Just a quick post to bring a few RSS overviews to light for my colleagues from the IIP … we met last week to talk about how moving to a content management/publishing system would help them transform their overall web presence and bring them to the bleeding edge in content publishing in the Higher Ed space … the concept of RSS as a research sharing tool is yet to really hit the mainstream, but as more and more people are introduced to the whole publishing/syndication/subscription model of the web, we’ll begin to see pockets of Research Centers and Institutes adopt it all. At least one can hope!

I wanted to drop a post in for the members of the IIP to read a little about the history of RSS and to see first hand how it works so they can draw their own conclusions to how it would be best utilized. First of all, here are two quick sites that review the history of RSS, the first is from the Dive into Mark blog space and the second takes a much more linear historical perspective from gotee.net … both good overviews. Here are a list of links to major milestones in web syndication dating back to the Netscape Publishing Program in 1999. Here is an additional resource just in, Quick Start Guide to RSS for Educators, from Will Richardson. Finally, here is a link to The Evolution of RSS … another good read.

Once you’ve read up on the history, it may make sense to get a bloglines account (or other free service) and subscribe to a few feeds. They have a fairly complete directory. Also, when you visit sites that have feeds, just look for the RSS or XML mark, control click (or on a PC, right click) it and select copy URL … use that to add it to your bloglines and you’ll be subscribed. Once you get a solid listing of subscriptions you should begin to notice your web surfing habits changing a bit.

At any rate, there are a few resources. If there are others, please leave comments.