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Google Reader and the Academic Community

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When Google Reader was first introduced, the product manager, Nicholas Baum, said it was like your “inbox for the web.” (Read his full introduction here) As many of you know I am a big Google fan and will try out any of their products so I jumped right in. After several weeks of use I am not totally hooked and realize that Google Reader (or some sort of RSS reader) is a must have for anyone in the academic community.

How it Works:

On almost any page that you visit now a days there is what’s called a RSS feed reader. It often has an orange icon accompanying it or even just says ‘RSS feed’. If you look at the right of this page you will see that my blog has a RSS feed as well. If you see any of these things, or often even if you don’t, you can ’subscribe’ to that webpage.

To subscribe you right click on the icon or link and click “Copy Link Location” (Firefox) or “Copy Shortcut” (IE7). After that go to Google Reader and click “Add Subscription.” Walaha! It is added to your reads and updated every couple of minutes if there is something new. There are lots of other little tricks I love about Google Reader, like the shortcuts (list of shortcuts and other FAQ’s about Google Reader ) and the ability to read it INSIDE of your G-mail , but this article is more to introduce the product and discuss it’s academic potential. Feel free to add any comments you have about what you like about it or other RSS-feed readers that you like. For more information about RSS Feeds in general and other options out there see Wikipedia or About.com.

General Uses of a RSS Feed Feader in an Academic Community:

- World News - No college education would be complete without keeping up with the news of the world. (CNN Feed , BBC Feed )
- Campus Happenings - Keep up to date with what is happening on campus
- Campus Sports - I am an avid Tar Heel Fan and have subscribed to several of my favorite teams RSS feeds to keep up with what is going on (UNC Sports RSS Feeds Page ).
- Keeping up with your favorite hobby or passion. For me it happens to be Google so I am subscribed to dozens of Google RSS feeds.
Possible Discipline Specific Uses:

The possible uses of a tool that lets you aggregate the most current information on the web is one that is useful across all disciplines of education. Of course sciences like medicine have a constant need to be updated on the latest and greatest developments in their field… but that need extends beyond them. If anyone is to survive in an academic community one must be up to date with what the rest of the community is doing. I would be interested to see what you think about this, but I believe that someday RSS feeds or something like that will start to appear that alert users of the newest publications in print articles as well. It would certainly be a useful tool for academic writers. There is nothing worse than working on an article for weeks only to find that your topic was already written about, and you didn’t know about it.

So take a moment and look through the hundreds of pages in your bookmarks and see which ones would be helpful to subscribe to. It only takes a moment to set up and the knowledge you gain from your daily reading is invaluable. Read what you can, skip the things you don’t find important. Remember, knowledge is power.

I realize that my perspective may be limited, but as always I am writing to induce discussion. We all learn from each other, so what is your favorite RSS feed? How do you use RSS feeds in your specific discipline? What do you think about the future of RSS feeds? Do you think they will eventually start to publish information about printed articles? Perhaps it is already out there…