…keep up with news in my field (via RSS feeds)?

Answer

Instead of visiting individual Websites to view news, you can read your favorite news sources all in one place through an RSS reader. RSS is the technology used by thousands of Websites, such as CNN, Time, and PubMed, to deliver headlines and stories directly to your desktop as RSS “feeds”.

Introduction

RSS readers are software programs either installed on your computer or used through a Web interface which let you quickly scan headlines from many Web pages at once. You choose which sources to subscribe to and the reader automatically downloads the stories as they are published. Some sites, such as PubMed, even let you subscribe to your own searches as RSS feeds, showing new results when items are added which match your saved search.

To get started, first choose a reader (see list in Resources below) and then subscribe to one or more news feeds. To subscribe to the Library’s news feed, click on the RSS button located on the Library’s homepage and add the URL as a new feed into your reader.

Step-By-Step

  1. Choose a reader (see list in Resources below).
  2. Subscribe to feeds by clicking on the RSS button RSS button image found on many sites, and paste the URL into a new feed for your reader, or use your reader's automatic subscription tools. For example, to subscribe to the Health Sciences Library’s news feed, click on the RSS button located on the Library’s homepage and add the URL as a new feed into your reader.
  3. Check your RSS reader weekly or more often for new feeds. Each reader denotes which feeds are new since your last visit. In the example below, Bloglines denotes new feeds in bold type, with the number of new articles next to it in parentheses. Previously read feeds are in plain type.