Current Awareness Services

Importance

While all subjects experience change and demand for new information, the STM disciplines and professions place an acute premium on the most recent content. With competition between scientists, laboratories and institutions, and countries to be first in creating and patenting intellectual property, the need to supply the most current information has become even more important. With so much scientific information available on the web and the increasing multi-disciplinary nature of research, even experienced scientists may need assistance in finding relevant, current information.

Those who work with less experienced and less knowledgeable audiences face even more of a challenge since much of the consumer STM information found in the mass media and on the web is exaggerated or incomplete. Thus, there is a substantial need in academic and larger public libraries for information professionals to provide filtered STM content that is understandable, authoritative, and balanced. For medicine and the allied health professions and all who are ill, cutting edge information is not only urgent, but is essential in providing care and intervention that provides the best balance between risk and healing.

The heart of current awareness services [CAS] is the ability to insure that individuals are aware of and have access to new content related to specific work or personal interests. These services are selective since they involve filtering to insure that the user is faced only with information that is relevant and useful. Obviously, such filtering is a major task and there will always be some unwanted content that comes through. In our email, we deal with this be establishing filters, white lists, and black lists to reduce costs. The same can be done with current awareness.

Services may be provided for individuals, including the information professional, or groups of individuals with similar experiences/knowledge/interests. Groups vary in these attributes. For example, lower division undergraduates have different STM information needs or wants than post-docs.

In earlier days, CAS were limited and found in special libraries and information centers. The library notified individuals of relevant content. Today, it is more likely that the library provides assistance so that individuals create their own CAS with notifications sent directly to the individual. Ideally, the services would work so that notification [the alert] would be received whenever new content was available. That could be every fifteen minutes when a web page adds new content or once a month when a new table of content appears for a scholarly periodical. Regardless of the frequency, CAS must be reliably frequent.

Regardless of the audience, CAS must be based upon the needs of the user and that will vary with experience, on-the-job responsibilities, information technology comfort level, available time, and other variables. Current awareness for the science librarian will differ from that for a high energy physicist. With some, the tension between needs and wants may surface and the information professional will need to decide on the degree to which CAS should be pushed. Generally, a small, bite-size program is best to begin with.

The major value of CAS is that it alerts individuals to content that they otherwise might have missed or that they find it much earlier. If systematic and filtered, CAS should also save user time and effort. However, without discipline current awareness may become an end in itself.

Being informed and up-to-date is a cornerstone of what it means to be a professional. Thus, current awareness needs to be systematic and carefully thought out. Although the evidence is murky, current or hot news often drives and is certainly the basis of competitive intelligence.

In the management literature, questions about information needs [not wants] involve thoughtful answers to three questions:

1. What information is needed?
2. When is information needed?
3. How is information needed?

Certainly, any current awareness service requires that these questions be answered and then asked again at reasonable intervals to insure that the current awareness system continues to meet current needs.

If you were limited in time and effort, would you develop and maintain CAS services for your library or information agency?

Collection approaches

As with any collection development exercise, there are various ways to select best sources. Here is a general approach:

1. Ask colleagues in peer institutions via professional contacts, discussion lists, and the like. Identify science libraries that have substantial CAS services or content and use them as benchmarks.
2. Use those sources found on one or more [better] STM library websites with each mention on a library website seen as a vote of confidence. Check to insure that the URL is accurate and that the site is alive and well.
   
3. Identify scholarly and professional organizations that are heavy hitters in those disciplines and professions important to library staff and the user community.
4. Web searching and evaluating.

Which of these approaches seems best to you?

Selection criteria

Selection criteria will favor with audience, institutional mission, goals, and objectives and the ..... Still, the criteria are common:

• Relevancy [how central is this to your information need?]
• Currency [how timely and when was the content created]
• Authority, accuracy and reputation
• Understandable [easy to make sense of]
• Depth and completeness of content provided [citation, abstract, overview, full article]
• Subject coverage, including depth versus breadth issues
• Content type [books, articles, reports, white papers, announcements of conferences, grants, regulations...]
• Audience [research professional, amateur, consumer science ...]
  
• Information type [peer-reviewed, pre-print, method and instrumentation, policy brief, editorial ...]
• Language
  
• Monetary cost and availability [free, open source]

Which of these criteria seem most important? Ideally, you should be able to explain to another [briefly] why you have selected each of your news sources.

