# Welcome to SMIRK Unit
8 - Keeping up to date

- Current contents services
- ToCs and RSS feeds
- Conferences and discussion lists
- Back to main index

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SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

# Current contents
services

Databases and other information resources are frequently updated, often daily. You can sign up to a current contents service of an information provider and it will alert you to new information that has been recently added.

#### Current contents services will:

- Help you to have up-to-date information in your subject area
- Will help your marks
- Will save you time
- Be especially useful when you are writing your dissertation

#### Current awareness services:

These will often deliver information directly to your desktop. The following will help you keep up-to-date with current research and introduce you to useful subject information.

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SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

# ToCs and RSS feeds

#### Table of contents (ToCs)

Many journals will allow you to sign up for free email alerts of their latest table of contents. Choose only one or two of the main journals in your area to avoid being swamped by lots of emails. An example is Nature

#### Alerting services and RSS feeds

Alerting services work away in the background and alert you each time an article which matches certain keywords is added or will send you the table of contents of specified journals. They use either email or RSS feeds.

- Zetoc – The British Library table of contents service will email you with:
  - tables of contents
  - articles which match your keywords
- JournalTocs - covers thousands of journal tables of contents. Provides RSS feeds by title, subject or publisher.

######
SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

# Conferences and
discussion lists

#### Conferences

Conferences discuss the latest developments in their subject area. Look at the Conferences UK web site.

#### Discussion lists

These are email forums which allow peer group discussion of the latest issues in your subject area. An example of this is Jiscmail. Jiscmail hosts hundreds of UK academic mailing lists, you will need to register for these lists using your universtiy email address.

This is the end of our section on keeping up to date.

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SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/