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What is RSS? It stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. But let’s ignore technical definitions for a minute, and take a quick look at what RSS actually DOES for you.  Imagine having your own personal news-clipping service. You tell the service to get headlines from the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and all of your other favorite publications. Put those headlines together with the latest updates from your favorite online blogger, and the list of upcoming events at the public library, and present them all to you on one single sheet of paper. The benefit to you is that you get to see the top stories and events at a single glance. If you want more information, you know which paper or website the headline came from, and can easily drill down to find the details.  This is what RSS does for you - in the online, internet world. Rather than surf around to all of your favorite websites, you can open up one single site, or one single small software program, and it will immediately retrieve the latest headlines or updates from all of your favorite sites and present them to you on one screen. If you want further details about any of the news items or event entries that you see, you click on it. Getting Started... First, you need the news clipping service…the system that goes out to all of your favorite sites and collects the headlines. These are called news readers. There are many different varieties available to you – and almost all of them are free of charge. Some of them are standalone software products that you download and install on your computer, while others are online services.  Google has a great online reader, and that might be a good place to start. For more information on other popular readers, check out this article. Second, you need to tell your new newsreader which websites you want to receive updates from. Your newsreader will provide instructions on how to ‘subscribe’ to new sites. As long as your favorite sites provide an ‘RSS feed” – usually indicated by the presence of an icon that looks like this…. or this… you’ll be in business. Simply click on that icon and follow the instructions for adding the website to your newsreader.
You’re done! Now every time you log on to or open your newsreader, you’ll see the latest updates from all your favorite places (including the library, of course!)
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