Databases like PubMed and Turning Research Into Practice (TRIP), and even the occasional transfusion-related website are beginning to offer RSS feeds. RSS feeds present online information in ways that help you monitor new publications and upcoming events. This demo of exceptional feeds shows you how you can make best use of these tools. It will be of special interest to individuals who want to monitor the literature, educators who want to create reading lists for their students and organizations who would like to syndicate their resources. And the demo will get better over time as more websites make feeds available to their visitors.
New! Download all the feeds in the reading list starter kit
Transfusion Reading List Demo
Need help? See How to use this demo.
All the feeds in this demo are available in a single file. This means that with one link you can subscribe to all these selected sources. Download and import the file into your feed reader.
Download: Reading list starter kit (includes all feeds in the demo)
Updated: May 22nd, 2009
Frequently Asked Questions
If your answer is not here, post a comment or contact me at shanta.rohse@gmail.com
- How do I use the demo? Try the Demo Help.
- Will RSS feeds let me get articles for free? Only if they are free to begin with.
- I already use email alerts. Why would I use RSS feeds?. If they serve you well, email alerts are useful (Dr. Jennifer Fesser recommends PubCrawler. If you find they are buried under a clutter of spam, meeting invitations, mountains of corporate email alerts or personal email exchanges, consider trying feeds. Not only do RSS feeds avoid these frustrations, they are still spam-free, can usually be personalized and filtered to a great extent than email alerts, and are more easily exchanged with your colleagues.
- Are there disadvantages to using RSS feeds? Not all web sites offer them (fortunately, this is changing), you need to use a feed reader to view the feeds (much like you need an email client to view your emails), and you need to remember to look at your feed reader.
- How do I subscribe to feed? To follow an RSS feed, you need a feed reader. I prefer Google Reader, a web-based feed reader, but there are many other good choices.
- How do I find RSS feeds? Look for the image icons
or 
or 
on your favourite transfusion-related web pages. Look for RSS options within article databases like PubMed or TRIP. Or use a directory like Google’s Blogsearch or this demo. - May I copy your feeds into my feed reader/organizational web site/learning management system? Yes.
- My organization wants to syndicate our resources using RSS feeds. What should we do? Contact your web designer. Good web designers have many tools at their disposal for adding RSS feeds to your site.
- How do I know when you’ve added a new feed to your demo? Subscribe to the feed for this post: RSS feed for this post. See how this works?
Contributors
This demo began in September 2007 as part of a workshop called Cool Tools: Web-based learning for Transfusion Specialists, originally held for the Ontario Regional Blood Coordinating Network (ORBCoN). Since then others have contributed their scan and search strategies, making this demo an outstanding resource for the transfusion information maven: Dr. Jennifer Fesser, Dr. Heather Hume, The CBS TRALI Working Group, Pat Letendre, Dr. Jeanne Callum, Ray Berger, Dr. Ben Saxon, Wendy Owens, Diana Boye.
4 Comments
@Pat Letendre: I think it is the nature of the beast. I’ve used feeds for years, but only in the past year have I finally grasped that they can be used to create flexible, personalized reading lists. I have to give much of the credit to the clever tools and inspiration provided by online services like Yahoo! Pipes and (especially) Grazr. Can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Shanta,
Thanks for being an early adopter of RSS and promoting its professional uses when the rest of us did not know what you were talking about. I’ve finally twigged! And thanks for adding a feed to “Musings on TM”.
P.S. I really like what you did with the GRAZR feeds above. Now I’ll have to explore ways to create a “jukebox menu” of feeds. <8-)
Cheers, Pat
http://www.traqprogram.ca
Ray, thanks for the kind words. The opportunity to stay up to date rather than visiting each web site is definitely one of the key advantages of using feeds. Let me try to tackle your questions:
Thanks for the comments, Ray. This demo was originally part of a workshop I facilitated on using social media tools. When I have time, I’ll put together an FAQ to explain how to add these feeds to your own reader.
This is wonderful, I love it. I found it easy to navigate ; up to the level I actually went down to – though I\’m sure there is lots more I could do.
Questions:
1. If I wrote a comment about a paper/abstract who would actually see it/where would it go. Also if I had a question is it set up to answer a question and/or forward it to the author?
2. Could you add the BBTS Journal \’Transfusion Medicine\’? it\’s also a Blackwell publication
3. Did you have to deal with Copyright issues to allow you to share the abstracts, etc.?
4. Would you be able to develop/support an interested group of individuals who could share with you/each other feedback on various papers/activities? e.g., SMEs in the field giving instant feedback. Potentially to share and maybe publish online
5. Would you permit individuals to take information from your site for their own needs, e.g. for Con-Ed, research, etc. or would permission need to be obtained?
Just a few thoughts…. I really like the concept. Very compact and all together in one place. This also gives those who might have been a little hesitant to work with RSS feeds, or unsure of the process, the opportunity to become comfortable with this concept and build confidence.
Well done, Ray