Keeping alert: the productive use of web-based current awareness Alison McNab JISC Collections...
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Transcript of Keeping alert: the productive use of web-based current awareness Alison McNab JISC Collections...
Keeping alert: the productive use of web-based current awareness
Alison McNabJISC Collections Manager,
Journals & Discovery Tools
Outline
• Productive use of your time
• Tips and tricks
• New possibilities for current awareness
• Current awareness for:– Yourself– Colleagues– Clients
The Internet: cause or cure of information overload?
• Using the Internet for:– Communication – Content delivery
• What works well for current awareness?– Discussion lists, newsgroups and web logs– Monitoring changes to websites– New Internet resources – Internet technologies
What type of current information is required?
• Professional or general news items
• Conference and events information
• Journal articles and books
• Specialist information– New Internet resources– Official publications– Subject-specific sources
Managing the information flow (1)
• Managing email– Good practice– Filtering– Sharing the load
• Managing references– Bibliographic software– Creating in-house databases– Sharing Bookmarks/Favorites
• Managing paper
Managing the information flow (2)
• Your sources– Do you catalogue them?– Can you re-use the data?
• Information gathering– Can you share the workload?– Are you duplicating effort?
• Obtaining feedback on your sources
Information delivery
• WWW
– search facility
– archive facility
• RSS
• weblogs• WAP / PDAs
• Don’t forget:– Print– Email– Newsgroup /
bulletin board– Bibliographic
software
Conference information
• Tracing conference papers and reports
• Identifying forthcoming conferences
• Planning a conference
Growth in journal titles
Growth in journal titles 1932-1997
0
20000
40000
60000
80000
100000
120000
140000
160000
180000
1932 1951 1959 1970 1980 1987 1991 1997
New journal articles
• by Title – Table of Contents Services (TOCs)
• by Subject – Via an aggregator– Article preprints– Saved searches on databases
Table of Contents services
• Collections of ToC services
• Publishers with e-mail ToC services
• ToC services on publishers websites
RSS
• Rich/RDF Site Summary
• Used to create news channels for web sites– lightweight XML application for sharing
metadata– widely used by news content providers to
deliver news 'headlines' on the Internet– can syndicate content to third party web sites
Weblogs
• Trendy
• Vanity publishing?
• Potential for updating library users
• Potential for learning & teaching
Managing a current awareness service
• What is a current awareness service?– Column in print publications – Table of contents services– What’s New feature on websites – News monitoring services– SDIs from online hosts– Subject-specific CAS bulletins
Types of current awareness services
• Commercial
• Mediated
• Self-service
• and permutations of the above….
Issues
• Current current awareness– Breaking news– Monitoring websites– Pre-publication sources
• Integration with other services
• Confidential data
• Copyright!