The Librarian's Lounge

Creating an RSS Feed for a Site That Doesn't Have One

So I had this dilemma: There's this awesome Anthropology site out there called Anthropology in the News. I've been wanting to add it to my RSS reader for some time now, but alas, they haven't yet created a feed for it. And no other site is as comprehensive in meeting my Anthropology news addiction as this one.

The first thing I did was contact the department to make sure I hadn't overlooked an already available feed. As it turned out, they haven't had the time or other resources to set one up yet. I got to thinking, there must be a way, with all the web technology out there, to create a feed for a site I don't own. I did a little research and sure enough - there are several different services out there to make that happen.

First I tried FeedYes. It seemed like the easiest way to go and it's a free service. Unfortunately, I couldn't derive a good feed for the site - it only gave me two of the many news items on the page. So then I tried Feedfire. Instantly, I had a beautiful feed for the site. The problem? The free version refreshes only once a day and only gives you 40 items at a time. As I didn't want to pay for what I thought should be freely available, I hopped over to Feed43, another free service. After spending about 20 minutes trying to figure out how to set it up, I gave up over the technical difficulty of what it was asking me to do.

Finally, I found a working solution with Page2RSS. It's simple and it's free. It's not perfect - when I added it to Google Reader, it said there were only 10 items available. Further scrutiny showed that each article was actually a good chunk of the website with all the links included. Strangely, the links are not listed in the order they are presented on the website and I'm not sure why. At first I thought it had something to do with the date the link was added, but that doesn't seem to be exactly the case. Regardless, I am happy to report that my dilemma is no more!

Here's a copy of the rss feed (RSS 2.0) link to Anthropology in the News for all you anthro aficionados out there. Enjoy!

Catering to Japan's Otome

As one who has an undergraduate degree in Anthropology and a grad degree in Information Resources & Library Science, I find stories about the intersection of books and culture fascinating. Yesterday, I read an article in Time Magazine about these "butler cafes" in Japan, which are to Japanese manga-reading women what the "maid cafes" are to the men. It's interesting to note that the author of the Time article explained the popularity of the butler cafes by noting the sexism women must deal with in Japanese society, the new venues being antithetical to that. I don't know that it's anything more that a person's desire to be pampered, myself - I mean, who wouldn't like to be waited on hand and foot for an hour or so? Interesting, too, that a business that seems to have a broad appeal has its roots in the comic-book-reading crowd. In this article, the author mentions that 90% of those visiting these cafes are not strictly otaku/otome but are "tourists." 

I'm also intrigued that its inspiration is not modeled on something from Japanese culture, but from British culture, with a few modifications. One wonders how this phenomenon would translate back into a primarily English-speaking country such as England or the U.S.

Newly Free

I was so happy to read today that This American Life has decided to go ahead and offer their current episode by podcast. This is the most interesting radio show I've ever listened to by far and now it'll be easier than ever to get the weekly fix. If you haven't given it a listen already, check out the archives. All past episodes can be streamed for free, or you can purchase them for $.95 each. If you're not sure where to start, click on the link to "our favorite shows" - something's bound to tickle your curiosity.

Ancient audio recordings from Pompeii

This is seriously the coolest thing I've heard in a very long time. This french archaeologist by the name of Philippe Delaite speaks, in french, about this discovery in which sounds were recorded in the grooves of a clay pot from Pompeii. It's a short video and all in french but includes a short audio portion of the recovered sounds. Wow - could this lead to entirely new understandings of the past?