Environmental scanning

Environmental scanning is the systematic to casual scanning of the environment in which an agency or firm is located to identify change that has the potential to threaten or provide an opportunity. Threats need to be countered and opportunities need to be taken advantage of.

Clearly, CAS and environmental scanning have much in common. One could argue that they are identical, except that environmental scanning focuses more on events likely to impact the organization as a whole. Still, CAS may well identify change that provides threats and opportunities to individuals and organizations. Competitive intelligence is a variant of environmental scanning with a somewhat narrower focus.

Information overload

Current awareness systems are designed to cope with information overload by filtering a large number of possibilities into a small number of sources that meet information needs on a daily basis. Too little current information and too much are both notable problems. The advent of the Internet has created an environment where many professionals are tempted to spend too much time on too many sources in order not to miss anything important. This may easily lead to information overload. Common overload symptoms include:

• Feeling guilty or being tempted to check your news reader too frequently
• Overwhelmed by the amount of content available and the time required to view and ponder
• Considerable quick scanning and browsing, but little evaluation/analysis or relating new content to tasks and responsibilities.

In fact, information overload may lead to ill health in managers who simply do not know how to filter information, make sense of it, and then apply it to the decisions and tasks before them. Too much irrelevant content, "info smog," obscures the horizon and may lead to confusion and anxiety.
An effective, efficient CAS will monitor sources on a fairly regular basis to weed those that are not genuinely useful and productive. As others have stated, distinguish between interesting information and content that is useful and used. A key question, to be asked frequently, is how much information [broadly defined] is enough?

How might you do this?

Cost

Current awareness, whether for an individual professional or as service for others, has a real cost. The personal cost is mostly in time and discipline. The service cost is also in time and cost, but the time then includes interacting with users to measure satisfaction and monitoring sources to insure that they remain valuable and cost-effective.

The systematic dissemination of information services provided years ago by special libraries and information centers was notably expensive because of the manual processes involved in capturing information about research interests and then the costs of customized, repeatable searches in expensive databases such as Dialog. The web and library site licenses have dramatically reduced these costs, but this is an activity that competes for time and attention. Information overload, the feeling that one must keep up with everything can lead to frustration and anxiety.

What are the advantages of saved, automatically repeatable database searches for current awareness? Disadvantages?

While some content is free, other content may be expensive and available only to members of an organization that can afford an institutional subscription. This means that those who work for an affluent organization are favored over those who do not. Most clearly, this is a problem for STM professionals in third and forth world countries. However, it is also a problem for those in the developed countries who do not have a well funded library or information center.

Many alerting services are free since they may stimulate purchases [articles, reports] or subscriptions. The abstract or brief summary found in the alert may be enough to determine relevance or it may be a tease that leaves the user frustrated. While the amount of free or open source STM content on the web is growing rapidly, much essential content still requires payment. Typically, STM content is much more expensive than that in the social sciences or the humanities. Some information professionals and STM professionals will restrict their CAS to free sources because of the cost.

Those in corporate environments may have access to a commercial CAS service such as CyberAlert. Clipping services have existed for many years, primarily focusing on newspapers. With the Internet, services are more specific and content is delivered much more quickly. While news sites receive most attention, some clipping services also monitor news groups, blogs, and discussion lists. Traditionally, such services were of most interest to public relations and competitive intelligence departments in for-profit corporations.

Which costs seem most notable and most troublesome?

Time

When

Ideally, the user would have a regular time slot allocated for current awareness as well as a list of tested, highly productive sources to check on a regular basis. How often to check depends on the frequency with which the source is issued. RSS feeds make checking relatively easy since new issues are automatically received by your news aggregator as soon as they are issued so that there is no need to go to individual websites to see if new content is available. Like email, current awareness can become addictive so that it is important to know when to scan quickly and when to read with more care. If you discover that sources tend to duplicate each other, delete the one that seems less useful.

If you could/read/view/listen to but one source, what would that be? Two sources?

Different professionals will find that different times work best. For many, a quick current awareness check first thing in the morning works well and insures that you are well prepared during the day. For others, like checking your email first thing, this is a distraction that takes you away from what needs to be done.

Which time would work best for you?

