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Getting information to come to you Current awareness tools for Philosophy Researchers

Keeping up to date with philosophy

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Page 1: Keeping up to date with philosophy

Getting information to come to youCurrent awareness tools for Philosophy Researchers

Page 2: Keeping up to date with philosophy

Current awareness methods

•Journal contents email alerting services•RSS feeds•Saved searches and search alerts•Citation alerts•Social Media

When researching a topic it is vital to make sure you are keeping up to date. There are some useful methods for doing this:

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1. Journal contents alerts

• British Library service• Over 20,000 titles• Add journals to your list• Receive alerts by email

or RSS feed• Easy to use

• ticTOCs table of contents service

• Over 14,000 titles• Search for journals and

save to list• View citations and links

to full text (where subscription allows)

• Export to a RSS reader

http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk

www.tictocs.ac.uk

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2. RSS Feeds

•“…a format for delivering regularly changing web content” (Attitude Group, 2011)

•This is usually referred to as a ‘web feed’ or ‘news feed’, and makes it possible to subscribe to content from a site without having to visit the page to check for updates.

•You need a free RSS reader e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines

What is RSS?

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What can I use RSS for?

RSS Reader

Latest news feeds

Publisher feeds

•New books or research papers

•Most read or most cited publications

Journal feeds – Table of Contents

(TOC)

Saved searches from

databases

Blog posts or updated websites

Favourite user’s

bookmarks, articles or

photos

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RSS Readers

Add a new subscription using

this button

All subscriptions shown in this column

New items shown in bold with number in brackets

Once you have your account set-up, you can add RSS feeds from websites and blogs to your reader and view them all in one place.

www.google.com/reader

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RSS Feeds: Netvibes• Netvibes is a personalized start page• Useful for managing RSS feeds- you can

subscribe to e.g. journal contents pages or blogs and view them all on one page.

• See Philosophy Library’s Netvibes page below

www.netvibes.com

www.netvibes.com/lewylib#Journals-Latest_Issues

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3. Databases: saved searches• Many Philosophy databases will allow you to create search alerts e.g.

Philosopher’s Index, Web of Knowledge and Scopus.• Lets you know about new articles and citations of articles on your topic• Includes RSS feeds, email alerts and saved searches

1. Perform a search in a database

2. Click on the ‘Recent searches’ link at the top right of the screen

3. Choose to create an alert or RSS feed.

Rerun the search as

often as you choose.

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4. Databases: citation alerts• Citation alerts can be set up to notify you when a particular

journal article is cited by new articles added to the journal or database (e.g. Web of Knowledge, Scopus).

• You can choose to receive the alerts by email or RSS feed.

Creating a citation alert in Web of Knowledge

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5. Social Media

•Blogs•Twitter•Personalised

pages•Social

bookmarking

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Blogs•Many blogs contain good philosophical

content and discussion.•A list of many philosophy blogs can be found

here: http://consc.net/weblogs.html •The Philosophers' Carnival highlights some of

the best philosophical blogging each month •Two useful blog search engines are:

▫Technorati▫Google Blog Search 

•Many blogs have RSS feeds or email alerts

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Twitter

•Microblogging site• ‘Follow’ someone to receive updates•Search for topics•Up-to-the-minute philosophy news•Debate and exchange ideas with others• John Basl maintains a list of philosophers on

Twitter, which can be browsed or followed: http://twitter.com/johnbasl/philosophers/members

http://twitter.com

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Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking sites allow you to save references and bookmarks to an online account, which you may choose to share with others. You may also discover and keep up to date with articles on your subject by browsing by subject or tags.

Social bookmarking sites include :• Delicious See the Library’s delicious page here:

http://delicious.com/phillib • Connotea Save links to journal articles, websites and other

eresources of interest. Designed for scientists.

Some reference management sites also allow you to share reference lists, so you can collaborate with other researchers.

• Zotero • Mendeley

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Summary

Current awareness tools help you to:•Save time and effort•Save and organise items•Tap into formal and informal sources•Share information