Two UNHCR blogs

UNHCR's Policy Development and Evaluation Service (PDES) has started a blog that focuses on "Witchcraft, Displacement and Human Rights." It shares news reports and related research studies on witchcraft allegations and their impact. The RSS feed is available here.

A second blog was started in tandem with the 2009 evaluation of UNHCR’s Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming (AGDM) strategy. Called "It Begins with Me. It Begins with You. It Begins with Us. Thoughts and Actions Around Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming," its purpose is described as follows: To "encourage thinking, dialogue and action around the challenges and rewards of AGDM. You’ll find the mission, methodology and the milestones of the ongoing AGDM evaluation as well as posts about films, audio, books, paintings, programs, partners, news, op-eds… anything that helps add to our greater understanding of AGDM." The RSS feed can be accessed here.

New Journal Articles: Alerts and Full-text Retrieval

I've added a new journal articles feature to the sidebar of my other blog. It works like this: As I come across articles of interest, I bookmark them in Delicious and add the tag "newjournalarticles." Each time this occurs, the list of article titles in the sidebar updates accordingly. So whenever you visit the blog, be sure to check the list for any new titles of interest.

If you forget to check, you can always 1) click on the link to go to the bookmarked titles in Delicious, or 2) subscribe to the RSS feed for the listing and peruse the updates at your leisure in your own newsreader.

One thing to note is that these journal articles are not necessarily available in full-text online. To retrieve the full-text, you have several options:

- purchase the individual article
- sign up for a free online trial for the journal you are interested in (for example, Sage Journals is offering free access to all of its journals during April)
- search Worldcat.org for libraries that subscribe to a particular journal; enter your postal or zip code to determine which library is closest to you, and retrieve the text from that library
- if you are based in a developing country, you might have access to full-text journals through one of these initiatives: Electronic Information for Libraries (EIFL); GDN Journal Services; HINARI Access to Research Initiative; JSTOR Developing Nations Initiative.

Finally, it's always worth searching online for keywords in the title of journal article you are seeking. Why?
- Sometimes journal publishers designate specific issues as free online samples: see, e.g., "A Heterotopian Analysis of Maritime Refugee Incidents," abstracted in IngentaConnect, but available at no cost by Wiley InterScience.
- Some articles are posted online in openly accessible journals: see, e.g., "The humanitarian consequences and actions in the Eastern Mediterranean Region over the last 60 years – a health perspective", which was indexed in PubMed.
- Some articles are available as preprints or conference papers: see, e.g, the abstract for "Resettling Refugees in Rural and Regional Australia: Learning from Recent Policy and Program Initiatives"; a report with a slightly different title but with the same authors was published earlier.

FMO on Delicious

Forced Migration Online (FMO) has started two sets of delicious bookmarks, one for new documents added to its digital library and the other for RSC working papers. As I've mentioned before, the handy thing about delicious is that it offers RSS feeds for tags created to describe one's bookmarks. So users can subscribe to feeds for both the aforementioned bookmark lists, here and here. Very handy for keeping up-to-date on FMO content.

Peace Palace Library RSS Feeds

The Peace Palace Library has expanded its offerings of RSS feeds:

- If you would like to be kept up to date about new additions to the library's collection, you can subscribe to keyword feeds (e.g., Refugees and displaced persons, Human trafficking, Humanitarian assistance, etc.). Any time a record for a new journal article, book chapter, report or book that includes one of your keywords is added to the catalogue, your feed will be updated.

- You can also subscribe to a journal feed to be alerted when a new issue of a journal is received by the library.

- If you prefer to be notified of new tables of contents for individual journals that you specify, you can do so from the journal TOC page.

- You can even conduct a search across journal articles and then create a custom RSS feed for those results. Choices include searching on the journal title, the article title or the author.

Monitoring legal journal articles

Some time ago, I posted a note on "monitoring journal-reported research" via, among other strategies, generating custom RSS feeds. One journal service that has added this feature since the time that I wrote that earlier post is Current Law Journal Content.

How it works: Conduct a search; the search results page will then display a "feed version of search" link that you can subscribe to in order to be alerted when future results occur that match your search criteria. That's it!

