Do-It-Yourself Alerts

Librarians have an almost uncontrollable need to pass on useful information, particularly when they know their research can make someone's day. They make a point of getting a handle on users' general interests and try to be cognizant of projects their clients may be pursuing at any given time. Once the antennae go up and librarians become conscious of the information needs of the student they helped at the reference desk last week, or the biologist they are working with, or the colleague undertaking a new project, previously random information becomes invaluable.

Satisfying as this sort of connection can be, though, the catch-22 is that librarians can't always establish direct contact with their users, and some users are perfectly content to keep their distance as long as the information they need is accessible. Alerts can play a critical role in the information supply chain.

As far back as the print version of Current Contents, there have been users who always knew just which journals published the type of information they needed to see. Browsing a collection of tables of contents was pretty much all they had to do to follow the advances in their fields. The Selective Dissemination of Information (SDI) electronic services from online vendors like Dialog and BRS automated this process so email alerts essentially bypassed the librarian.

In the current do-it-yourself era of information gathering, most users search the Internet and subscription databases unsupervised by professional librarians. The ability to set up a profile based on subject searching or journal title fits nicely into this picture of the independent researcher, but we suspect the percentage of users who actually subscribe to alerts is relatively low.

In this setting, the librarian's role as the specially trained partner and confidante who delivers information directly to a user has evolved into that of an educator who incorporates awareness of alert services into the information literacy program and therefore enables researchers to uncover the information they need on their own.

As far as trends go, RSS (real simple syndication) has established itself as a highly effective way for e-resources to deliver notice of new research materials directly to a subscriber's desktop. RSS doesn't always play consistently well with all browsers, readers, or platforms, however, so subscribers may need to do some experimentation. Alert services with an RSS option will typically provide links on their web sites to the readers they've found work effectively with their products.

A couple of notes about this particular review column are in order. First, providing at least a basic-level alert service has become the norm for most electronic resources, and, consequently, we have left out far more alert services than we've had space to include. Second, since the alert service is free, we didn't see the need to mention that repeatedly in each review. Finally, as far as the audience goes, alert services are typically for any relatively serious researcher who wants to stay aware of the developments in his or her field, from undergraduates working on a semester-long paper and graduate students and faculty to serious hobbyists who use the library to keep up with narrow subject interests.

ACS Publications
American Chemical Society

Content ACS Publications offers 35 scholarly journals in addition to the weekly news magazine Chemical Engineering News. With its ACS Journal Archives, ACS Publications provides online-searchable access to 130 years of research in chemistry, including 750,000 articles of chemistry findings, dating back to the introduction of Journal of the American Chemical Society in 1879.

It covers agricultural science, biotechnology, biochemistry and molecular biology, chemical biology, chemical engineering, computer science, crystallography, energy and fuels, food science, environmental science, inorganic and nuclear chemistry, medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and toxicology. ACS Nano and The Journal of Physical Chemistry C are new titles for 2007.

Features ACS Publications offers email and RSS feed services to alert users to new ACS content. RSS feeds are available for the “Articles ASAP” (as soon as publishable) and the complete tables of contents for all journals. A link to all feeds is present throughout the site from the left-hand frame, and users can browse titles either alphabetically or categorically for the desired selection(s). Categories include applied chemistry and chemical engineering, biological chemistry, core chemistry, polymers and materials science, and news and features.

Users can register for email ASAP Alerts and/or Table of Contents Alerts. For ASAP, one email will be sent for each selected journal—either daily or weekly depending on the desired frequency—listing the title, author, journal name, and web publication date, with a direct URL link to the full-text article. TOC Alerts contain the entire issue's contents with title, author, journal name, and page numbers, with a direct full-text article link. Both options are easy to manage through Unsubscribe or Modify links.

