Page 89 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Information Sources and Services

Notes Know the meaning, aims, functions and types of bibliography
Discuss about bibliographic control and its importance in the library
Identify various information services, such as document delivery, translation services,
and reference services

Introduction

The acute problem of increasing amount of literature felt by scientists and technologists (who
used scientific and technical libraries) on one hand and resource crunch to acquire at least all that
which is important for the core user group on the other hand has led librarians and information
scientists to devise ways and means of supporting R&D activities. In order to solve the problems
created by the growth of literature, information service acted in scientific and technical libraries.
The intention was to provide information service by one who can keep in touch with research
going on in laboratory. His primary function was to organize literature and he was to know all
the possible sources of information, which might be useful to the group of persons being served
by him. Information service was started first in scientific and technical libraries because scientists
and technologists were the first to feel the acute problem of increasing amount of literature.
However, many other types of libraries are also providing this kind of service.

5.1 Meaning of Alerting Services

Alert is a colloquial term used to define a machine-to-person communication that is important
and/or time sensitive. An alert contains user-requested content such as a reminder (important),
a notification (urgent), and ultimately an alert (important and urgent). Alert messaging or alert
notification is the delivery of alerts to recipients. Alert messaging emerged from the study of
Personal Information Management (PIM), the science of discovering how people perform certain
tasks to acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve and use information relevant to them. Alert
notification is a natural evolution of the concept of RSS which makes it possible for people to
keep up with web sites in an automated manner. Alerting makes it possible for people to keep
up with the information that matters most to them.

Notes The library offers alerting services to keep you informed of new publications or
databases. It is also possible to keep track of citations of scientific articles.
There are a number of different types of alerting services:

Saved Search/Keyword Alerts: Develop a keyword search and all articles matching your
keywords will automatically be sent to you. This can be set up in many article and journal
databases.

Citation Alert: This service will alert you when a chosen author or article has been cited
by another.

Example: The ISI database is the most notable source of citation alerts because of the
extent of its coverage.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS): The RSS feed is a way in which information is delivered
rather than a type of alerting service. RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and the
feed delivers tables of contents, saved search results, or other types of alerts in a form that
can be interpreted by RSS feed readers.

84 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY