#7 - Adding a journal RSS feed

Happily I have managed to add a feed from a journal from ANZ Reference Centre plus one from an about.com guide which was very easy to set up and guided me nicely through the process. In the process I found out that Winona Ryder is going to play Spock's mother in the new Star Trek movie ( for the uninitiated Spock's mother was human, although I can't imagine she ever was into shoplifting ) - and now that I am set up for these feeds I will know lots more valuable snippets like this.

#6 -RSS feeds

After having come across references to RSS feeds quite often and really having no clear idea of what they were, but having a vague idea that they kept you "up-to-date" with things, it has been good to learn a bit about them.
One of the misconceptions that I had was that it was a matter of having your own search terms and that you somehow received a notification ( email I thought ) when something new appeared with that term in it. Instead of that the RSS feeds are determined by the "producers" of the website on what sections should have a feed. eg something like new books received that month for a library feed.
Sometimes it can be surprising to see what feeds are and are not offered. For instance, SLV offers a number of feeds but I could pick up only one from the New York Public Library - a couple more if I narrowed it down to the Science Library.
I've subscribed to my 5 feeds - but I will explore all this a bit further when I have the time - -
right now I must try to catch up - - I'm behind schedule - - I've been travelling on impulse speed - - time for Warp factor 1 - -

# 5 - Managing to add something to a Wiki - or 2 Wikis

I thought I had actually successfully posted something useful about electronic journals represented in SLV databases to a wiki - but then I couldn't find it - and thought that someone else had removed it - - for absolutely no good reason !
Turned out that I had actually added it to the Redmond Barry Team Wiki and it's still there safe and well - so I am pleased about that - reassured that I can actually do it.
As I am adding this I am also looking at RSS feeds and talking to Lynette about how they can be used. Further down the track I will see if I can set up feeds from the internal SLV wikis - as I've found out that all wikis and blogs should automatically have feeds as it is enabled by the software behind them.
I added my blog - not without one hiccup though - to the PB Sandbox Wiki and I think I might go back there and also have a look at the information that Rebekah has added to the favourite restaurant section.

# 4 -Wiki Wackys

Here I am back again after a bit of a lull in my blogging - hope it will all come back to me. I've had a bit of a look at some different wikis - certainly seems that they can be useful in libraries and elsewhere. We all know to be a bit wary of Wikipedia but we also know that it is often a very good starting point for research on a subject.
Thought I'd have a look at the Star Trek entry on Wikipedia - no mention of William Shatner's muffins but I did find out lots of recent news that I wasn't aware of about new productions etc. Even some of the Star Trek items - which you would have thought would have been added to ad-infinitum - were still asking for citations to be added for some statements.
In addition, it isn't too likely that entries such as these are blatantly misrepresenting the facts.
However, and I can't begin to imagine the United Federation of Planets ( that's their flag at the top of this entry ) doing this, according to WikiScanner, it seems that a host of blue-chip companies have altered their entries on Wikipedia to cover up embarassing episodes in their history. WikiScanner can track the IP addresses of the machines that were used to make the changes to the online encyclopedia - see more

So wikis can be used for good -- or for evil - - -