I completely agree about the geek-factor of RSS, but would argue that such a project should go for the best of both worlds. Have Koha "publish" such "newsletter/new accessions/librarian reviews/lists/recommendations" etc. fundamentally as an RSS stream so it's available in that more user-friendly and elegant format for those savvy enough to make use of it. And then allow patrons to set their preferences to have the stream emailed to them, for those that like email.
From here none of this is a "little project" but I wholeheartedly agree it would be way cool, fun and a very valuable addition to Koha's value from "customer relations" POV.
2011/4/18 Robin Sheat <robin@catalyst.net.nz>:
Op maandag 18 april 2011 23:46:28 schreef Nicole Engard:
You are right that the lists now look like the search results, but they do not have the RSS feed by default. There are however custom RSS feeds that you can create for any types of content
RSS feeds are great, but most people don't know about them or what they are.
A cron job that runs weekly, bi-weekly & monthly, looks up the people who have mentioned that they want to receive new items at that frequency of a set of types, takes the output similar to that made by the RSS generator, and fires it off to them would a) be worthwhile and b) a fun project to implement, I think.
You could also roll other things into it, e.g. news that's been published to the OPAC within the selected timespan, or have a special notice section for emails to make it really easy for libraries to set up newsletter-style things with news and new items, customised to what that user wants to see.
Bonus points if there is also added the feature to do librarian reviews and have these included with the items if they're available (as STDC does here: http://libraryplus.blogspot.com/ but actually attached to the record.)
Of course, now it's becoming less of a medium-sized project and more of a big one :)
As much as I wish everyone would just use RSS, I don't see it happening (hell, I have an RSS reader open pretty much all the time, and forget to check it more than once every week or two.) However, everyone (almost) understands email and knows how to work it.
-- Robin Sheat Catalyst IT Ltd. ✆ +64 4 803 2204
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