Guide: Staying Current
RSS Feeds
What are RSS Feeds?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) provides a way to check for new updates to a website or find the latest tables of contents for your favourite journals. Many journal publishers and news services have RSS feeds. They are convenient because:
- You can look at the most recent table of contents whenever you like
- Your email in-box is not overloaded with lots of alerts
- Links to your favourite journals are available in one place
- You can link directly to information about the articles on the e-journal site.
Examples of RSS Feeds
- Journal Publishers Offering RSS Feeds
- Library News via RSS
- RSS feeds are also available on some library databases, e.g. ScienceDirect and Scopus.
How to set up RSS Feeds
The availability of an RSS feed is indicated by either 
or 
.
RSS Readers
A number of modern browers can be used to set up and read RSS feeds. See below for instructions for how to set up Mozilla Firefox and IE7 for RSS.
The following services are an alternative to using a web browser to receive RSS feeds. They can be downloaded freely.
Firefox instructions
If you see either 
or in the bottom right of your Firefox
browser window
This indicates that an RSS feed is available for the journal.
1. Click on the icon.
2. Make sure Live Bookmarks is selected and click Subscribe Now.
3. The RSS feed for the journal will appear in your bookmarks along with the most recent table of contents.
If you have a URL for the RSS feed:
Sometimes instead of an icon, the journal page will give you a URL for the RSS feed. If this is the case, you can set up the feed by copying the URL into your live bookmarks. Follow the below instructions:
1. Select Bookmarks - Organize Bookmarks from the Menu Bar
2. Click on the "File" menu bar and select "New Live Bookmark"
3. Enter a name for your feed, e.g. the name of the journal.
4. Cut and paste the URL for the RSS feed into the Feed Location box. You can do this by right-clicking on the RSS icon (or RSS link) and Copy the Link Location.
The Feed will then be available under your Bookmarks with a link to the table of contents for the most recent issue of the journal.
IE7 instructions
In IE7 this icon is in the icon bar in the top right of the browser screen. If the page you are interested in doesn't have a feed available this icon will be grey.
To subscribe an RSS feed
1. Click on the organge feed icon. It will take you to the rss feed page.
2. Click on Subscribe to this feed (in the yellow box at the top of the page).
3. Change the name of the feed if desired, then click on the Subscribe button.
To read the RSS feeds you have subcribed to
1. Go to your favourites (click on the yellow/orange star in the top left of the browser screen.
2. Click on the Feeds tab.
3. Click on the feed you want to read.
4. To read the full content from a headline click on the grey arrow beside the displayed date.
