How LIS Professionals Can Use Alerting Services

Citation

Satija, M.P. (2007), "How LIS Professionals Can Use Alerting Services", Library Hi Tech, Vol. 25 No. 4, pp. 628-628. https://doi.org/10.1108/07378830710849555

Dean Jessa Shera once likened librarians to the unshod sons of the proverbial shoemaker. In their professional pursuits of keeping others updated with current information they have neglected themselves and their ilk. As a result, not many current awareness services were available for LIS professionals. Since those days, many positive developments have taken place to feed LIS professionals with current literature – the web has proliferated such services to the extent that we need to keep constant track of them. This book describes such alerting services (traditionally known as CAS services).

Alerting services, which provide some solutions to information overload, require environmental scanning, information filtering and repackaging. There are many means to be alerted. Professor Fourie relates the use of CAS to our understanding of information‐seeking behaviour. How we are keeping up, and are we really making best of our possibilities? We need to know much more about ourselves! The book under review makes many suggestions in this matter.

Fourie closely examines the LIS alerting services available to LIS professionals and how these are used. An appendix lists the current awareness services for information professionals, especially those in the web environment. The book's focus is on the services available through the web. It draws heavily on research on information behaviour, information use and information communication.

This handy book has been divided into seven chapters, including the introduction, which is a synopsis of all the chapters. Chapter 2 traces the evolution of current awareness services and explains the purpose of using them. The third chapter describes the various theories and styles of information seeking in different environments and suggests basis for selection of alerting services to avoid information overload. The fourth chapter, the core, describes and evaluates available alerting services of different types, both free and fee‐based, from academic organisations and commercial publishers. Weblogs constitute an important section of this chapter. The fifth chapter is a scholarly study of the theories and recent literature on information‐seeking behaviour. The sixth chapter explains information overload, its various manifestations and consequences. Lastly, it focuses on how to make best use of the information sought and found. The last three chapters are of a general nature, addressing information seeking in all disciplines and by all types of users.

This book is a readable and rewarding study, and a long overdue aid to harassed librarians seeking to keep up to date with the evolving, highly technical library scene.