Comments Similar to the other full-text services previewed here, a subscription or article pay per view is required for full-text article content, although nonsubscribers can still stay up-to-date with abstracts and other information. RSS feeds of Chemical Engineering News “Latest News” and “Nanofocus” content are also available. Finally, Analytical Chemistry, Environmental Science & Technology, and Journal of Proteome Research offer feeds for research articles and/or news and features.

EBSCOhost
EBSCO

Content Three hundred full-text and secondary databases are available via the EBSCOhost interface. New content additions include Book Collection: Nonfiction, Garden, Landscape & Horticulture Index, Auto Repair Reference Center, Corporate ResourceNet, Computers and Applied Sciences Complete, and ICON Global Intelligence.

Users can now create multiple folders and subfolders for easier organization of articles, searches, alerts, and multimedia; the Ask a Librarian service allows users to email librarians directly from EBSCOhost (we actually receive questions from students this way); and there is enhanced OpenURL access.

Features The process of creating an alert was previously only possible from the My EBSCOhost folder directly from the result/search history or the publication list by clicking on the RSS Feed icons. Initially, this new process can be enabled by users who click on the New Features link at the top of the EBSCOhost screen and then check the box in front of the One Step Alerts feature, listed under What's New. This enables RSS alerts for the current search session. This fall, this feature will be moving from the New Features screen so users can activate it from the EBSCOadmin module.

Setting up an alert is simple. After performing a search from the Basic or Advanced Search Screen, users see the RSS orange icon next to the “create alert for this search” link. EBSCOhost automatically creates a Search Alert using the desired search criteria. The system displays a confirmation that the Search Alert has been created, including an RSS feed that users can simply paste into any aggregator or RSS newsreader like Google Reader. The feed will expire on its own if not placed in a newsreader within one week of creation and after two months of inactivity. Once a user has created a Search Alert, the process of running it at specific intervals and delivering the new results via email to the user becomes automatic. Frequency options include daily (default), once a week, biweekly, and monthly.

To enable email alerts or to change frequency settings, alert options, etc., users must select the “sign in and create a new alert” link. This puts users in their My EBSCOhost folder, where they can modify Saved Searches, Search Alerts, and Journal Alerts. Users can always go into their folder to view, modify, or delete previously established alerts.

Once the new alert feature is integrated, users can create Journal Alerts by selecting the publications tab at the top of the screen, choosing the RSS icon next to the publication title, and following the same steps outlined above.

Comments Even without the Coming Soon alert feature enabled, users can save searches as alerts and have the system email any new results. Users can also sign in to their personal account and reexecute a saved query without waiting for the alert to run. From the Basic or Advanced Search Screen, users can select the Search History/Alerts tab and choose the various alert options as detailed above.

IEEE/IET Library (IEL)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.

Content Powered by the IEEE Xplore interface, IEL is a digital library that provides full-text access to IEEE journals, transactions, magazines, and letters (from 1988 with some content back to 1913), conference proceedings (from 1988 with selected content back to 1953), standards (from 1948), books (from 1974), and IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) publications (from 1988). Currently with 1,566,664 documents online, the system is updated weekly and adds 50,000 new documents each month. IET was formed by the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) and Institution of Incorporated Engineers (IIE), hence the new name.

Features Users can either subscribe to RSS feeds and/or set up regular email alerts to be notified of recently posted journals, magazines, and industry standards—as well as standards by version. Either preference can be managed through a personal email alert account profile. The IEEE Xplore web site offers links to commonly used RSS readers for those getting started with RSS, including FeedDemon, SharpReader, NewsGator, Shrook, and Bloglines.

Users can browse the Journals and Magazines category to view a journal homepage, select the RSS icon to view the URL, and copy and paste the URL into an RSS reader or to a browser that supports RSS feeds. When the publication's latest issue is posted, each feed will contain the publication's title and table of contents, with a hyperlink back to the IEEE Xplore database for the full text. Users can select the Alerts tab in the top navigation bar to sign in with name and email address to view email alerts or the Tables of Contents Alerts page. RSS feeds are also available, and users can select tabs for Journals and Magazines, Standard by Industry, or Standard by Version (e.g., OpenURL 0.1 or 1.0).

