Old Parliament House now offers some of its regularly updated content in the form of an RSS feed. You can subscribe to our news, events and exhibitions feeds separately or grab the combined feed:

• Current exhibitions
• News
• Events
• Combined feed

Why RSS?

Besides visiting websites using a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari), there are other ways of accessing web content. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a service provided by many websites which allows you to receive regular new website content, delivered to your computer or other device, without having to visit the website itself. RSS is a handy way to manage a lot of content quickly and is also useful for accessing web content conveniently when using phones or other handheld devices.

What is it?

RSS is a term used to describe a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content like blog entries, news headlines and audio in a standardised form. An RSS feed is actually just an XML file which can be read by feed reading software, either installed as an application on your computer, using a web browser that supports RSS or viewed online using a service like Google Reader.

How do I get an RSS feed?

To view RSS feeds you need to install software called a feed reader, news reader or news aggregator. Some programs are accessed using your web browser, and some are standalone applications. Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feeds from any computer, while downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer. Aggregator features are also built into sites such as Google. Once you have a newsreader program or online reader installed and set up, you can subscribe to any number of websites that provide RSS feeds and automatically receive updates.

News aggregators are installed applications designed to collect RSS feed subscriptions and group them together using a familiar interface. Since RSS feeds have become widespread and popular, the graphical user interface of news readers and sites which have newsreader functionality has come to closely resemble that of popular email clients, using a three-pane window in which subscriptions are grouped in a frame on the left, and individual entries are browsed, selected, and read in frames on the right.

Which newsreader?

There are many such programs available, and while we don’t recommend a particular application, we can say that we’ve enjoyed using Feed Demon on the PC and NetNewsWire on the Mac. Google Reader is a very good web-based aggregator.