EBSCO Alerts: Keeping Up with Scholarly Literature Part One: Creating a MyEBSCOhost Account Setting Up Search Alerts Dr. David Hamrick, Reference/Cataloging Librarian Zale Library at Paul Quinn College

What you’ll learn Part One:  How to create a MyEBSCOhost account  How to create a “search alert” that will you when new results turn up to a specified search Part Two:  How to create a “journal alert” that will a summary of the latest articles in selected journals  How to manage, delete, or modify your alerts

The following slides are animated… Please wait for the “Next Page?” message before proceeding. Next page? Click mouse or page down.

First, enter Texshare from the Library web page and select Ebsco MasterFile and Academic Search. Next page? Click mouse or page down.

Be sure to select Academic Search Complete, for the best coverage of scholarly journals… Click “Continue” to move on. Next page? Click mouse or page down.

Click on “Sign in to My EBSCOhost” to create an account. Next page? Click mouse or page down.

EBSCOhost will now ask you to sign in to “My EBSCOhost”. If you don’t have an account with them, click here… Next page? Click mouse or page down.

You’ll be asked for your name, an address, and a password you would like to use for this account. Next page? Click mouse or page down. Make up your own user name and password; they do not need to be the same as your PQC or Texshare login.

Suppose I want to keep up with the news about my old dissertation topic, the 16 th -century composer Gallus Dressler. gallus AND dressler (This is an easy search, since both his first and last names are unusual.) Next page? Click mouse or page down.

If you use RSS feeds, you already know what this does, and you can add this search as a feed to your favorite reader. Otherwise, click here to create an “alert” for this search. Next page? Click mouse or page down.

After you’re signed in, you’ll see a screen like this. This allows me to save the search I did as an “alert”… This means that EBSCOhost will run this search automatically and alert me whenever something new turns up. gallus AND dressler I just need to give the search a name, and save it as an Alert. Next page? Click mouse or page down.

Once you click the “Save Search as Alert”, you’ll need to scroll down to set up your preferences for this search alert. For example, you can set how often you want to get updates… You can also set the length of time you want to keep getting updates. Most importantly, you need to enter the address where you want to receive your alerts. Next page? Click mouse or page down.

You’ll probably want to add a subject line, so you’ll recognize the alert s when they arrive. Gallus Dressler - Ebsco alert Then click “save”, and EBSCO will start monitoring the search for you! Next page? Click mouse or page down. Scroll down some more…

Summary So far, we’ve seen how to create “My EBSCOhost” account, and how to save a search alert. EBSCO will review you search alerts every day (unless you change the frequency), and you with any updates. This is a great way to keep up with an ongoing research interest that you don’t necessarily work on every day.