Thursday, December 30, 2004

What is RSS?

Zeki Celikbas of Istanbul Technical University provides a clear and concise introduction to RSS in "What is RSS and how can it serve libraries?"

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

USC Center for Public Diplomacy

The University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy is a useful site for information about public diplomacy, including (in the "library" section) links to government hearings, reports, public opinion surveys, and think tanks and organizations that deal with public diplomacy.

Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Converting RSS to Javascript

RSS Digest (see September 25 posting) is one of several tools that will create javascript out of an rss feed so that you can direct the feed to any html page. Two similar tools that deserve mention are rss-to-javascript and Feed2JS. Directing an RSS feed to a webpage - as has been done with the feeds on the left side of this page - makes good sense when you'd like users to be able to read newsfeeds without downloading/installing/using an rss aggregator/reader like Amphetadesk orFeedReader. In our environment, where many users are neither inclined nor permitted to download/try out new software, this is particularly useful. Using an RSS to Javascript converter, you can easily direct any RSS feed to your website, intranet, or even to an html page on the shared section of your LAN.

Monday, December 6, 2004

Center for Immigration Studies

(from Scout Report Volume 10, Number 48)

December 3, 2004Center for Immigration Studies [pdf]

http://www.cis.org/

Founded in 1985, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization which happens to be the United States' only think tank devoted "exclusively to research and policy analysis of the economic, social, demographic, fiscal, and other impacts of immigration on the United States." From the homepage, visitors can peruse a number of common topics in immigration, such as immigration history, statistics on immigrants, and citizenship. The site's homepage also contains links to current news articles addressing various aspects of immigration, and also contains a feature titled "This Day in Immigration", which highlights various important dates in immigration history and policy. Perhaps the most helpful section of the site is the "What's New" area of the site, which highlights various new policy briefs and papers released by the CIS.