WISER Humanities: Keeping up to date Kate Petherbridge and Gillian Pritchard Oxford University Library Services

Aims This session will introduce and demonstrate… RSS feeds E-mail alerts “table of contents” services saving searches Using these tools you can set up a personal current awareness service, using electronic bibliographic resources to keep up with the literature in your field. 

Remember… The idea is to manage the information! Think about… 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 Subscribe to automatic updates from important websites and other e-resources. You will need a “reader” - software that manages RSS feeds and lets you access the new material they bring. There are free web readers – e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines, My Yahoo! RSS is available when you see these logos: or

Case study 1 - Dr Organization I need to keep up to date with key journals in management – but I haven’t got time to keep browsing in the library or on websites!

Solution – journal alerts e.g. ZETOC is the British Library’s electronic “table of contents” service. Covers 20,000 journals and 16,000 conference proceedings a year. You can set up email alerts and RSS feeds for particular journals, or for searches on keywords or author names. Access is through OxLIP+ (login with Single-Sign On for remote access).

Hands-on Create a RSS reader account with Google Reader Set up RSS feeds from Zetoc using your Google Reader Set up email journal alerts from Zetoc

Case Study 2 – Ms All Rounder My DPhil topic is really interdisciplinary. I need to keep up to date with several topics, but I don’t want the hassle of checking databases all the time.

Solution – Database alerting services Use RSS feeds or e-mail alerts to inform you about new material accessible within the database (both may be available) Some databases use different terms: “Alerts”, “Updates”, “SDI” (selective dissemination of information), “Save search” You can set up multiple alerts Tip: name your alerts meaningfully

Types of alerts Tables of contents Alerts about new material/information relating to searches on specified subjects/authors/other keywords searches can be made into alerts by clicking “Alert” manually rerun searches using “Search history” Receive alerts about new material Receive alerts whenever a particular article is cited by someone else

SOLO alerts http://solo.ouls.ox.ac.uk You can save searches and set up alerts in SOLO. Sign-in using your Oxford SSO Click on the Save query option at the top of the results list of any search. Set up alerts and re-run saved searches from your SOLO e-shelf. An RSS feed is generated by any SOLO search and you don’t need to be logged in to copy the URL into your reader.

Citation alerts 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 academics’ work is!

Citation alerts - Web of Science (Web of Knowledge) To receive alerts if anyone cites a particular article, click on the article title to select full display Click on Create citation alert You will be prompted to log-in or to register. The default alert type is email. To set up an RSS feed instead, right click on the XML icon, choose Copy shortcut. This can then be added into your reader.

Click here to set up citation alert

Managing My Cited Articles Click on My Citation Alerts, and choose My Cited Articles List. This gives information about the alerts. To view or change the email alert settings, click the Modify Settings button. You can cancel particular alerts, or change the format of the emails. If using RSS feeds, your 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.

My citation alerts

Search History You can save a search so you can run it manually again later or You can save a search so you will be alerted to new records which match the search when they are entered in the database

Search history Save History / Create alert

Name your saved search

If you click on the XML/RSS icon you will see the RSS feed url which can be copied into your RSS reader

Firstsearch FirstSearch does not offer alerts but… You can save and re-run searches manually to find new publications related to your search terms Use My Account to set up a FirstSearch account Perform a search, then click Save Search (bottom right) To re-run your saved search, click on Previous Searches on the FirstSearch home page, and log in. Re-run saved searches from your list by clicking Select Terms and Search/Combine You can combine previous searches using AND/OR/NOT

Save search Previous searches

Previous Searches Type search terms and/or choose an operator to combine selected previous searches in the current database and click on Search/Combine. Note: Click on a previous results count to retrieve previous results. Note: Click on a database name to redo a saved search on that database.

Case Study 3 – Professor Asset I need to keep up to date with the academic community in the field of economics – things move so fast!

Solution - Mailing lists, feeds, blogs & podcasts Mailing lists, e.g. from publishers, special interest groups www.jiscmail.ac.uk for hundreds of scholarly mailing lists RSS feeds from webpages wherever you see the icon, e.g. http://www.intute.ac.uk/integration/rss/ Blogs - online diaries: subscribe to RSS feeds e.g. for forthcoming conferences in your subject Podcasts – news feeds with audio or video files http://itunes.ox.ac.uk/

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk

Finding feeds, blogs and podcasts Directories Intute http://www.intute.ac.uk Browse or search for your subject, then “Filter by” Blogs Many subjects, not just Social Sciences Podcasting news http://www.podcastingnews.com Podscope http://www.podscope.com iTunes http://www.itunes.co.uk

Finding feeds, blogs and podcasts Search engines Technorati http://technorati.com Searches blogs Use “Advanced Search” Can make your search into an RSS feed http://blogsearch.google.com/

Summary Keep up to date using databases, blogs and mailing lists for e-mail alerts and RSS feeds be selective to avoid information overload be thorough to avoid missing important information Need subject specific advice? Ask your subject consultant! http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians

Hands-on Saving searches in SOLO Setting up Citation Alerts and saving search histories in Web of Science. Explore some of the mailing lists on JISC