eawareness for Historians

Transcription

1 History Faculty Library eawareness for Historians Rss feeds and ealerts Navigating History Collections 4

2 Introduction In an age of rapidly increasing rate of publication the need to keep up-to-date with research is becoming ever more important. Providers of electronic information resources have started to exploit the potential of IT and offer add-on services in the form of automated alerts. Automatic alerts are proactive systems which match a user profile against newly acquired information as and when the database is updated. Identified matches are then automatically ed to the user. Increasingly organisations and e-journal providers also offer RSS feeds as alternative ways to keep up-to-date. RSS is basically a system where updates to web pages can be distributed automatically and picked up by feed readers. Advantages Alerts are received automatically In electronic form Often before the libraries have received their copy 24/7 access to full-text (if subscription held) and to table of contents. Can read full-text immediately, though subscription will be required Content & access As with all electronic information resources, off-campus access restrictions may apply. In automated alerts systems results are sent only by . They typically include brief bibliographical details of newly added content and an URL to link to either abstracts or the full-text article. The currency of published information is dependent on the providers updating policies. Many providers will offer Alert services which are independent of subscriptions. Users are therefore able to receive information beyond Oxford s subscriptions. However, if access to full-text articles is needed, then an institutional subscription is required. Automated desktop-delivered CAS/SDI There are 3 different types of alerts: Contents/ToC alerts typically the table of content (ToC) of new journal issues or newly added content to a bibliographical database. The frequency of alerts is usually dependent on the publication frequency/database update frequency. ZETOC Alert or ejournal providers will typically offer these. Search alerts the results of a saved search run with each database update. Citation alerts details of new articles citing a selected article(s) or author. Registration Although most resources do not require individual logins to perform online searches, the use of personalisation features necessitates personal registration of some form, if purely for identification purposes. Alert profiles Once created, all alert profiles can be reviewed, updated and deleted. Some resources will impose a limit on the active period of an alert profile. It has to be either accessed at least once during that time or occasionally renewed. 1

3 Selection of some alerting e-resources for historians Historical Abstracts on the Web America: History & Life ZETOC Alert Oxford Journals Cambridge Journals Online IngentaConnect WileyInterScience Alerts Publishers journal alerts You can set up electronic journal alerts with individual publishers. You may want to do this if ZETOC Alert does not cover a specific journal you are interested in. Also, you may find that individual publishers provide a faster alerting service than ZETOC Alert. The following publishers provide particularly good alerting services for journals: Oxford University Press Cambridge University Press Project Muse WileyInterScience ZETOC Alert 1. Creating an Alert List Once you have logged in to ZETOC Alert with your Oxford Single Sign On (SSO) details, create your ZETOC Alert List by entering your address in the box provided. Choose a name of a new alert list. To change an existing Alert: 1. Select the Alert from the drop-down menu 2. Click on add new journals or searches To create a new Alert: 1. Enter your address 2. Name the Alert 3. Choose to include links 4. Click Create 5. Choose some journals or authors 2

4 2. Adding journals/searches to an alert list The left side of the screen shows all the journals or author/title searches which are currently in the List. The right-hand side of the screen is where you choose journals to add to the List. Once you have a list of journals to choose from, simply select the Add button next to the journal title to add it to your list. The text on the button will change to read In List, and the journal title will now be shown in the list of journals in the Alert List on the left-hand side of the screen. You may add up to 50 journals to each Alert List. There is no limit on the number of Lists you can create. 3. Adding searches to the alert list In addition, it is also possible to add searches for articles to an Alert List by storing searches containing author names and/or keywords from an article title. This means that every time an article which matches your criteria is loaded into the database you will receive an giving you details of the article. For full instructions see 3

5 RSS feeds What is RSS? RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed format in XML that provides summaries of web content together with links to the electronic full text. Many websites, databases and electronic journals allow you to set up RSS feeds for articles or journals important in your field. In this way, you can be alerted whenever a new issue of your favourite e-journal is published, and automatically receive an online table of contents with links to the articles. By using feeds, new web content is coming to you rather than you having to visit all your favourite web pages individually to see if they ve been updated. RSS feeds need a feed reader. How do I use RSS? To set up RSS feeds, you need a news reader, feed reader or aggregator software that checks RSS feeds and displays updated content. Free web-based readers (e.g. Google Reader, Bloglines) let you check RSS feeds from any computer, whereas downloadable applications (e.g. Newz Crawler, FeedDemon) let you store them on your own computer. See for more details. There are various different kinds of feed readers: 1. built in to browsers (IE 7 and Firefox for example), 2. software on your PC (like the equivalent of Outlook Express) 3. Web-based services like Google Reader or Bloglines ( You can set up a feed whenever you see the logo or in a website or database. Simply click on the logo, copy the URL into your reader, and you will begin receiving feeds from the website, journal or database you chose. Copy shortcut and paste the link into your feed reader. 4

6 Paste RSS feed URLs here eawareness for Historians to set up new feed subscriptions Table of contents with links to electronic full-text articles History-related examples of useful RSS feeds: Subscriptions to feeds from academic journals History-related examples of useful RSS feeds: Information sources: British History Online (IHR) DNB Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers ejournal TOC alerts, e.g. Past & Present, Historical Journal, etc. > see ejournal provider website, e.g. Oxford Journals online. Libraries & archives: VHL s new books Cambridge University Library news National Library of Scotland news National Archives news Library of Congress Archives Hub: Latest additions Historical Associations & societies HistorikerVerband.de: Mitteilungen Historicum.net Institut de recherche et d histoire des textes (IRHT) Wisconsin Historical Society 5

7 Example: RSS feed from VHL s New Books Example: RSS feed from historicum.net Example: RSS feed from British History Online 6