Using Netvibes and Yahoo!
Pipes in practice
Jason Curtis
Site Librarian
Shrewsbury and Telford Health Libraries
Outline
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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
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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
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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:
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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