Sidebar

Main Content

RSS feed for New Books Plus at the Penn Library

What is the orange XML button and what does it do?

The XML button allows you to subscribe to New Books Plus as an RSS feed, which allows another program or even another device (for example, a PDA or cell phone) to deliver information to you on new books added to the Penn Library's collection as soon as it is available. RSS is usually said to stand for "Really Simple Syndication," and it is relatively easy to use. RSS is a form of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which assigns a code to each piece of data so that the program or device receiving the information will know exactly what to do with it.

The New Books Plus RSS feed will keep you up to date with the latest seven days' worth of new books. Whatever parameters you might have placed on the New Books Plus search that led you to the XML button will be carried over to your RSS subscription. Because thousands of books are added to the library's collection each month, we recommend that you place restrictions on your search (by community of interest, library location, format, or language) before subscribing to the RSS feed in order to keep the feed to a manageable size.

RSS readers are available as plugins for most popular browsers (for example, Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape and Internet Explorer) and are built into some mail clients. A number of stand-alone programs are also available.

If you have questions about New Books Plus or RSS feeds, please contact us for assistance.