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Current Awareness Tools

Current awareness is a way of keeping up to date with things happening in your discipline within the last 30-90 days. This can mean anything from reading the most recently published information or developments in your field to following blogs that encourage discussion with your peers.

This information can be found in many ways depending on your field. Here are a few examples:

 

  • Journals
  • Newspapers
  • Organizational websites (e.g. AMA, NAMI, NIH)
  • Social Media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, wikis)

Current awareness tools are great way to stay up to date with the sometimes overwhelming amount of professional information availalbe today. These tools offer a variety of ways to receive this information.

Examples of Current Awareness Tools:

  • Table of Contents (TOC) alerts
  • Newspapers alerts
  • Blogs
  • RSS feeds
  • Facebook & Twitter
  • Citation alerts
  • Post Publication Review (F1000)
  • They save time by sending information right to you
  • Information is directed to one place convenient to you (e.g. email, RSS feeder)
  • Target and customize your information
  • Enables you to quickly go through and triage information