Vast Active Library and Information Science blog. From a recent library science graduate in Wellington, New Zealand. A focus on reference and current awareness tools and issues, especially free, web-based resources.

 
Panlibus describes the launch of personalised RSS feeds for library users at Northumbria University.

"Subscribers to their personal feed receive alerts from their Library account such as 'Item due for return in 3 days', or 'The item you reserved is now awaiting collection at the Library', or 'Your overdue item has already attracted in excess of £2.00 in charges'. The feed items provide a link to take the user, without an interviening login challenge, in to their Library interface at the apropriate page to take the required action such as renew the book on loan."

This is cool. It's not the first example of the use of RSS in a catalogue (I'm using LibraryELF and finding it very useful), but the automatic login appears to be a new, and very cool, feature - LibraryELF gives you the information, but you have to login to the OPAC separately.

There's also a research paper on 'Personalised RSS in the Library' (PDF).

| posted by Simon at 8:34 pm