HSLS Update

On the Alert - New HSLS Guide Helps You Stay Current With New Information

With a seemingly exponential increase of information published every year, the task of staying up-to-date with newly published information can become overwhelming. In fact, it is nearly impossible. A recent study of the literature in the field of primary care revealed that reviewing all current primary care literature would take 351 hours per month, or two full-time equivalents of physician effort.¹

Many online resources provided by HSLS offer time-saving current awareness email alerts that can be set up to automatically identify new information by:

• a particular topic,
• a particular journal,
• a particular author,
• articles that cite a particular article.

HSLS librarians have created a new online guide that outlines all of the Current awareness services alerting services available to University of Pittsburgh and UPMC faculty, staff, and students. Highlights of selected Alerting services are listed below. Complete details and set-up instructions are available from the guide at www.hsls.pitt.edu/guides/alerts/. Note that all of these alert services require a free registration to establish a user profile.

Ovid Databases
Alerts can be created in almost any database on the Ovid search system, including MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL and others. Alerts can be sent weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly. Subject, author, and journal alerts are available.

PubMed
The PubMed version of MEDLINE uses the new MyNCBI feature to save searches and set up e-mail alerts. Alerts can be sent daily, weekly, or monthly. Subject, author, and journal alerts are available. Articles are added to PubMed daily, and a daily alert is available, making it slightly more current than Ovid MEDLINE.

Individual E-Journals
The Web sites for individual e-journals usually offer their own alerting service. Note that new articles are typically posted on the journal's site days or sometimes weeks before they are added to MEDLINE or an equivalent database.

Citation Alerts
These provide notification when a new article cites a particular article of interest. In an ISI Web of Science search, view the database record for a particular article, and click the "Create Citation Alert" button to be notified when any new article cites this article. The Scopus database also supports citation alerts in the same way.

Some of these resources are difficult to use. To ensure that your search does not yield too many citations or not enough, a complex search strategy may be required to get your results "just right." If you would like assistance with creating an alert, an HSLS reference librarian can help you to develop a search strategy. Call 412-648-8796 to request an appointment.

--Linda Hartman & Ammon Ripple

¹Alper BS, Hand JA, Elliott SG, Kinkade S, Hauan MJ, Onion DK, Sklar BM. "How much effort is needed to keep up with the literature relevant for primary care?" J Med Libr Assoc. 2004 Oct; 92(4):429-37.