When new content is posted online, an email alert contains a direct link to the latest issue's table of contents or the selected standard. Users can modify their existing profile to change selection of titles, unsubscribe altogether, and add or alter an email address. Both RSS feeds and email alert options can be easily changed.

Comments Titles of IEE publications will slowly migrate to the new IET name over time, magazines first, then journals. Librarians should already be seeing title changes galore as a result.

ISI Web of Knowledge
Thomson Scientific

Content Thomson's ISI Web of Knowledge offers integrated access to ISI products, including Web of Science Citation Indexes, Current Contents Connect, ISI Journal Citation Reports, and ISI Essential Science Indicators, as well as third-party databases, including BIOSIS Previews, Inspec, and Medline. The Thomson content universe includes journals, books, proceedings, patents, chemical structures, evaluated web content, grant funding, and preprints.

Recent ISI Web of Knowledge updates include Author Full Name in Web of Science, 12,500 e-journals with full-text linking, and EndNote Web upgrades.

Features Any search history may be saved and run as search alerts—managed remotely on the ISI server or downloaded as a text file. Registered users can create alerts to track activity via email or RSS feed, for notification whenever content has been posted online that matches the search criteria. Alerting is not available with results retrieved using CrossSearch (although users can use the Saved Search function).

The alerting feature has different frequency options based on each specific product, although most can be set to run weekly or monthly. Current Contents Connect alerts can be set to be run daily.

When users save their search history, appropriate options are listed under Email Frequency. The first five alerts display on the right side of the Web of Knowledge homepage within the My Saved Searches area. An asterisk after the named search notes whether an alert has been established for a particular query. Users can modify settings from the Open/Manage Saved Searches link. Saved search alerts expire after 24 weeks and users receive an expiration notice in addition to the regular alert email when it is time to renew.

Registered users can also create citation alerts via email or RSS, which show articles that cite a given article. Email format options include plain text, HTML, ISI ResearchSoft, or Field Tagged. Email alerts expire after one year, and users can modify settings by selecting the My Cited Articles List. To create a citation alert, do the search, go to an article's full-record page, and select Create Citation Alert. If alerting is active, the user sees a notice under the user's Citation Alerts list. Currently, Citation Alerts are available in most of the ISI Web of Knowledge products, although a subscription to Web of Science is required. Users do not need to be registered with Web of Knowledge to receive RSS feeds but will need subscription access to get to the full text.

Comments ISI Web of Knowledge is rolling out a totally new interface in summer 2007. As part of the personal settings option, users can automatically sign in when accessing the interface. This makes creating alerts much easier since you don't get the login prompt every time you create a new alert. Current Contents Connect subscribers can also create Table of Contents Alerts, and these automatically include relevant eFirst content.

Project MUSE
Project MUSE

Content Project MUSE is a partnership between libraries and publishers that provides full-text access to 300 humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers. MUSE began with Johns Hopkins University Press titles in 1995, and other journals were added in 2000, with more joining each year. Institution collection options now include Standard, Premium, Basic Research, Basic Undergraduate, Arts & Humanities, and Social Sciences. Some MUSE titles are available as single title subscriptions.

Features Project MUSE users can subscribe to RSS feeds or email alert notification for new journals, journal issues, and other miscellaneous announcements.

Users can get email alerts with weekly notifications of new journal issues or new Project MUSE titles. Users can view, update, and (most importantly) quickly delete existing selections from the Request Journal Alerts and Make or Change Selections screens. Users can select alerts at the title, subject, and/or collection level.

Users can “subscribe to RSS Feeds” from the left-hand navigation panel. This page gives information on the service and lists the Journal Feeds: Latest Issues (latest four issues of each journal) or the Upcoming Titles (2007) feeds. Users can also browse each publication's homepage to view the available feeds for that journal.

