WISER: Keeping up to date Kate Petherbridge & Judy Reading

Aims of the session What do we mean by “keep up to date” and why is it important? What kinds of tools and services are available to help me keep up to date? – alerts –RSS feeds and readers Demonstrations and exercises –Set up an RSS feed

Keeping up to date – the challenge Information resources are increasingly varied... …a n d v a s t

…and solutions… There are a number of tools and services that highlight new publications in your subject area –Journal/Table Of Contents (TOC) alerts e.g. ZETOC –Citation alerts from Web of Science –Saving and re-running database searches e.g. FirstSearch, CSA Illumina –Mailing lists e.g. JiscMail

Before you start… The idea is to streamline and manage information To avoid being overwhelmed with s and RSS feeds, think carefully before setting up alerts –What kind of publication and information is most useful to you? –How much time will you have to digest and act on the alerts? –Will a new alert duplicate information you already receive from elsewhere? –What is the “life expectancy” of your interest in a particular topic?

RSS feeds RSS Really Simple Syndication RSS allows you to subscribe to updates from favourite websites and other e-resources To set up RSS feeds you first need a reader - software that checks RSS feeds and lets you read new articles that have been added to them It is simple to subscribe to a free web reader – e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo!

RSS feeds 2 You will know RSS is available when you see this logo in a website or database: To set up a feed from a journal to your reader, click on the button A new page containing XML code will open Simply copy the URL from this page into your reader You will now receive the TOC from this journal in your reader whenever a new issue is published

ZETOC ZETOC is the British Library’s electronic tables of contents service Covers 20,000 journals and 16,000 conference proceedings a year You can set up alerts and RSS feeds for particular journals, or for keywords or author names ATHENS password needed for remote access

Other Table Of Contents alerts Many other bibliographic databases provide TOC alerts Many publishers provide TOC alerts for their own e- journals – e.g. Blackwells, OUP, Project Muse Exercise – Zetoc alerts and Setting up RSS feeds

Citation alerts from Web of Knowledge Citation alerts let you know whenever a particular article is cited by someone else This can help you keep up to date in several ways: –You can track how important a particular article is –You can find new articles on a similar topic –You can monitor how well received your own work is! N.B. Citation alerts tend to be more useful in the Sciences and Social Sciences, but still worth trying for the Humanities

Click here to set up citation alert Click here to see and save Search history

Citation alerts from Web of Science Choose full display of a citation you would like to know if anyone cites by clicking on article title. Click on Citation alert You will be prompted to log-in or to register. You can set whatever account and password you like. The default alert is . To set up RSS feed instead click on the XML button and then copy and paste the URL that appears in your browser’s address bar into the RSS reader.

WOS: Managing My Cited Articles To go to My Cited Articles List, select Citation Alerts from the drop-down list box at the top of any page, or click on View my Cited Articles List on the home page. To change the alert settings, access Citation Alerts (using the drop down menu at the top of every page) and click the "Modify Settings" button. You would do this to cancel alerts or to stop s coming or change the format of the s. Your RSS reader will automatically report new citing articles. You do not need to renew the alert and should use your RSS reader to cancel the feed.

Search history in Web of Science You can save a search either so you can run it again later or so you can be alerted to new records which match the search when they are entered in the database Do a search eg Global warming Click on Search history at the top of the page Click on Save history to save the last search set that you create. Open Saved History lets you see your saved histories You will then see the XML button that you can use to set up the RSS feed You can turn the alerting off or delete the search history Choose Open to run the search again

Saving and re-running searches: Firstsearch You must be registered before using ‘save search’ Click Save Search (bottom right) Look for saved searches through Previous search Re-run your saved search by selecting the search and click ‘search’ Or combine two previous searches using AND/OR/NOT First Search doesn’t offer alerts

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Allows saving of search histories Allows alerts to be set up Offers RSS feeds Need to register for search history and alert functions but have own choice of and password Check what is available with your favourite database Ovid, SCOPUS, Google Scholar etc.

Reference managing software How to manage found information? Import titles from databases into a reference management tool, e.g. EndNote or RefWorks Refworks will receive RSS feeds Keep the important titles in your own ‘library’ or ‘sublibrary’ Export the title as a reference into your document No typing errors No need to cover the same ground twice Follow an OUCS course on EndNote or RefWorks

Up to date with new info Mailing lists –From publishers –From special interest groups –See for hundreds of scholarly mailing listswww.jiscmail.ac.uk RSS feeds from webpages wherever you see the icon eg or

Summary Keep up to date to avoid information overload To avoid missing important information Using databases and mailing lists for alerts and RSS feeds Need subject specific advice? ask your subject consultant Presenters also happy to help – contact or