Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Real Simple Syndication (RSS): The Law Library of Congress

Question 1: What is so great about RSS?

Answer: RSS feeds are a great way to keep up-to-date on important news and information without cluttering your email inbox. RSS feeds also free you from having to check different websites and news sources constantly. Basically, by subscribing to a website’s RSS feed you can get automatic updates for when news and information is posted on that site. To view RSS content you just need to set up an RSS feed reader—these readers conveniently compile the different feeds that you subscribe to into one place. After setting up an RSS feed reader you can subscribe to as many RSS feeds as you have time to keep up with! To identify an RSS feed look for this icon .

For more information about RSS feeds and feed readers click here.

Question 2: What RSS feeds should I subscribe to?
Answer: There are so many to subscribe to, but you are missing out if you do not to subscribe to one or more of the RSS feeds sent out by the United States Law Library of Congress! The Law Library of Congress is the largest law library in the world with over 2.65 million volumes covering ever jurisdiction in the world. Even better, the Law Library of Congress has been digitizing more and more of its resources and making it available to the public through the Internet.

The Law Library of Congress provides four primary RSS feeds:
1) The Global Legal Monitor provides information about legal developments around the world. Users can subscribe to the entire feed or select feeds on a per topic basis.
2) The Legal Research Reports feed notifies users of legal commentary, research and resource recommendations on a variety of legal topics.
3) The News & Events feed broadcasts news and events for the Law Library of Congress.
4) The Webcasts feed provides notices of new webcasts from the Law Library of Congress.

Through the Law Library of Congress’s RSS feed site (the link is below), you can also subscribe to RSS feeds for legislative news and information provided by the Library of Congress THOMAS website.
Now, go forth and subscribe to the Law Library of Congress RSS feeds by clicking here.
Oh, and if you would still rather receive updates by email, just click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Written by Jennifer Chang, Law Librarian Fellow