Comments The Syndication page includes a link for instructions on how to use RSS feeds and how to access full-text content when authenticating through a proxy server, which is particularly useful for academic libraries.

ProQuest
ProQuest

Content ProQuest hosts dozens of research and popular periodicals databases geared toward audiences from the K–12 level through the professional researcher. ProQuest enables researchers to set up alerts depending on their information needs and habits. The most common alert is for the most recent search that was just run in either basic or advanced search mode. We set up one some time ago in the ProQuest Research Library to keep track of new CDs that might be of interest to our East Asian musicologist and her students. Named “East Asian Music Reviews,” the alert strategy is as follows: (asia* or japan* or china or chinese or korea*) AND SU(musical recording) AND AT(audio review favorable) AND NOT PUB(billboard). This alert looks for reviews of recordings that have been considered “favorable” by ProQuest indexers but excludes any that appeared in Billboard magazine. We specified that the search be restricted to terms found in the citation and abstract and in all publication types so we would get reviews from newspapers and magazines as well as from more scholarly sources such as the journal Asian Music. This alert produces a steady trickle of reviews, resulting in several CD purchases that we otherwise might have overlooked.

ProQuest also permits setting up recent alert searches that show up when the appropriate link is selected on the basic or advanced search mode screen or on the results list. Users may also receive publication alerts for new issues of journals, magazines, or newspapers. A radio button lets the user specify whether the alert should be sent as soon as the citation and abstract is added to the database or “Only when full text is available.” This is especially useful for key publications that have an embargo.

Alerts can be set to be active for two weeks, one month, two months, four months, six months, or one year and are renewable. When the alert arrives, the user must be able to access the ProQuest system to view citations and full text. Conveniently, emailed results contain a “Delete this alert” link, enabling the user to cancel future updates.

Comments One of ProQuest's underappreciated aspects is that its alerts expire. This makes ProQuest particularly appealing for student researchers whose interest in a particular subject may end on the due date of their term project. Consequently, we often introduce ProQuest alerts in library instruction sessions, particularly those conducted for thesis students who may be working on a project for six months or more.

PubMed
National Library of Medicine

Content PubMed is the National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE database, which offers bibliographic access to the literature of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, healthcare, and the preclinical sciences from 1950 to the present. PubMed includes 15 million citations published in 5000 international journals and records feature NLM's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) indexing with English-language abstracts.

Features Researchers who connect to PubMed will encounter a prominent display informing them they can “Set up an automated PubMed update in less than 5 minutes,” using their personalized My NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) accounts.

We created a search—poison ivy AND (co2 OR poten*)—aimed to keep tabs on the research that indicates that the biomass and toxic potency of poison ivy appears to be increasing and that global warming may account for this alarming development. When we clicked on the Save Search link, a screen popped up reminding us either to sign into our My NCBI account or register for one if we hadn't yet created one. The registration process for new account holders took less than a minute and transported us immediately to a Save Search display that repeated the search syntax we constructed, prompted us to give it a name, and asked: “Would you like to receive email updates of new search results?”

Clicking the Yes radio button and OK adds the search to the newly created account, where you can make edits and specify monthly, weekly, or daily updates. The search may be renamed to be more descriptive or just simpler to remember.

A range of formats are available—including Summary, Brief, Abstract, AbstractPlus, Citation, MEDLINE, and XML—and subscribers can specify that alerts be sent as HTML or text type emails. The subscriber may also direct the system to limit the number of items sent with each update, starting with just five records. The QuickTime tutorial recommends not laboring over this decision, because each update contains a link to the complete listing of new records that meet your search criteria.

Subscribers may direct PubMed to send them a regularly scheduled email “even when there are no new results,” although why would anyone do that? Finally, subscribers can opt to include additional text in the email message, which is useful if you use the alerts to forward to a client or a group of users.

