In efforts to dust off the ol’ RSS feed o’ mine (not sure why I’m adopting both twang and Irish with this sentence) I thought I’d make a quick post here on how I use Zotero to manage my RSS feeds.
I’m a big fan of Zotero, but I haven’t been using it a lot lately. Things have gotten weird and fallen to the wayside since becoming a mom— er, let’s be real, since I was pregnant— and, 8 months in, I’m finally feeling like I’m ready to get back in the ring when it comes to keeping up with the latest and greatest in both EdTech and general critical digital practice. And, for me, Zotero is super handy for catching and organizing articles and resources I come across in this sphere. On top of that, I can also store and access any RSS feeds I find particularly interesting. It’s super convenient for me to browse my RSS feeds then save any articles I like right in the same place.
I had mentioned this practice to Pilot a while ago and they immediately requested I blog about it… and, so, here goes.
Subscribing to RSS feeds in Zotero
I’m gonna be pretty vulnerable here and show you my entire Zotero library. The RSS section is pretty light, just a handful of blogs at the moment. Long story short, I went in and cleared a lot out a while back, and I’m still building it back up.
The RSS feed we’re going to subscribe to here is from Ben Wedmuller’s Werd I/O. Taylor recommended this site to me just the other day, particularly the Links post from the BBC on Extending our Mastodon social media trial. We’re currently working on a proposal for an upcoming conference on reclaiming your social media presence in the face of various social media platforms crashing and burning… to put it mildly.
Grab that RSS link
The first thing you need for adding an RSS feed to your Zotero is get the link! While there are certainly easier and cleaner ways to do this, my silly way to grab the RSS link is just to Inspect the page and search for “rss” in the HTML.
Add that RSS link
Once you have your RSS link, go to your Zotero— I like using the Desktop app— and select the “New Feed” option in the dropdown beneath the Library button.
Once you paste your RSS link into the available field, most times the Title autofills for you.
Hit Save, and voilà, your new feed has been added for your browsing pleasure!
Now excuse me while I go read all of this.