Staying Current: alerts and feeds and more, oh my!

Mimi Smith-DeCoster &

Beth Filar-Williams

A check-in poll

• Which of these have you used?A Google Reader or other RSS feed options

B Alerts from databases and/or journals

C Both of the above

D Neither, tell me more!

RSS Feeds: what’s up with them?

• RSS=Really Simple Syndication• Most blogs, news sites, etc. have an RSS feed• You can “subscribe” to that feed through a

“reader” like Google Reader• Google reader aggregates all of those feeds

into one place—you read that instead of going and checking each place

Getting set up with RSS

• If you’re at UNCG, you already have Google Reader available (more > even more > under social)

• Sending RSS to email is also an option

Video intro to RSS feeds

“RSS in Plain English”From 2004(!!) but still a great basic explanation

http://youtu.be/0klgLsSxGsU

Adding things to your

• Click orange Subscribe button• 2 options:– 1) Search from Google Reader– 2) From the blog or other source, click the RSS

Icon, copy the URL and paste it into that box that the Subscribe button gives you

• Read what you want without hunting for it!• Organize: star, keep unread, tags

Demo of Google Reader

Staying Current: Alerts

• Table of Contents• Keyword• Citation• Other alerts

Current Awareness Guide: http://uncg.libguides.com/currentawareness

Table of Contents Alerts

Receive an alert of a new journal’s TOC – Search Journal Finder to see if we subscribe to it at

UNCG through a database vendor– Use journalseek.net to find publisher or try your

favorite subject database – Use www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk – grab a journal RSS

feed …. or login to create a list of favorite journal TOCs RSS feeds

DEMO!

Keyword Alerts

Get notified when articles are published that match your subject criteria.• Search in a database, save the search, set an

alert • Might have set up am account/log in for that

database• Available in most databases

DEMO!

Citation Alerts

Select an article & create an alert for every time it is cited in another publication. • Citation alerts are not available in all

databases: Web of Science, JSTOR, and Science Direct

DEMO!

Staying alert

• Beside RSS in a Google Reader…– Email alerts– Follow using Twitter

• Also, Google alerts, blogs, newspaper alerts, new books alerts, and more!

Visit the Current Awareness Libguide

http://uncg.libguides.com/currentawareness

Q & A