks as a feed reader? This nifty webpage from the Refworks folks explains how to set this feature up.  Refworks' RSS feature to imports citations from database search feeds.