Updating the Forced Migration Research Guide

I recently made available an RSS feed to let users know what resources had been newly added to my forced migration research guide. To supplement this, I have also added a link and RSS feed to my del.icio.us bookmarks for pending resources that I plan to add to the guide when time permits! This helps me to keep track of things, and it allows readers to access relevant reference and research materials in the interim.

ReliefWeb's RSS Feeds

ReliefWeb has offered RSS feeds for some time, but their list keeps growing. They've added a feed for their "Policies & Issues" library, which is very helpful for tracking research reports. And they now also offer the chance to create feeds based on search results. Follow the instructions provided on their feed page, and find out what else you can subscribe to.

23 Things: The Eighth Tool = Mashups

I noticed that the Free Movement blog uses Yahoo! Pipes to create news and research feeds that are displayed on the site. Since one of the 23 Things units focuses on mashups, I decided to experiment with Yahoo! Pipes as my challenge. I found a guide with (somewhat dated) step-by-step instructions. I elected to use RSS feeds from six different forced migration research institutes for the exercise. Here is the result (you can also see my avatar!). The process is pretty straightforward, although this is probably less true if you want to play around with other types of sources besides RSS feeds.

23 Things: New Books RSS Feed

One service I offer on my other blog, Forced Migration Current Awareness, is announcements about "New Books" on refugees, forced migration, internal displacement, and the humanitarian sector. In the past I have created custom RSS feeds using the Amazon Feed Generator. Basically, this allows you to enter keywords, generate a feed, then receive updates when new books with those matching keywords are added to Amazon's database. For various reasons, though, this has not been an optimal solution.

After being introduced to del.icio.us through SLA's 23 Things program, I thought of a way to supplement my new books service. Basically, whenever I come across notices of new book titles, I bookmark those pages in del.icio.us and tag them as "newbooks." del.icio.us automatically generates RSS feeds for all tags, so I've subscribed to the newbooks feed, and when updates appear in my Google newsreader, I "share" them so that they appear in my "New Books" feature in the sidebar of my blog. This ensures that anything missed in my Amazon feed can still be picked up and highlighted.

23 Things: Forced Migration RSS

In blog posts past, I've highlighted many of the different RSS feeds that are now available from forced migration and humanitarian web sites. I thought it might be useful to provide an index of sorts to those previous listings here:

Organizations

• Brookings Institution
• International Organizations
• Policy/Research Institutes

Thematic

• Human Rights Developments
• Humanitarian News
• Refugee/Forced Migration Blogs

23 Things: The Sixth Tool = RSS

I introduced RSS when I first set up this blog, so rather than re-invent the wheel, I think I'll just re-post my original introduction! Here it is, with only minimal updating:

Once upon a time, researchers who wanted to keep up with frequently updated information on the web (news, publication titles, research developments, etc.) had to remember to regularly visit bookmarked sites of interest or register for e-mail alerts or newsletters (if these were available). Today, an XML file format called RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") simplifies this process dramatically by delivering "headlines" to you directly so that you can peruse news and information in one central location. Content is distributed via RSS in the form of a feed that must be read by an application called a newsreader or news aggregator (more about this below).

Increasingly, content providers all across the web are beginning to offer RSS feeds of one kind or another. To determine whether or not a web site has RSS feeds, just look for a reference to "site feed," "syndicated content," or an orange icon that either says RSS or XML on it or that looks like this: . Also, if you use Internet Explorer v.7 or Mozilla's Firefox as your browser, this icon appears in a toolbar at the top of the browser. It is normally gray, but if you visit a site that offers RSS, it will turn orange, indicating that a feed is available. (NB: I use IE7 and to be honest, the icon is not 100% effective; but it's worth keeping an eye on.)

So who in the forced migration information community offers RSS feeds? Here are a few examples:
- News services such as IRIN
- Blogs such as RI's WorldBridge
- Information hubs like ReliefWeb

As noted above, you need to have a newsreader or aggregator to be able to view RSS content delivered via a feed. You can choose between a client-side reader (i.e., an application you download onto your computer) or a web-based reader. Some are free and some require payment. This site offers a fairly complete listing of the various options. Bloglines is one of the more popular free web-based readers. Often, newsreaders are made available through personalized portal providers like My Yahoo! or Google.

