Keep up to date

This is a brief introduction to the current awareness and alerting services available for you to keep up to date with publications, both paper and electronic, in your field of interest.

University Library: new acquisitions

Weekly reports of new items added to the Library Catalogue (updated every Thursday) and news reports of major acquisitions are available on our New acquisitions web page.

You can also save and re-run searches to find what has been added to the Library Catalogue.

  • Do a search which finds resources you're interested in
  • Login to My Library Account
  • Follow the Previous Searches link and click in the box next to the search you want to save
  • Click on the Save button. You will see a message in the main menu at the top of the screen saying your search was successfully saved.
  • To re-run the search, return to My Library Account
  • Click on the Saved Searches button
  • Click in the box next to the search you want to run, then click on the Find button

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Books, journal articles, conferences and web pages

There are many online booksellers and publishers where you can find details of newly published items. Some provide an alerting service, which emails to you the details of new books, tables of content or journal articles in your specified subjects or journals.

Look at our Library and publishing resources web page for links to some of the major booksellers and publishers.

Examples of popular alerting services are:

  • Book News for the latest books in science, technology and medicine
  • ChangeDetection is a simple service that monitors web page URLs for changes, and notifies you by email when changes occur
  • Conference Alerts includes a searchable database of upcoming academic conferences and a free alerting service
  • ticTOCs produced by a consortium of 14 UK partners, is a free RSS-based alerting service where academics, researchers and anyone else can easily keep up-to-date with scholarly journal Tables of Contents. ticTOCs has gathered over 10,000 TOC RSS feeds from over 300 large, medium and small publishers, and has created a searchable directory of the latest Tables of Contents to enable users to search, browse, view and subscribe to TOCs, without needing to be familiar with the concept of RSS. Users can also find TOC feeds for many journals that they are interested in, without having to search numerous different publishers' websites.
  • ZETOC which provides access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents service, dating back to 1993. The database contains details of about 20 million journal and conference records, with 20,000 current journals and 16,000 conference proceedings added per year.

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Saving and re-running database searches

Many of the databases we subscribe to have alerting services. Generally you will need to run a search, save it and then set it up to run regularly. Results of the search will normally be emailed to you automatically. Look at the online help for your favourite database to see if it has an alerting service and if so, how to set it up.

Examples of some of the major database alerting services are described below.

MetaLib alerts

For databases which are cross-searchable you can set up a MetaLib alert:

  • Login to MetaLib using your University username and password
  • Select the cross-searchable databases you want to search, enter your search terms, and click Go
  • Click on Add to History in the Previous Searches screen, adding this search
  • In My Space - History, click on the Alert button to convert this search into an alert, then complete the online form
  • You will receive regular emails of the search results

Find more information on Databases and MetaLib

Citation alerts from Web of Science

Using MIMAS Web of Science, you can set up an e-mail alert when articles you select are cited. You can also use this feature to keep a list of your favourite articles.

To add an article to your list and receive an email each time it is cited:

  • Do your search in MIMAS Web of Science, then go to the Search History screen
  • Select the search you want, then click on Save History.
  • You will be prompted to login with your registration details
  • Enter the details of frequency etc in the Alerts screen, and give the alert a name
  • Save the alert to the WoK server, or to your PC
  • Finally, you will see a confirmation message saying the alert has been registered.

Database alerts

Our three major hosts, which provide access to over 30 databases between them, all provide alerting services. See the guides for information on how to set up your alert. For other databases you can look at their online Help to find out if alerts are available and how to set them up.

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Subject gateways and portals

Intute is a nationally funded gateway to quality academic web resources in all subject areas. It is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) with contributions from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

All material added to Intute is evaluated and selected by a network of subject specialists to create the Intute database. If you register with MyIntute you create a personal account where you can:

  • Save Intute records of interest and database searches
  • Receive a weekly email alert listing new records added to the database - which match your specified subject areas or saved searches
  • Export records to your own Web pages

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Training

A workbook on Current Awareness and Alerting Services (PDF , 307kb) is available.

Getting more help

For more help on current awareness services you can: