Disseminating News Within Your Organisation

Brian Kelly

UKOLN

University of Bath

Bath, BA2 7AY

UKOLN is supported by:

EmailB.Kelly@ukoln.ac.ukURLhttp://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)

5

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

Email

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

8

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