Current Awareness

 

Introduction

Current awareness services assist faculty and students in keeping up-to-date with current research in specific areas of interest. KUC Library is constantly adding new material its collection and maintains a list of recently added Books and Videos

Other current awareness services are provided electronically and take various forms:

  • Table of Contents alerting serives. When a new issue of a particular journal is available, its table of contents is emailed to the subscriber.
  • Saved Searches. Some article indexes will allow you to save your searches so that they can be re-run in the future, or have an email sent to you when new citations that match the profile.
  • RSS or Web Feeds. Allows you to avoid email clutter by having your table of content or saved searches sent to a separate reader.

If you are looking for a current awareness service for a specific journal, it is often easiest to use a search engine such as Google to locate the publishers homepage. Once you have located the journal's homepage, look for a link labelled "email alerts," "login" or something similar. Some journals may provide RSS feeds; look for an button (often orange) labelled RSS, XML, or ATOM. You will often be able to receive alerts even if Kwantlen does not subscribe to the journal. (Note: direct links to journal articles from email or RSS feeds may not be available off campus.)

Multi-disciplinary & Multi-publisher Services | RSS & Web Feeds | Other Services

Multi-disciplinary and Multi-publisher Services

These are a few of the larger multi-disciplinary or multi-publisher services available. Others include BioMed Central, Blackwell, Berkeley E-Press, Cambridge Journals and Informa World.

CSA: you can set up Journal Alerts for any full-text journal that this is hosted on CSA Illumina. Click on the Browse tab to see a list of journals and then click the 'New Issue Alert' link for the chosen title. You will need to create a a personal account first.

EBSCO: which includes databases such as Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier and PsycInfo. See the Ebscohost User Guide to create Search Alerts and Journal Alerts. (Information on creating RSS feeds for Search and Journal Alerts in Ebsco can be found here)

ProQuest: allows you set up alerts for databases such as CBCA, Canadian Newstand, and Criminal Justice Periodicals. First click on the Publications tab, then chose the journal. From there you will be able to set up an alert when a new issue is published.

Sage Publications: multidisciplinary publisher with Table of Content alerts.

RSS & Web Feeds

Checking many different sites for new content can be tedious, and signing up for e-mail alerts can often result in an overwhelming amount of information and spam. Many databases and academic journals now send out alerts via RSS or Web Feeds. You can set up a simple piece of software, called a feed reader, to collect the web feeds of your choice, allowing you to browse new content at your leisure via the reader, rather than having to visit multiple websites or go through large numbers of e-mails.

For more information on RSS and how to set yourself up to read the feeds, click here.

Other Current Awareness Services

Watch That Page: is a service that enables you to automatically collect new information from your favorite pages on the Internet. You select which pages to monitor, and WatchThatPage will find which pages have changed, and collect all the new content for you.

Infomine: alerts you when new scholarly Internet resources are added to Infomine (Scholarly Internet Resource Collections), based on your profile.

For more information and help with Current Awareness services, please contact your subject area Liaison Librarian.

Updated: 07/05/09
Updated by: CD

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