Using RSS for Research

There is an awful lot of information out there. And that's just on Wikipedia. Taken as a whole, the Internet is a vast field of data and unfiltered information that offers nearly unlimited potential for research. Whether you are a professor or a student, you will do research on the Internet. This can be a daunting task, as unlike with the old, book and print journal-based world of research, information on the Internet tends to drift and change over time.*

So, how to keep track of it all?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is one way. You may have noticed these shiny orange icons on pages all over the Internet. Blogs, journals and newspapers uses them to let subscribers keep track of articles of interest. By saving the RSS link, you can stay informed of changes to websites of note. Your browser feeds the latest changes to your RSS folders and you can keep track of the sites you visit most without even having to go to the site.

But this is just one way to use RSS. Another is to syndicate your own research, so that collaborators can stay on top of the current project. By using an RSS enabled blog, you can post changes, discussion topics and updates, allowing your collaborators to keep up with the research process.

You can also create search feeds, like Google Alerts that will email you whenever your selected search term is mentioned online. This may end up dumping ridiculous amounts of useless links into your in box, so use a refined search term for your alert, not just one or two words.

But what happens if you are on the move and still need to do research? Say you're at a public computer – one which obviously doesn't have your RSS feeds bookmarked – what then?

Blinklist enables you to save your bookmarks to a website, making them accessible form anywhere. You only have to remember one url to gain access to the sites you need and you can organize them with tags and ratings to suit your interests. This lets you take yur research with you.

There is also Zotero, a plugin† designed to help manage your research, export citations and keep track of articles and journals. Zotero has the benefit of working with databases as well, allowing you to track, annotate and organize articles behind proprietary firewalls. You can even export citations.

Zotero v. 1.5 is in beta testing. This version has the added benefit of allowing you to back up your data and sync it across multiple computers.

So, don't be afraid of doing research online. We have the technology to keep track of that one pivotal article you need. Link it, syndicate it and move on to the next stage in the research process: writing that paper!


_________
* Obviously, it does in journals and books as well, but the pace of change on the internet is staggering. It may take years for a book to be updated and journals publish monthly corrections but these days, your research may change daily or even hourly, depending on your field.

† Firefox 2.0.* or 3.0, Netscape Navigator 9.0, or Flock 0.9.1 for Windows, Mac, or Linux.