Keeping Up with Research and Current Events: Using Email Alerts

Be among the first to read about new developments in your field. Automatically track citations of your own research. Stay current on everything from the early salvos of the 2008 presidential campaign to the latest events in Afghanistan. Email alerts offer a convenient way for you to accomplish these tasks on a daily basis. You can set up alerts on Google and on several of the databases accessible through Washington University Libraries.

Alerts from the Web

The Google Alerts service sends updated search results from the web, including current news stories, blogs, and Google Groups; selecting the "Comprehensive" option will provide updates from all four. You can set up the service to send results to your email account once a day, once a week, or as soon as new information is discovered.

How to Set Up Google Alerts

• Go to the Google Alerts page
• Type in search terms
• Select what you want to search and how often
• Type your email address
• Watch for a confirmation email that will verify your address

If you have a gmail account, you can eliminate the last step and manage all of your alerts from one window. Gmail accounts are available at http://gmail.google.com.

Three Examples

1. To get links to stories about asteroids as they appear in the popular news media
   • Search terms: asteroid
   • Type: News
   • How often: as-it-happens
   • Your email: astrophysicist@wustl.edu
2. To get links to blog posts that mention presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich
   • Search terms:“Dennis Kucinich”
   • Type: Blogs
   • How often: once a week
   • Your email: DKblogstudy@hotmail.com
3. To get links to mentions of your name on the web, news, blogs, and Google Groups (a.k.a. “ego search”)
   • Search terms: “Joy Weese Moll”
   • Type: Comprehensive
   • How often: once a day
   • Your email: If you are logged on to a gmail account, the alerts are automatically sent there

Alerts from Databases

Email alerts from databases of professional and academic literature provide a great way to keep current in your field. With these alerts, you will be notified whenever a topic or article of interest has been cited in a new article. Two of the databases that provide email alert services are Education Full Text and Web of Knowledge .

How to Set Up an Email Alert in Education Full Text

• Go to library’s Education Full Text page .
• Click on “Connect to Database.”
• Do a basic or advanced search of the database on the search terms of your choosing.
• Click on “Create Alerts,” which is the blue button at the bottom of the left menu.
• Your search will be listed with a link labeled: “Create Alert for this Search.”
• Click on the link, and fill out the form.
• Watch for a confirmation email that will verify your address.

Example

To get weekly links, for a year, to new articles appearing in the education literature on blogs

• Do a search on the word “blog.”
• Click on “Create Alerts.”
• Click on “Create Alert for this Search” to get the alert form:
  • E-mail Address: jmoll@wustl.edu
  • Re-enter E-mail Address: jmoll@wustl.edu
  • Schedule: Select “Weekly” from the drop-down list.
  • Stop after: Select “One Year” from the drop-down list.
  • E-mail Subject: Education Full Text sightings of “blog”
• Click on the “Save Alert” button to activate the alert.

How to Set Up Web of Knowledge/Web of Science Email Alerts

• Register for alerts: the registration form is on the right-side menu on the Web of Knowledge portal.
• Enter email address and password to register.
• Create a citation alert for any article or book of interest by clicking on the “Create Citation Alert” button while viewing that citation.

Example

To get notifications of new articles citing “Economic-Performance Through Time” in American Economic Review by Douglass C. North

• Do a general search in the Web of Science database for author (north d*) and source title (American Economic Review).
• Select the desired article to bring up the full record.
• Click on “Create Citation Alert” on the right-side menu.
• Enter email address and password.

More Alerts, More Ways

To find more databases that offer alerts, see the Washington University Libraries alerts page ( http://library.wustl.edu/research/alerts.html ). This page also lists alerts available via RSS, an alternative to a cluttered email inbox. A future ITeach newsletter will detail a method for setting up an RSS reader for the purpose of receiving database alerts. For more information, please contact Joy Weese Moll, Reference/Web Services Librarian at jmoll@wustl.edu or 935-7466.

Note: If you are planning to set up numerous email alerts, consider setting up a separate email account for this purpose, so that work and personal email messages do not get lost among alerts, and vice versa.