2013

If you’re actively involved in research, you’re probably on dozens of email lists from publishers and scholarly societies, and maybe you’re even following them on Twitter, or with an RSS feed reader. Well here’s a way to consolidate your alerts to make things a little easier to manage and to reduce the amount of mailbox clutter you receive: Current Contents Connect (Thomson Reuters/Web of Knowledge). With Current Contents Connect, you can

• Browse tables of contents of all your favorite scholarly publications within a single web site;
• Subscribe to tables of contents of your favorite journals to receive an update when new issues are published;
• Set up an alert based on a topic or keyword;
• Find that hot new article your colleague told you would be really interesting to your research;
• Link directly from an item in the Table of Contents to the NU library’s subscription, or to request a PDF via interlibrary loan;
• Email the article author directly to request a reprint or ask questions; and
• Save the citation to Endnote, Refworks, or Zotero.

Citation tracking is a key strength of the Web of Knowledge family of databases. This means the following advanced features are also available:

• View a list of all the references the author of the new article has cited (and if they cited you, of course!);
• Subscribe to an RSS feed to be alerted every time this new article is cited by someone else; or
• View a citation map that shows links from one journal article to another (see below).

          Note also that we have moved away from our old E-journal Finder, so if you have been receiving alerts from that system (in the form of emails from TDnet/Teldan), those alerts will end sometime this fall. Current Contents Connect is the perfect substitute going forward.

You’ve tried the new search box on the library web page and it seems just fine. But did you know that you can get even more out of it when you sign in?   If you’re a current NU student, faculty, or staff member, here are 4 great reasons to sign in to Scholar OneSearch every time you use it: 1. If you sign in, you get more high-quality search results. This is because the NU Libraries subscribe to some great scholarly content that will display ONLY if you show you’re affiliated with the university. Web of Science (the Thomson Reuters citation indexes), ArtSTOR, GeoRef (American Geological Institute), and MLA Bibliography (Modern Language Association) have key scholarly citations that you will only see if you sign in with your myNEU credentials. 2. If you sign in, you can make requests. Some full text and book requesting options are only available to NU affiliates. Signing in lets you see all the options available to you. 3. If you sign in, you can save your work. Whether it’s individual citations, or whole batches of results, you can make folders for different projects, and even save searches to update and run again at a later date. Instead of having to remember another password, this service is based on the same credentials you use for myNEU. 4. If you sign in, you can see your account information. You can view and renew the items you have checked out from the library, and see the requests you have made and waiting lists you are on. And here’s another tip:

Think about connecting directly to Scholar OneSearch the next time you’re in myNEU. Just go to the “Services and Links” tab in myNEU (or use the library tab, if you’re a faculty/staff member), and look under “Useful Links”. Because Scholar OneSearch recognizes your NU identity, you will automatically be signed in. Give it a try, and let us know if you think it’s worthwhile!