Alerts [a PLN tip from my mother, the ‘retired’ librarian]

Researching a topic for a long-term project or thesis? Did you know that you can generate on-going searches and receive results as e-mail messages or as RSS feeds to your feed reader?

Both the EbscoHost and ProQuest (journal databases providers we can access via the Empire State library website) allow you to receive an automatic email notification or RSS feed whenever:

• a new issue of a journal you are interested in ‘subscribing’ to has been added to that database or when 

• new articles are available to update a search you have run in that database. 

You can read more about these neat services from EbscoHost and ProQuest.

And you can use GoogleAlerts to notify you of new, updated results for a search you are interested in following on the Internet over time. Each email you receive contains a link to delete the alert, so you can cancel any time you want. Google Alerts has several other settings to help you customize your updates. Learn more fine-tuning your search by source type and frequency of reporting.