Vendor services Vendor services for current for current awareness awareness

servicesservicesLaila jarkhiLaila jarkhi

OutlineOutline• Definition of Current awareness

service• Definition of vendor• Examples of Vendor services in

current awareness services.• Advantages of Vendor services in

current awareness services.• Conclusion

Definition of VendorDefinition of Vendor• A company in the business of

providing access to a selection of bibliographic databases, online or on CD-ROM, by subscription or on a per search basis usually under licensing agreement. Providers of non print media are also referred to as vendors.

Definition of Current Definition of Current awareness servicesawareness services

A service or publication designed to alert scholars, researchers, readers, customers to recently published literature in their field of specialization, usually available in special libraries serving companies, organizations in which access to current information is essential.

Current Awareness Services

• Many publishers, online resources (including research databases and article indexes) and e-journal packages now provide electronic current awareness services.   

• Services include: Table of contents- search alerts-

citation alerts- RSS alerts

• Tables of contents alerts:  tables of contents of journal issues provided to you when new issues are published.  These are also known as TOC alerts, new issue alerts, or publication alerts.

• Search alerts:  a previously run search is

automatically run in a database with the results of new items in the database provided to you.  These are also known as keyword alerts.

• Citation alerts:  notification when an article has been cited in a particular online resource.  These are sometimes called author alerts.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/Home.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=JournalPage&logoutLink=false

• RSS general alerts:  aside from tables of contents, search and citation alerts being available as an RSS feed through many online resources, RSS alerts with pre-set topics are also available for subscription from some publishers, databases, or websites.    

http://news.google.com/nwshp

Current Awareness Current Awareness ServicesServices

Current awareness services: • Help faculty, students & staff keep

informed of new journal, books, etc. issues and articles in their research area through email or any contact info.

• Are of no cost to faculty, students and staff

• Are provided by some of online vendors

http://www.amazon.comhttp://www.amazon.com

horizon by sirsidynix: horizon by sirsidynix: http://library.kuniv.edu.kw:81/iphttp://library.kuniv.edu.kw:81/ip

ac20/ipac.jsp?ac20/ipac.jsp?profile=central&menu=search#profile=central&menu=search#

focus focus

Advantages of Advantages of Vendor services Vendor services for current awareness servicesfor current awareness services

• It will reduce cost of ordering articles or any document if ordered on an institution basis like universities.

• It will reduce time of receiving documents electronically from vendors.

• It can be updated anytime and easy maintenance from vendors to users.

• It will develop the skills of librarians in that field.

ConclusionConclusion• It is very essential to use new technologies to

improve the services in libraries.

• A co-operation should be taken into account between vendors and libraries to enhance the quality of services and to help users in easy access and easy too communicate.

• A co-operation should be there between similar libraries to present services from vendors such between Kuwait university and Kuwait public authority applied education and training to reduce the cost of services.

Links:• Ehrman medical libraryhttp://library.med.nyu.edu/library/

instruction/handouts/pdf/autoalertgrid.pdf• tripodhttp://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/trico/

alerts.shtml• dialoguehttp://www.dialoguejournal.com/content/

ReferencesReferences• Current awareness services,

university of calgary(2009) retrieved from:

http://library.ucalgary.ca/awareness • Investorwords.com• http://www.investorwords.com/

5234/vendor.html