Web Current Awareness
The links on this page are useful for librarians or anyone who has a professional interest in keeping up with the most useful sites on the Web. Many of these sites will let you subscribe to their updates by e-mail or RSS
This page:
Current Awareness Web Sites |
Custom Alert Services
Current Awareness Web Sites
See also
- Best Free Reference Websites - Annual list (American Library Association, Reference and Users Services Association)
- Free Pint - Reviews Web sites in many areas (focus on business); newsletter comes out twice a month; archives available
- INFOdocket - Where librarian Gary Price reports his latest discoveries (Library Journal)
- Internet Resources Newsletter - Monthly (last issue Dec. 2009) with an emphasis on academic resources (Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland)
- Internet Scout Project
- The Scout Report - A weekly update of the best of the Internet. Started in 1994
- Internet Scout Weblog
- Research Buzz
- ResourceShelf
- Web Savvy (Cyberlibrarians' Rest Stop)
Web Directory of Current Awareness Sites:
Sites that link to many other current awareness Web pages
Custom Alert Services
- Giga Alert
- Google Alerts
- Mention
- Yahoo Alerts
- Change Notes (formerly Watchit.us)
- Distill Web Monitor - Firefox extension (formerly AlertBox)
- Follow That Page
- Infominder
- Tracerlock - Even works with news sites
- TrackEngine
- Trackle
- Versionista - Get notified of changes and see side-by-side differences
- VisualPing - Absorbed ChangeDetection (also available as a Chrome extension)
- Watch That Page
- WebSite Watcher - $40 download (free trial)
- Free Keyword Monitoring Services
- Web Page Change Detection Resources (Steven Bell)
Keyword Monitoring:
These sites will watch the web — or parts of it, such as social media sites — for keywords or terms. For example, you might want to be alerted when your name or company is mentioned on the web.
Web Site Tracking:
These sites offer services that track changes to Web pages. Most of these are Web-based services; WebSite Watcher, however, is client-based (i.e., you download software to your computer)
Directories of Monitoring Sources:
Other Ways to Keep Up with Your Field Online:
Many of these ideas come from ResourceShelf
Use one of the above Web site tracking services to monitor the Web site of a researcher or university department you're interested in
Monitor the Web site for a conference at which relevant papers are likely
Do a keyword search on OAIster or other Open Archive Repositories, then track the search results page using one of the Web site tracking services above
Do a search using a Journal Index, then see if you can get e-mail or RSS updates. This may work on journal indexes available from your library, which are often of higher quality than the free indexes on the open Web
Get tables of contents of the current issue of a relevant journal. They are often available from journal publishers or services like Ingenta and Infotrieve
Get updates on new books from ISBN.nu, Amazon, or your library, which may offer RSS feeds of its new book lists
Books
- Information
Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web by Tara Calishain (New Riders, 2007)
(Find it in a library) - Keeping Current: Advanced
Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs by Steven M. Cohen (ALA Editions, 2003)
(Find it in a library)