New Options for Wowbrary (beginning on April 16):

RSS feeds
Wowbrary will be available also as RSS feeds showing new items purchased by our library. This option is for patrons who prefer RSS over email or as a supplement to the e-newsletter. One feed includes all new items for the week, and 29 smaller feeds show new items in a specific category such as mysteries, DVDs, cookbooks, etc. Please see http://www.wowbrary.org/rsslinks.aspx?l=2312 for a sample.
The RSS feeds are updated weekly just before the time the weekly emails go out. They include cover art (which does not appear in some RSS readers) and descriptions of the items, and each item permits click through to our catalog page and to reviews. A wide choice of RSS readers is supported. Among the popular ones are MyYahoo, Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, and Windows Live. The different RSS readers have different ways of displaying text and graphics and offer different capabilities. It has been found that Windows Internet Explorer 7 is the best as it lets you search the item descriptions by keyword.

Amazon customer ratings display
The Wowbrary e-newsletters and RSS feeds will display Amazon customer ratings (the 1 to 5 yellow stars) and number of reviews for all items with such ratings available. The rating stars will also appear for the past weeks’ items (“Previous Week”). These ratings and reviews are available by clicking on the “Review” button in the emails/RSS feeds. This new feature will make ratings and reviews far more visible, by showing prominently the average number of stars awarded and the number of customer reviews, with a hyperlink directly to these reviews.