"Staying Up" with the Literature

Long before the term "information explosion" entered the lexicon, "staying up" with the literature was certainly not easy. In recent years, this challenge has fairly been described as increasing. Yet, this remains one of the daily tasks of academics -- being well-versed in the literature.

After yesterday's class, I was inspired to list out the various tools that I'm using to stay up to date with the literature. Yesterday's speakers primarily focused on organizing and annotating literature, which is central to the literature review process. Yet, what are the ways that we can assure that we are doing our part to stay up-to-date? There are a variety of tools, but I thought I'd share a simple one that I've always found useful. 

One very simple tool that has served to support my 'daily' reminder to remain steeped in the literature are my search and journal alerts. If you haven't already, I encourage you to go into EBSCO today and set up search word alerts and journal alerts.

• The first thing you'll need to do is create an account. 
• Make sure you are signed into your account.
• Then, you can use keywords of import to your work and save this search as an alert. 
• You can set up the alerts to be daily, weekly, bi-weekly, etc. 
• For details of how to do this, check out this link: http://support.ebsco.com/help/index.php?help_id=1164