Innovative Interfaces has announced the availability of two new RSS capabilities for Millennium. The first offering will give libraries the tools they need to display RSS feeds in any number of locations in the online catalog. The second offering, a new product called Millennium Feed Builder, will allow staff to send the results of any Boolean query of the Millennium database as an RSS feed. This means that the library can deliver updated news and information. These new abilities will allow libraries to demonstrate their value as information aggregators and distributed content providers without the hassle of manual maintenance or the content limitations of static Web pages. Best of all, both RSS capabilities can be set up without the need for third-party servers, programming, or knowledge of XML.

The Millennium Web OPAC provides a sample set of customizable HTML pages that the library can modify to fit its particular needs. The incoming RSS enhancement allows staff to insert a token into the HTML code of these pages. This token displays any RSS feed--from national publications, to special interest magazines, to librarian Web logs--at any location in the online catalog where it is inserted. All that the library staff has to know is the URL of the feed. Staff can choose the number of headlines that display and whether or not to show the description or date for each entry.

Millennium Feed Builder will allow libraries to publish the results of any staff Boolean search of the Millennium catalog as an RSS feed. This will direct the most recent information about a particular subject, publisher, author, or items at a certain location to patrons. Feed Builder will bring library content to pages maintained by subject specialists, university or government departments, or any leading light in a library community.

This new product can reduce the time between acquisition and use of new materials. It will also cast the library in the role of daily information provider as part of the mix of news, magazines, and blogs found in patrons' feed readers. Library staff can also create special review files that Feed Builder will transmit to anywhere in cyberspace regarding special topics such as award winning books, library staff picks, books by local authors, or any other topic of interest.

Both the incoming RSS feed capability and the Millennium Feed Builder will be offered with the 2006LE Millennium release scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2005.

(www.iii.com) (www.millennium.com)