How

Traditionally, current awareness was based on newsletters and weekly periodicals. Trade news arrived in monthly periodicals and looseleaf services. General news was gathered from a substantial newspaper. Radio news provided the most current news.

Reading hard copy is a different experience for many since it is more thoughtful and demanding while reading digital copy involves more scanning or browsing. Some find that hard copy current awareness works better because it increases focus and retention. Still, most current awareness involves considerable scanning, browsing and filtering with reading only the parts that seem most essential or relevant.

Some [many?] will save important content as notes or snippets that may be placed in digital notebooks or folders so that they may be easily found later. Others, print these snippets and file them in traditional file folders. It's likely that the future will find current awareness to be an entirely digital activity involving browsing, reading/viewing, capturing, storing, organizing, and allowing software to find the snippets when needed.  Capturing relevant snippets is fairly easy, but establishing a system to insure that they are easily found may require more effort. It is increasingly easy to import content from databases and store it on client machines. End Note, reworks, Reference Manager and others make it relatively easy to create bibliographies from imported citations. Other software makes it easy to collect a wide variety of content formats, and tag each item for easy retrieval.

We should also emphasize the power of social networking, especially with those we work with and those peers in similar institutions and situations. Even the most energetic individual can only keep up with so much. Networking with others, developing appropriate professional relationships, makes it relatively easy to share new information whether it be done at the water cooler or coffee machine, at lunch, or at a professional meeting. A considerable portion of our current awareness should come from colleagues. Face-to-face sharing can be most effective. Ideally, information professionals would be models at discovering and sharing relevant new content with those who would benefit from it, especially since creating such services for others is a key professional activity.

Considering your interests, style, and likely employment how would you develop a current awareness program for yourself? For others?

What

Source and content type often varies with the amount of time available. When time is limited, abstracts, digests, and short summaries  work well and allow quick filtering for relevance. For research articles, titles, abstracts, and conclusions usually tell the reader all that she needs to know and also allows quick filtering. When more time is available, the full report may be read.

There are various flavors of current awareness as seen below.

 

Specific current awareness services

Conferences

We've mentioned the importance of the invisible college earlier, but it is important to emphasize that attending conferences is an essential way to network, develop contacts, and become part of an informal network of information sharers. Current awareness may take place in conference rooms listening to presentations or in the lobby speaking with colleagues. Ideally, the STM professional would attend BOTH LIS and the relevant STM conferences. You should identify the most important and relevant conferences from your peers and from those you serve. While there are well-regarded lists of conferences in various disciplines, select your conferences on the advice of those with experience.

Which LIS professional organization offers the most potential for the STM information professional?

Alerting services

Alerting services represent one of the most heralded services of the special library, often called "systematic dissemination of information [SDI]." The service matches specific subject descriptors identified by the researcher or administrator with tags applied to incoming content. When there was a match, the user was notified and asked if he or she would like the content to be held or delivered. Ideally, those providing access to STM information would provide such services to their clients. However, since this is costly in terms of time and effort, alerting services are more likely to be created by individuals through selections of RSS feeds delivered via a newsreader client on their work or home computer or a web-based one such as Google reader.

While somewhat popular in the recent past, URL minders or web monitoring services [you receive an email alert when content on a designated page changes] are less useful with RSS feeds increasingly available for many websites and blogs.

The RSS feed has transformed current awareness by eliminating the need to visit websites to see if there is new news. Instead, when there is new content, it appears on your news reader with title and abstract as well as a link to the original item. While not all current awareness services have RSS feeds, many [a growing number do]. Each new content item appears in your news reader as a separate under the heading of the title of the website or blog. For example, Science Daily updates content frequently and each new item is sent out as soon as it is published.

Information analysis services

One of Alvin Weinberg's big science initiatives was that information analysis centers should be created and staffed by top rank scientists to evaluate the rapid growth in the relevant scientific literature and identify the items that are the most important.  Originally, before the recent reorganization, ERIC was based upon the IAC model with subject specialists selecting content in discipline and topic specific areas. However, the IAC model has received little attention in recent years.

An interesting contemporary variation of the IAC is the Faculty of 1000. There are two faculties with one for medicine and one for biology. Articles are evaluated and tagged with an emphasis on identifying articles of value that did not appear in a leading periodical. This is a subscription service with considerable promise.