To begin reading RSS content, simply copy and paste the URL for the RSS feed into the reader program you choose. I experimented briefly with Bloglines, but I found that at times certain feeds were not updating even though new headlines were available. In addition, I could not always re-display feeds after I had read them (although this was probably a temporary glitch). I decided to try Google Reader instead, and so far, so good! It's very easy to use. Both Bloglines and Google Reader allow you to create folders, which is important if you want to be able to keep your feeds organized.

Brookings Institution RSS Feeds

The Brookings Institution is now offering an extensive list of RSS feeds to subscribe to. You can choose from the following: general feeds (including one for new books and journals), topical feeds (including "Darfur," "displacement in Iraq," "human rights," "internal displacement,""natural disasters," "migration," etc.), experts, programs, centers, projects (e.g., Brookings-Bern Project on Internal Displacement), and series (like working papers and policy briefs).

You can also undertake a search of the Brookings site, and then create a custom RSS feed for that search.

Keeping Up with Blogs through Google

Google recently relaunched an upgraded version of its Blog Search. If you want to track what blogs are saying about a certain issue, conflict, or other topic, run a search, then scroll to the bottom of the results page. There, you will find options to create an email alert or subscribe to an RSS feed for those results.

May 1: RSS Awareness Day

May 1st has been designated RSS Awareness Day by Daily Blog Tips in an effort to promote RSS as an easy and convenient mechanism for keeping track of new content. The original impetus for this blog - Researching Refugees - was to alert members of the refugee and forced migration community to web technologies like RSS that can facilitate current awareness. For my part, I track over 70 different news, blog, journal, and web site feeds through Google Reader. And more are being made available all the time. RSS makes it much easier to keep up with new information - so give it a try!

RSS Feeds for International Organizations

Here's a listing of RSS feeds available for United Nations agencies and other international/regional organizations involved in humanitarian and development work. Subscribing to one of these feeds will help you to keep up with an organization's news and activities.

(Note: If an organization is not listed, it is most likely because it does not currently offer any feeds.)

European Union [feeds]
- Available for press releases and speeches.

FAO [feed]
- Latest news.

ICRC [feed]
- Latest news.

IOM [feed]
- Latest news.

OAS [feeds]
- Available for latest news, press releases, photos, videos, webcast, and speeches.

OECD [feeds]
- Available for countries, topics and OECD Departments.

OSCE [feeds]
- Available for news and features.

UN News Centre [feeds]
- Topical and geographical.

UN Pulse Blog [access] [feed]
- Provides announcements of new UN information online.

UN.GIFT (Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking) [feed]
- Latest news.

UNFPA [feeds]
-Available for news and publications.

UNHCR [feed]
- Latest news.

UNICEF [feeds]
- Available for news and photo essays.

UNIFEM [feeds]
- Available for latest news, resources and job vacancies.

WFP [feeds]
- Available for news, press releases, photos, emergency reports, and videos.

WHO [feeds]
- Available for news, speeches and latest disease outbreaks.

World Bank [feeds]
- Available for regions and countries.

Subscribing to subject feeds in Blogger

I recently received a request for assistance from someone undertaking research on the peace, security and migration implications of climate change in Africa. I post references to publications on this topic as I come across them on my other blog, Forced Migration Current Awareness, so subscribing to my site feed is one obvious way to keep track of anything relevant that might be posted in the future.

But there is a second way to monitor postings on a subject-specific basis. I include labels for each of my posts that describe the general subject focus of the various publications referenced. Readers can subscribe to a specific label to ensure that they do not overlook any titles of particular interest.

The format for label feeds is this:
http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/labelname
- Substitute the address of the blog you want to monitor, or http://fm-cab.blogspot.com
- Substitute the label name

Here are two examples:

http://fm-cab.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/climate
- The format for the feed for the label "climate"

http://fm-cab.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/country%20of%20origin%20conditions
- The format for the feed for the label "country of origin conditions"

Copy and paste these into your reader just like you would any other feed. And the next time those labels are used in my blog, the feeds will be updated accordingly.

