Presented spring 2012 by UNCG Libraries

1. Staying Current: alerts and feeds
and more, oh my!
Mimi Smith-DeCoster
&
Beth Filar-Williams

2. 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!

3. 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

4. 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

5. Video intro to RSS feeds
“RSS in Plain English”
From 2004(!!) but still a great basic explanation
http://youtu.be/0klgLsSxGsU

7. 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

8. Demo of Google Reader

9. Staying Current: Alerts
• Table of Contents
• Keyword
• Citation
• Other alerts
Current Awareness Guide:
http://uncg.libguides.com/currentawareness

10. 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!

11. 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!

12. 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!

13. Staying alert
• Beside RSS in a Google Reader…
– Email alerts
– Follow using Twitter
• Also, Google alerts, blogs, newspaper alerts,
new books alerts, and more!

14. Visit the Current Awareness Libguide
http://uncg.libguides.com/currentawareness

15. Q&A