Page 90 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Unit 5: Alerting and Bibliographic Services

TOC/Table of Contents Alerting: A researcher can set up a table of contents alert by selecting Notes
his or her journals of interest; email alerts composed of each journal’s table of contents are
then sent to the researcher as they become available.
The number of scientific publications doubles every 10–15 years. Electronic publication becomes
very popular. Since the readers do not want to be forced to regularly search for information
about new documents, there is strong need for alerting services (AS). An alerting service keeps
its clients informed about new documents and events they are interested in. But alerting services
are not restricted to the area of scientific publications. Examples for applications that could
benefit from alerting services are applications such as digital libraries, stock tickers, and traveller
information systems. Currently, several implementations of alerting services already exist for
the different applicational domains.

Notes There are two technologies that can be used to electronically monitor new content:
email alerts and RSS feed readers.
With both of these technologies, you can choose what content you wish to monitor, and have it
sent to directly to your email account or your feed reader, making it unnecessary to regularly
search databases or visit journal websites to find new content.

Notes However, you should note that not all publishers, vendors, and databases providers
support these technologies, or they may support one and not the other.

5.1.1 Email Alerts

Email alert services offer a way to have new content sent automatically to your email inbox.
Setting up an email alert requires free registration with the publisher, vendor, or database
provider offering the service. Registration allows the company to store a profile of what you
want to monitor, along with your email address, so that you can be notified when newly
available content fits the parameters you have established.

Notes If you like, you can set up a filter in your email account so that these incoming
messages can be viewed in a separate folder, rather than with all of your other incoming
emails.

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