By the way, this format will also work in any other Blogger-hosted blogs that use labels.

RSS Feeds for Policy/Research Publications

Most research centres and think tanks in the forced migration community have not yet adopted RSS as a standard mechanism for distributing news and information about their publishing activities. But this is slowly starting to change. Here are five examples of organizations that do offer RSS feeds:

European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE) [web site] [feed]

Feinstein International Center (FIC) [web site] [feed]

Humanitarian Policy Group (HPG), Overseas Development Institute (ODI) [web site] [feed]
- Other ODI feeds are available.

Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) [web site] [publications feed]
- Other NAI feeds are available.

United States Institute of Peace (USIP) [web site] [feed]

Several information services use RSS to announce new additions to their collections. Subscribing to their feeds is a useful way to keep track of a wide variety of new policy and research publications. One caveat: There may be a delay between the time a report is received and the time information about that report is disseminated to a wider audience. Examples of these services include:

Eldis Newsfeeds [access] [conflict feed] [migration feed]

Forced Migration Current Awareness Blog [site] [feed]

Human Security Gateway [general feed] [generate a customized feed]

Keeping Up with Human Rights Developments

December 10 is Human Rights Day. To stay informed about human rights developments around the world, sign up for a selection of RSS/email alerts, such as:

Amnesty International RSS feeds (offered by type of information)

Asian Human Rights Commission email lists (by information type, country or language)

Fédération Internationale des ligues des Droits de l'Homme RSS feeds (offered by type of information)

Human Rights Watch RSS feeds (offered by theme and region)

International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights mailing list

Monitoring New Books through Amazon

Amazon.com is one of the largest online booksellers. It used to offer a helpful e-mail alert service based on keywords that would notify you when new books became available. While this seems to have been discontinued, other services have filled the gap. Here are two examples:

Amazon RSS Feed Generator
- Enter a search term or terms and create your own custom RSS feed for any Amazon store item (the default is books). Copy and paste the feed into your newsreader, where book titles will update as new matches to your terms are made.

Amazon Feed Generator
- A similar service, although this one lets you use Amazon's power search syntax to build a more precise query.

All about RSS

Once upon a time, researchers who wanted to keep up with frequently updated information on the web (news, publication titles, research developments, etc.) had to remember to regularly visit bookmarked sites of interest or register for e-mail alerts or newsletters (if these were available). Today, an XML file format called RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") simplifies this process dramatically by delivering "headlines" to you directly so that you can peruse news and information in one central location. Content is distributed via RSS in the form of a feed that must be read by an application called a newsreader or news aggregator (more about this below).

Increasingly, content providers all across the web are beginning to offer RSS feeds of one kind or another. To determine whether or not a web site has RSS feeds, just look for a reference to "site feed," "syndicated content," or an orange icon that either says RSS or XML on it or that looks like this: . Also, if you use Internet Explorer v.7 or Mozilla's Firefox as your browser, this icon appears in a toolbar at the top of the browser. It is normally gray, but if you visit a site that offers RSS, it will turn orange, indicating that a feed is available. (NB: I use IE7 and to be honest, the icon is not 100% effective; but it's worth keeping an eye on.)

So who in the forced migration information community offers RSS feeds? Here are a few examples:
- News services such as IRIN
- Blogs such as RI's WorldBridge
- Information hubs like ReliefWeb

As noted above, you need to have a newsreader or aggregator to be able to view RSS content delivered via a feed. You can choose between a client-side reader (i.e., an application you download onto your computer) or a web-based reader. Some are free and some require payment. This site offers a fairly complete listing of the various options. Bloglines is one of the more popular free web-based readers. Often, newsreaders are made available through personalized portal providers like My Yahoo! or Google.

To begin reading RSS content, simply copy and paste the URL for the RSS feed into the reader program you choose. I experimented briefly with Bloglines, but I found that at times certain feeds were not updating even though new headlines were available. In addition, I could not always re-display feeds after I had read them (although this was probably a temporary glitch). I decided to try Google Reader instead, and so far, so good! Both Bloglines and Google Reader allow you to create folders, which is important if you want to be able to keep your feeds organized.