Setting Up RSS Feeds

Real Simple Syndication (RSS) is a method of publishing links to content on your Web site. You can allow patrons to set up RSS feeds for new titles from Polaris PowerPAC directly to a Web site such as My Yahoo!. When the feed is received, the patron can click the link on the Web site to see a list of new titles in your library catalog and launch a catalog search for a specific title. Polaris PowerPAC is RSS 2.0 compliant.

Processing for the RSS feed is related to Polaris PowerPAC’s New Titles dashboard feature (see Automatic Web Parts). Automatic processing for the New Titles Web part occurs nightly via the SQL job Dashboard_NewTitles, and the dashboard links contain new titles for the past 31 days. For the RSS feed, background processing updates the current New Titles list hourly via the SQL job RSS_PopulateNewTitles. If you want to test RSS feeds after setup, you can run this job manually.

Set these PowerPAC profiles to control RSS feeds:

• RSS Feeds: Enable - Allows RSS feeds from Polaris PowerPAC. This profile is available at the system, library, and branch levels.
• RSS Feeds: Maximum new releases - Specifies how many titles should be listed in the RSS feed that the patron receives. This profile is available at the system level only; that is, it controls the number for every branch that enables RSS feeds.

When RSS is enabled, an orange RSS icon appears in the New Titles dashboard.

Patrons can click the icon to set up feeds, or click What’s RSS? for more information about how to set up RSS feeds and where to find readers. When you click the RSS icon, the RSS feeds are listed in the center area of the page. If you have a Windows-based reader such as SharpReader, you can drag each feed’s orange XML icon to the reader. If you have a Web-based RSS news reader such as My Yahoo!, you copy the URL for the feed and paste it into the appropriate field on the news reader’s RSS set-up page. If the patron subscribes to the RSS feed while connected to the system organization, the feed supplies all new titles in the system. If the patron subscribes to the feed while connected to a branch organization, the feed supplies all new titles for the branch.

When RSS is enabled, the header of the Polaris PowerPAC default.aspx page includes link tags that contain the RSS URLs. This allows RSS-aware browsers such as Firefox® to recognize the RSS feeds automatically when the user navigates to the portal page. Also, certain RSS programs such as SharpReader allow the user to enter the main URL of the Web site. For these programs, the patron can enter the main Polaris PowerPAC URL. The RSS program recognizes the links in the page header and subscribes to the feeds automatically.