Using Netvibes and Yahoo! Pipes in practice

Jason CurtisSite LibrarianShrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries

Outline

• Overview• Examples of Netvibes pages• Using Netvibes in practice• Creating an email alerting service• Using Yahoo! Pipes• Using Feedburner

• Questions

Overview : Netvibes

• Netvibes can be used to create a public ‘start page’ with many tabs

• Can enable users to view new journal articles, books, new evidence, across a wide range of subjects

• No need for users to login (unless they want Athens protected full-text)

• Uses RSS to pull in information• Will work on Internet Explorer 6

Overview : Email alerting

• Use Yahoo! Pipes to combine feeds from different sources

• Combined feed passed through Feedburner• Feedburner manages email subscriptions• Users receive up to one email a day if new content

available• Yahoo! Pipes works best in IE7 or Firefox

Example of email output

Examples

Many library services are now using Netvibes

• KnowledgeNet (Wolverhampton Hospitals)• Sheffield University• Dublin City Public Libraries• Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre

Using our site

A quick demonstration of what users see when using our site

www.netvibes.com/sathlibraries

Creating a Netvibes site

• Login using the details provided (or your own account if you prefer)

• Feel free to follow the steps and there will also practice time later

www.netvibes.com

Creating a Netvibes site

• Setting up a public page• Changing themes and colours • Creating a new tab• Adding a feed • Adding a text box• Adding a link• Exporting and importing an OPML file• Sharing widgets • Moving and editing boxes• Making sure an RSS feed links to full-text

Sources of RSS Feeds

• CASH (Current Awareness Service for Health)• NHS Evidence (Specialist Collections and other feeds

from the RSS directory)• National electronic Library for Medicine (NeLM)• BMJ and AMA Journals (full-text for NHS Athens)• BioMed Central journals (free full-text)• MedWorm (pre-configured and search query results)

Sources of RSS Feeds cont.

• PubMed searches• Behind the Headlines• EBSCOHost databases (CINAHL full-text and Health

Business elite)

• Your own feeds

Your own feeds

Feeds can be created from:

• Library blogs• Catalogues (using built-in features or Feed43)• Social bookmarking tools (e.g. Diigo, Connotea)• Google Reader public feeds• Pages without an RSS feed (using Feed43)

Practice

Links to sources are available on the Team Knowledge Update wiki

http://teamknowledgeupdate.pbworks.com

Setting up email alerts

• Netvibes cannot offer email alerts• Yahoo! Pipes is used to combine feeds on a topic• Feedburner is then used to offer and manage email

subscriptions• Users will receive an email each day something new

appears on their chosen subject

Using Yahoo! Pipes

• Yahoo! account required• Pipes can combine RSS feeds to create a single RSS

feed• For best results, use IE7 or Firefox• Can publish pipes, so others can modify them for their

own use

Using Yahoo! Pipes

• Login using the details provided (or your own account if you prefer)

• Feel free to follow the steps and there will also practice time later

http://pipes.yahoo.com

Using Feedburner

• Google account required• Offers email subscription management for RSS feeds

Demonstration

http://feedburner.google.com

Feedburner in practice

• Feedburner provides a link for subscriptions (or code to create a signup box)

• You or user enter their email address and validation code

• User then clicks the link sent to them• User can unsubscribe at any time• Alerts deactivate if 5 emails bounce back• You can see who has subscribed

Activation email

Unsubscribing