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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? Email alerts RSS feeds and readers Demonstrations and exercises
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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? • Email alerts • RSS feeds and readers • Demonstrations and exercises • Set up an RSS feed
…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 emails 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 email alerts and RSS feeds for particular journals, or for keywords or author names • ATHENS password needed for remote access http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/athens
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 see and save Search history Click here to set up citation alert
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 email and password you like. • The default alert is email. 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 email 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 email alerts or to stop emails coming or change the format of the emails. • 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 email alerts to be set up • Offers RSS feeds • Need to register for search history and alert functions but have own choice of email 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 www.jiscmail.ac.uk for hundreds of scholarly mailing lists • RSS feeds from webpages wherever you see the icon eg http://www.intute.ac.uk/rss.html, http://www.ox.ac.uk/ or http://www.thes.co.uk/rss/
Summary Keep up to date • to avoid information overload • To avoid missing important information • Using databases and mailing lists for e-mail alerts and RSS feeds Need subject specific advice? ask your subject consultant http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/collections/librarians Presenters also happy to help – contact judy.reading@ouls.ox.ac.uk or kate.petherbridge@ouls.ox.ac.uk