Week 7 – myEBSCO and alerts, RSS feeds, etc.

Is it really week 7 already?
That seems impossible!

Last week, we looked at MyEBSCO, and this week, we’ll take it one step further. Within the customization settings, there are a few interesting things that you can do to automate your searching. If you have a favorite author, perhaps, and would like to be automatically reminded whenever something by or about them shows up in an EBSCO database, you can create an RSS feed that automatically shows up in either Google Reader or Bloglines [remember those? Week 3.] You can also use this process to create an automatic piece of email as a reminder, too.
To do this relatively simple operation, perform a search in a EBSCO database that actually retrieves results. I did a simple keyword search for: Ondaatje, Michael

Once the results come up, look for Search History/Alerts, immediately below the search fields. Click on that to expand it and you’ll get a series of options. The options will vary depending on the search you performed. In my case, I was given a choice of a straight keyword search, a SU or subject search or an AU or author search. I’m going to choose the straight keyword search [mostly because the last name is odd enough it’s not going to give me a bunch of false positives…]
To actually create a link for my search, I’m going to choose the little orange icon [which is the standard icon for an RSS feed]. When I do that, a window pops up giving me some options. I can enable an email alert by choosing “Edit Alert” and adjust the settings there, if I wish. Since I am a regular user of Google Reader, though, I prefer to incorporate my EBSCO feeds into that platform. To do this, all I have to do is to copy the “Syndication Feed” link by right clicking on it and choosing “copy link location”. Then I can go to Google Reader and paste it in as a new feed. Alternatively, you can just click on the “Syndication Feed” link, and it’ll take you to a page that gives you directions on how to do this simply.

Once you get a feel for this, you can begin to be pretty creative with it. If you have a favorite magazine or journal that is in EBSCO, you can set up an alert that let’s you know whenever a new issue has been published – you can set up an alert that gives you tables of contents [for many publications], and all sorts of other ideas. Want to get really creative? Set up a search that looks for recipes containing an unusual ingredient and every time one is indexed in an EBSCO title… you get the idea, right?

So, this week, give this a try, and see what you think about it. If you choose your alerts carefully, they’ll be very interesting. If you build them too broadly, you’ll get 50 chocolate cake recipes every day [which may, or may not, be a bad thing…]

Use your blog to give us an idea of how this process went for you, and if you find it to be interesting or useful. Did you decide on an email alert, or an RSS feed? Also, if you come up with a creative use for this, by all means let us know about it!

Next Week – It’s time to Chat.
Happy Halloween,

jjs