Web of Science, RSS feeds and Current Awareness

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Web of Science, RSS feeds and Current Awareness

• Dongmei Cao
• Science Reference Librarian
• Blog http//scilibrarian.wordpress.com
• Faculty Technology Institute, 2006

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I. Web of Science

• Misleading name, not just for science
• Database for science, social science, arts and
  humanities
• Science Citation Index Expanded
• Social Science Citation Index
• Arts and Humanities Citation Index

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WoS and its content

• Selected, high quality, scholarly journals
• Journals indexed
• SCI-Expanded 6509
• SSCI 1876
• AHCI 1148

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More coverage added

• just added additional 5 years of back archive to
  our Web of Science subscription
• 1990 to current
• Note post on my blog about this great news

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Special Features of WoS

• Citations (bibliography) are indexed thoroughly
• Cited reference (backward)
• Citing reference (forward)
• Trace back and forth on a research topic
• Many other features

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Live Demo

• 5 seats only (so we may not get in!)
• Remember to log out after youre done.

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II. RSS feeds Current Awareness

• Current Awareness alert service, keep up to date
  with the literature in your field (or a specific
  research topic)
• old time (Web 1.0) e-mail alert service
• nowadays (Web 2.0) RSS feeds

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What is RSS?

• A format of XML (eXtensible Markup Language),
  readable by special software (RSS readers)
• Web content syndication
• Many different flavors (7)
• RSS 0.91 Rich Site Summary
• RSS 0.9 and 1.0 RDF Site Summary
• RSS 2.0 Really Simple Syndication

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Whats the use of RSS?

• Instead of visiting a site often to check for
  updates, news readers scan for updates and
  display them for you
• you can stay in touch with many different sources
  of news and information
• Keep up with literature, news, blogs all at the
  same time!
• Other creative use e.g. embed RSS feeds on your
  own Web pages to display headlines, display
  related content from databases on your course Web
  site.

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What do they look like?

• Orange buttons (RSS button, XML button or feed
  button) denote RSS feeds

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Finding RSS feeds

• Publishers web site
• News site
• Bloglines (add ? search, keywords)
• My page (focus on science) Current Awareness
  RSS feeds for e-journals and databases

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Ok, but how do I ?

• install your news reader/aggregator
• Subscribe to a feed
• The reader will display the latest
  headlines/content specific to that feed, each
  with a synopsis and link to the full
  story/article.
• RSS Tutorial Subscribing to RSS feeds on
  Bloglines

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RSS readers

• Web-based Bloglines
• Platform specific (download to your computer)
• find out more What is RSS?

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An example This allows you to view things such
as tables of contents from recently published
electronic journals, new updates from database
queries, news headlines, blogs, and more without
having to visit each individual Web site.
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Thank You!