Why did the IAC movement never get off the ground?

Browsing current periodicals

Browsing current issues of periodicals has long been a method of staying current. It may still be favored by older faculty, especially if the science library is near their office and laboratory space. Convenience and the short supply of time favor desktop methods.

Some science libraries provide routing services for periodicals. This service may be limited to staff or also include faculty or researchers. Newly received periodical issues are sent to those on a routing list with instructions to keep the issue for a limited time and then forward it to the next person on the list. Name order should be changed so that the same person is not always at the end of the list. The obvious problem is that issues may be kept too long by an individual or lost in the forwarding process. In general, this is not a satisfactory system.

As more libraries and information centers cancel subscriptions to hard copy periodicals, fewer browsing opportunities are available except via full-text databases. Still, it is important to provide a list of recently received periodicals on the library website and make the periodical browsing area as comfortable and appealing as possible.

The future of the hard copy periodical room?

Book alerting services

Nearly all libraries or information centers provide lists of new books received and/or on the shelf and ready for use. This traditional service works well via a new book blog or RSS feed.

Larger publishers provide alert services. Springer [German] is one of the largest STM book publishers and provides The Springer Alerts service. After identifying the major book publishers in a particular science discipline or profession, it is relatively easy to create a web page with publisher information to assist those who wish to be notified of new books.

Besides book publishers, some book vendors provide a digital service provide information about forthcoming and new books. Here is an example list of publishers and vendors from a British university. Does your library provide a similar service?

Bowker's digital Books In Print Database allows users to save their book searches and receive an email alert when items that match are added to the database.

Amazon Alerts works well and is familiar to many users.

Discussion lists

Discussion lists or digital mailing lists are useful for several purposes, including current awareness. There are a notable variety of lists available both for those interested in LIS concerns as well as STM. A good first step is to check with your colleagues in peer institutions to discover which lists they find useful. Lists range from those aimed at amateur scientists to professionals with deep and narrow interests. The Syracuse University Library provides a useful list of discussion lists devoted to physics and astronomy.

You are already familiar with discussion list directories, but here are three:

• Catalist [limited to Listserv discussion lists]
  
• Tile.net
  
• Topica
  

Table of contents services

The most famous table of contents services are provided by the Institute of Scientific Information and are titled Current Contents. Here is the blurb for one of the Current Contents titles:

"Current Contents / Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences provides access to complete bibliographic information from articles, editorials, meeting abstracts, commentaries, and all other significant items in recently published editions of over 1,050 of the world's leading physical, chemical and earth sciences journals and books in broad range of categories."

Many larger  research libraries provide access to the Current Contents [Web of Knowledge includes the Web of Science and Current Contents Connect] services and the one for a particular range of scientific disciplines should be found in the departmental or divisional library where it can be scanned by library staff and users.

Ingenta also provides a wide-reaching TOC service, but particulars are somewhat unclear after a recent merger and reorganization.

Besides aggregated services, many journal publishers and scholarly societies provide a TOC service. Most are free and do  not require that the user be a subscriber. Examples of scholarly societies include the American Chemical Society, and the American Institute of Physics. Publisher examples include Annual Reviews, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Science, Elsevier Science Direct, and many others. Several science libraries  provide lists of these with directions on how to set up the TOC alerting service. If you go to the publisher or association home page, find links for journals [or similar], then look for alerts, my account, or similar to find instructions for establishing an account and the alert service.

What is the value of the Current Contents services?

Scientific databases

Depending upon how frequently they are updated, comprehensive scientific databases can provide access to the current literature, especially if publishers provide citation data before the periodical is published. Searches may be conducted by descriptor, author, company name, chemical structure, and other attributes. A growing number of databases allow the user to save the search and it will be used to periodically check the database when new content is added. Thus, the searcher receives an alert when a item that matches specific criteria is added. Most STM databases allow for saved searches and alerts. In some cases, the search will be saved, but will not be rerun until the searcher logs on again.

PubMed provides access to very current information about new medical content. In particular, My NCBI service allows you to save search strategies and be notified when a new matching item is added to the database. SciFinder is a commercial service that covers several sciences, but is especially strong in chemistry [American Chemical Society].

This is the most focused of the CAS services. Why?

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Last major revision: March 2007.