More RSS

Recently I talked about RSS feeds from the Financial Times. You can also set up RSS feeds from EBSCO for notification of new journal content or for updating you with search results.

Before you go any further, you will need to set up a personal account with EBSCO. Instructions for doing so are here. It's quite simple, honest. There's a link to the sign-page on the top right of every EBSCO page.

The results of any search you perform on EBSCO databases can be saved as an alert, which will update you when new content matching your search criteria is added to the database. Rather than dribble on too much, with various degrees of coherence, here's EBSCO's instructions on setting up a search alert, alternatively here's how to set up a journal alert on EBSCO, and finally for EBSCO, here's the low-down on how to set up an EBSCO RSS feed. Why type, when you can copy and paste links, eh? The one negative, for me, is that EBSCO RSS feeds are only viewable on newsreaders and not on homepages such as iGoogle or Pageflakes.

Edit: RSS feeds do work with homepage services, but not it seems if you are searching using Business Source Complete's Enhanced Business Searching Interface. So there

RSS and Twitter Feeds from the Financial Times

This page lists all of the RSS and Twitter feeds available from the Financial Times. RSS (Really Simple Syndication, or Rich Site Summary if you prefer) feeds contain headlines, links and descriptions and are updated as the website is updated with new stories. RSS is a great way of keeping up-to-date with breaking news, or simply even being informed on new content on webpages that you like. Accessing RSS feeds is really simple (really simple syndication remember):

You can download software (e.g. FeedDemon) or subscribe to a news reader service such as Google Reader or Bloglines. You can add RSS feeds to a personalised web page such as Pageflakes or iGoogle, alternatively, depending upon the web browser that you are using, you can access feeds directly through your browser.

Twitter seems to be the Web 2.0 application du jour allowing you to send text updates on what you are up to (er, looking at Twitter)and reading what other users are doing (er, looking at Twitter), in the form of 140-character maximum "tweets". DBS Library twitter updates can be seen by moving your eyes a little to the right (while this post is at the top of the page) or clicking here

Keep up-to-date with your favourite journals

...or even the journals you don't like. The ticTOCs Journal Tables of Contents (TOC) service makes it easy for academics, researchers, students and anyone else to keep up-to-date with newly published scholarly material by enabling them to find, display, store, combine and reuse thousands of journal tables of contents from multiple publishers (or so their website says). According to one of their press releases, you can find journals of interest by title, subject or publisher, view the latest TOC, link through to the full text of over 250,000 articles (where institutional or personal subscriptions, or Open Access, allow), and save selected journals to MyTOCs so that you can view future TOCs (free registration is required if you want to permanently save your MyTOCs). ticTOCs also makes it easy to export selected TOC RSS feeds to popular feedreaders such as Google Reader and Bloglines