Langsdale Link
Contents:
- Welcome from the new director
- Alert, Alert!: Tables of Contents and other stuff
- Citing Sources gets Easier with Zotero
- No Parking, No Problem: Save Time and Travel with Langsdale
- Leading Langsdale Library
- Langsdale is looking for a few good books
- New Databases at Langsdale Library
- Meet Our New Staff
Alert! Alert!: Tables of Contents and Other Stuff
Langsdale Library and the University of Baltimore Law Library provide the UB community access to thousands of journal titles online. But you probably know that already. What you probably don’t use are the current awareness "alert" services that are available through many of our databases. With these, you can receive notification of new articles that might be of interest to you as soon as they become available.
The alert services can be one of two general types. The first is a basic Table of Contents (TOC) delivery service. If you have a favorite journal, you can have the Table of Contents of each new issue automatically sent to you whenever a new issue is added to the database. These TOCs have direct links to each article for on campus users, and off-campus users will be able to get to the article through ResearchPort . The second option is to create a search query that you would like run on a regular basis. With this option, you can be notified of all new articles that meet your search criteria on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis. In addition, the alerts can be delivered to you either via email, or through an RSS feed.
The specifics of how to set up an alert varies depending on which vendor provides access to a particular journal. But as an example, let’s say I wanted to receive the table of contents for all issues of the Journal of Popular Culture. Here is what I would do:
- Go to the Langsdale Library Journal Finder: http://langsdale.ubalt.edu/journalfinder.cfm
- Type in the name of the journal I want to find - in this case "Journal of Popular Culture" - and click the search button.
- The search result will show me which database(s) have this journal. The Journal of Popular Culture is in Academic Search Premier.
- If I click on the link to Academic Search Premier, I will get a page that will let me browse or search within the Journal of Popular Culture.
- At the top right of the page, is a link that says "Alert/Save/Share". Clicking on that will give me the option to create an alert where the table of contents of new issues for this journal would be emailed to me or to create an RSS feed for new articles that I can add to my feedreader.
I can also choose to receive an alert for all articles that meet search criteria that I set up. This works much the same way. As an example, let's say I wanted to receive all articles on open access publishing that appear within scholarly journals in Academic Search Premier. Here are the steps:
- Go to Academic Search Premier. http://researchport.umd.edu/source=UMD02096)
- Enter open access journals in the top search box and
- Check the "scholarly (peer-reviewed) journal" box in the "limit your result" section below.
- Click on Search
- Towards the top of the search results screen will be a line that reads "Alert/Save/Share". Clicking on that will give me the option to create an alert for all new articles in from scholarly journals that are covered by Academic Search Premier and contain the phrase "open access journals" somewhere in the record. Again, I can choose to have the results sent to my email address, or I can get a RSS feed for this search which I can add to my feedreader.
Hopefully these instructions will give you an idea of how the alerts work and get you pointed in the right direction, but keep in mind that the specific steps you will need to take will vary depending on which database you are using. If you want help with setting up an alert for any of our databases, you can always contact the reference desk for assistance. http://langsdale.ubalt.edu/contact.htm