Disseminating News Within Your Organisation Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, BA2 7AY UKOLN is supported by: Email [email protected] URL http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Jan 05, 2016
Disseminating News Within Your Organisation
Brian Kelly
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath, BA2 7AY
UKOLN is supported by:
[email protected]://www.ukoln.ac.uk/
Session Aims
This session• Includes hands-on exercises and group
discussions
By the end of the session you should:• Be aware of the potential of automated new feeds
within an institutional context• Be aware of current standards for news feeds• Have made use of RSS viewers and authoring
tools• Have a feeling for the different models for
managing news• Be in a position to make recommendations on local
approaches to the provision of news feeds
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Timetable
11:00: Start of workshop• Introduction• Current Approaches To News Feeds And Their
Limitations • Approaches to Automated News Feeds• Standards For News Feeds• Creating Your Own News Feed• Deployment Issues• Conclusions
12:00
4
Exercise 1
In small groups briefly discuss the following
1.1 What is your background?
1.2 Review news services within your institution
1.3 Describe the limitations of existing news services within your institution
E
Try not to spend too long on this exercise(3 mins)
Try not to spend too long on this exercise(3 mins)
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Use Of News
News
Email alerts
Email newsletters
Hybrid paper / email newsletters
Web pages
Posters
Newsletters
Message of the day
Login notices
Usenet News
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Issues
Issues
Timeliness
Cost
Relevance
Need to loginInformation overload
Information desert
Personalisation
Maintenance
Reuse No single solution
An Architecture
Institutions are beginning to develop richer architectures for managing and disseminating news
Newsdatabase
Automated expiry, …
Web site
Paper
A better approach, but there is a need to do this in a standard way in order to:
• Allow others to use our news
• Allow us to include news from 3rd parties
• Allow us to use off-the-shelf authoring tools and readers
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RSS
RSS:• Originally (v 0.9) stood for Rich Site Summary• A popular lightweight XML standard for
distributing news feeds and syndication• Now an RDF application – RDF Site Summary
<item rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-3-Events-20010410/"> <title>DOM Level 3 Events Working Draft Published</title> <description>10 April 2001: The DOM Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of ….</description> <link>http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-3-Events-20010410/</link> </item>
<item rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-3-Events-20010410/"> <title>DOM Level 3 Events Working Draft Published</title> <description>10 April 2001: The DOM Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of ….</description> <link>http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/WD-DOM-Level-3-Events-20010410/</link> </item>
Now try the exercises in order to gain experiences in using and creating RSSNow try the exercises in order to gain experiences in using and creating RSS
H
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Parsing RSSW3C’s news information is available as an RSS file
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Creating RSSRSSxpress is an example of a Web-based tool which can be used to createan RSS file
This tool was developed by UKOLN
Other tools are available to create RSS, and expect to see them in a CMS (Zope already does this).See <http://www.blogspace.com/rss/>
Other tools are available to create RSS, and expect to see them in a CMS (Zope already does this).See <http://www.blogspace.com/rss/>
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Converting XHTMLUse the Syndicate Your Page service by:
• Adding some simple <span> tags
• Use Syndicate Your Page to transform your
(lightly-structured) page to RSS
The output can then be processed by an RSS parser
The output can then be processed by an RSS parser
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Approaches To ViewingUKOLN has two RSS parsers:
RSSxpress:• A CGI program• Requires SysAdmin to install
locally and configure• Works with any browser
RSSxpress-lite:• JavaScript solution which can
be used by HTML authors• Browser must support
JavaScript• Need style sheet to improve
appearance of news feeds
See <http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/> and <http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/lite/>
See <http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/> and <http://rssxpress.ukoln.ac.uk/lite/>
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Other Parsers (1)
RSS was originally developed to enable published to provide resources which could be can be processed by My.Netscape.com
NOTE My.Netscape made use of RSS 0.9, not RSS 1.0.Netscape appear to no longer be developing RSS
NOTE My.Netscape made use of RSS 0.9, not RSS 1.0.Netscape appear to no longer be developing RSS
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Other Parsers (2)
The Redland RSS 1.0 Viewer is an open source Web service allowing you to take RSS 1.0 feeds and format them as HTML.
It was developed by Dave Beckett, ILRT, University of Bristol.
http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/rss/http://www.redland.opensource.ac.uk/rss/
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Moreover provide a free tickertape applicationSee <http://w.moreover.com/dev/ticker.html>
Other Parsers (3)
Headline Viewer is an MS Windows application that lets you see news headlines from a configurable list of Headline providers
See <http://www.vertexdev.com/HeadlineViewer/>See <http://www.vertexdev.com/HeadlineViewer/>
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Other Parsers (4)
A final example of a news reader is Feedreader.
<http://www.feedreader.com/><http://www.feedreader.com/>
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Deployment Issues
Before deployment of news services in your institution:
• What management issues need to be addressed?
• What technical issues need to be addressed?
In addition:• Who should be providing news feeds which would
be of use to your institution?
D
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Technical Issues
Issues:• Security and performance• Creation tools• Management tools• Information Flow Models• …
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Management Issues
Issues:• Justification• Resource implications• Quality of information (automated deletion,
etc.)• Duplication of information• Inappropriate information• …
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Who Should be Doing This?
Which institutions should be providing news feed which would benefit institutions?
• Funding bodies (e.g. JISC, HEFCE, EU, etc.) so that news of new funding calls will be available within institutional Web sites automatically
• National services (e.g. JISC services, LTSNs, etc.) so that information about news services, events, etc. can be provided in an automated way
• …
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Further Developments
Creating and viewing news feeds is relatively simple.
Possible enhancements include:• Personalised interfaces to news feeds• Searching news feeds• Management models for news feeds • Integration with Content Management
Systems
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Personalised Feeds
SOSIG’s My.SOSIG service allows users to choose their preferred news feeds, including:
• Commercial news• HE feeds
(JISCMail)
Note that the JISCMail feed makes use of an emailRSS conversion filter
http://www.sosig.ac.uk/grapevine/Userhttp://www.sosig.ac.uk/grapevine/User
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Searching News Feeds
The RDN has a Behind the Headlines service
Small number of today’s news items are chosen and used as a search string to the RDN hubs
Because the search results are in RSS format, they can be processed by any RSS parser
Because the search results are in RSS format, they can be processed by any RSS parser
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Searching News Feeds
You can provide pages containing “canned” searches of news feeds
For example:• Your Research &
Grants Unit could provide results of a search for “funding” from news feeds provided by JISC, HEFCE and the EU.
• The Careers Department could provide results of a search for “funding”
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Models
Good For UserThe end user can choose her news feeds, including local news, news from JISC services and news from third parties
Good For ServiceThe service can chose its own informationflow model. Its news is disseminated automatically.
Good For UserThe end user can choose her news feeds, including local news, news from JISC services and news from third parties
Good For ServiceThe service can chose its own informationflow model. Its news is disseminated automatically.
RSS Institution (e.g. Bath)
RSSCommunity(e.g. MIDAS)
RSSExternal
(e.g. BBC)
Local News..JISC News..National News
XHTML converted to RSS
Structured database converted to RSS
Zope CMS outputs to RSS & XHTML
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Conclusions
What conclusions have we reached:• On the potential for use of news feeds by
our institution • On our institutional policies on providing
news feeds for use by others• On technical approaches we could be
using• On managerial issues which need to be
addressed