Once a profile has been set up, it may be easily edited and resaved or deleted if the researcher's interest in the subject wanes.

Comments The My NCBI Help pages have an elegant four-minute automated QuickTime tutorial that goes over the basics of setting up an alert and offers useful suggestions much as an expert searcher might.

SpringerAlerts
Springer

Content Springer issues 3500 new book titles each year and publishes 1700 journals. The company's chief focus is science, technology, and medicine, but it also includes coverage of architecture and design, arts, business and management, economics, education, geography, humanities, law, linguistics, philosophy, public health, statistics, and the social sciences.

Features Springer has instituted a range of alerts designed to accommodate the information needs of the conscientious user. Personal SpringerAlerts are available from the company's homepage. Choosing alerts takes the user to a simple, noninvasive registration template that requires an email address, one's place of work in general terms (i.e., college, government, private practice), type of work, and country. The subscriber indicates his or her language preferences and whether emails should come in HTML or text format. (Receiving alerts via conventional mail is also an option.) The user can choose a subject area from an expandable listing of 30 broad subject areas. An email is generated once a month to inform subscribers regarding newly released book titles in their areas of interest.

Comments In late spring, Springer was working on an improved table of contents alerts service, and the company web site indicated that existing alert profiles were unavailable. When it comes online, table of contents subscribers will get an email as soon as each issue is available. Every journal page on the Springer web site provides one-click access to its journal alert service, so setup is quite simple.

The book series alert option generates an email with the tables of content of the newly published series volumes, and authors can set up an email alert for their own articles. Springer also offers new title alerts in RSS. Changes to profiles are verified by email, and users who set up the service and then lose interest or, more likely, feel overwhelmed by all the information directed their way, can easily unsubscribe. Springer provides help via an online email form.

Comments With a huge roster of science, medicine, and technology book titles and journals and a tremendously easy setup procedure, SpringerAlerts offers an elegant way for serious researchers to keep on top of developments in their fields. Because Springer is active in areas beyond its hallmark STM, humanists, social scientists, and others also have good reason to explore its alert service.

WilsonWeb
Content H.W. Wilson allows researchers to access online products via its 2.9 WilsonWeb interface. Any subscribed database can be cross-searched for greater ease and efficiency, which is especially useful for multidisciplinary study. The interface has improved significantly, and available PDF files can now be emailed as separate attachments.

Features Introduced several years ago, WilsonWeb's SDI Alert service permits users to save any search string, scheduling it to be rerun automatically, with the latest results emailed whenever an article posted online matches the desired search criteria: subject, keyword phrase, publication title, author, etc. Once created, the alerts can be emailed on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Alerts can be stopped after one month or run with the user's preferred frequency for up to one year.

Alert settings can be modified or deleted when an alert email is sent, which always includes Update Alert or Delete Alert links at the bottom of the page. It appears that any number of searches can be saved or set up as alerts if so desired, although Famous First Facts and Art Museum Image Gallery do not offer this service.

To get started, users can choose the Create Alerts or Search History buttons on the left toolbar to set up the Alert task once a query has been executed. This runs through the Search Builder functionality of the system, where users can combine searches during a session or begin an entirely new search. All searches performed during the session are displayed, and users can save or delete all searches (combine sets as mentioned above) or select the “Create Alert for this Search” link to the right of any/all of the search strings.

A confirmation email is sent after the alert is set up, and users have to select the Activate Alert link as the final step in the process. As new documents matching the desired search are added to the database, the system emails new results. Alert links take users directly into WilsonWeb, where the user can view the full citation or full text of articles.

Comments Saving searches involves creating a unique personal ID number that allows users to login and rerun the search. It would be nice to have similar access to alerts, since we found they can only be updated or deleted once an email alert has been sent. Of course, users can set up daily alerts, even if there are no new results, so the modification or deletion is only delayed by one day.