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Reference Sources and Services

Notes of Health Sciences at the University of Helsinki, a working group was formed and charged with
exploring possibilities for an RSS current awareness service.
Open source and freely available feed-finding tools and homegrown input forms that fed into the
library’s existing journal database structure were employed to create an initial collection of 1,900
journal feeds (now exceeding 2,400). Because the group had neither the time required for individual
title review nor an established taxonomy necessary for categorizing the journal titles according to
discipline, the group leveraged the category assignments in the SFX knowledgebase, the library’s
Open URL link resolver software, which has an internal taxonomy for electronic journals. Although,
the taxonomy is not particularly refined, the group deemed it adequate for the task. The group
exported the SFX categories for the library’s active subscriptions, matched them against the library’s
electronic journals database, and reviewed the assignments for accuracy.

Methods of Providing CAS

The categorical lists of RSS feeds comprehensively presented the titles available to Ebling
Library users, but the extended length of most of the subject-based lists was
cumbersome. Moreover, the alphabetically arranged categorical lists did nothing to
signify the influence or popularity of a journal within the categories. To resolve these
usability and qualitative concerns, the group selected core journals in each category to
create much shorter, more relevant “top journals” lists.
The Ebling library compiled the lists using librarians’ subject expertise, liaisons’ core lists of titles,
journal usage statistics, and the impact factors from Web of Knowledge’s Journal Citation Reports. To
save users’ time and to allow easy import into feed readers, bundled OPML files were created for
both these top journals lists and the comprehensive lists. Step-by-step instructions were provided to
simplify the task of quickly populating users’ feed readers with high-quality journal information.
With the feeds gathered, categorized, and bundled, the group’s focus moved to bringing users to
the current awareness project through multitiered educational and promotional activities. The
obvious first target group for these activities was Ebling Library’s own library staff, whose
understanding of the project’s purpose as well as the process of creating personalized RSS-based
current awareness services would be essential to the project’s success. A “proof of concept” session
was held in which various feed readers were configured with feeds from library professional journals.
This was contrasted with the system of routing journals among staff for current awareness purposes
that had been used internally but had become bogged down and impractical. Staff members were
also offered individualized sessions to help them to choose readers, set up feeds, and become
comfortable using RSS feeds. Liaison librarians were encouraged to prepare themselves to be able
to actively promote the value of RSS for current awareness among their liaison groups.
Along with a collection of instructional materials, including video, an hour-long “Keeping Current
with the Health Literature Using RSS” class has been added to Ebling Library’s regularly scheduled
drop-in instructional sessions. The class emphasizes RSS as a convenient alternative to more
traditional methods of staying on top of professional literature and includes hands-on activities for
participants to set up a feed reader, select and import individual feeds and OPML bundles, and
view and edit feeds in a feed reader. Brief introductions to the concept of current awareness using
RSS have been incorporated into many of the various presentations provided to Ebling Library user
groups in other instructional settings.

80 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY