Anil Kumar Mishra

LIO, NCHRC,
NIHFW, New Delhi
Email id: anilmlis@gmail.com
Blog: http://anilkmishra.blogspot.com
 Current Awareness Services (CAS) is an important
service provided by libraries and information centers
 It fulfill current approach to information
 Due to the advent of E-resources, library centered
service are shifting to publisher centered service
 Traditional definitions of CAS “it is a system or
publication for reviewing newly available documents,
selecting items relevant to the needs of an individual or
group, and recording them so that notifications may be
sent to those individuals or groups to whose needs they
are related”
 Acc. to S.R. Ranganathan “Service listing the document
appearing during a period covered & without being
selected to suit the requirement of a reader or a specific
topic under investigation”
 In 1958, H.P. Luhn was the first to propose the
use of computers for CAS.
 1960-1980, Various CAS based on Computers
and the use of CAS in specific business sectors
were reported.
 Over the last 20 years various electronic methods
for CAS have been reported, for example the use
of electronic tables of contents, SDI services
using CD-ROM databases, e-mailing of search
results etc.
 Emergence of internet.
• Not in response to any specific query
• Continuous need
• Not always necessary to go to the original
document
• It is an announcement mechanism
• Speed and timeliness is the essence of CAS
• Wide sources of information covered
• Recent development in a subject field are given
 Keep professionals better informed in their
respective fields of interest.
 Supporting and sustaining research, study,
teaching and business.
 Automating the process of searching
publications and retrieving relevant
information, and thus saving users time, input
and money.
 Providing information in a preferred format
for reuse.
 Professional or general news items
 Conference and events information
 Journal articles and books
 Specialist information
• New Internet resources
• Official publications
• Subject-specific sources
 A good Current Awareness service is based on four
main factors -:
 Knowing what topics to cover
 Knowing who wants what
 Knowing the sources for obtaining the latest
information
 Supplying the information regularly and reliably
DELIVERY OF CAS
 right information
 right user
 right time
 right format
 right sources
 right cost to keep users up-to-date.
• Many of the services provide very useful information but the
information requires further filtering.
• The services are not tailor-made for specific target groups nor they
support their specific needs as compared with traditional services.
• In the Internet CAS, the interest profiles or search profiles are
created.
• Information is filtered and organized according to the user’s
requirements.
• As regards cost, some of the services are available for free, while
others are available commercially.
• keeping track of new developments in a particular
field(s) of interest
• keeping track of new web sites, discussion groups
(listservers, Usenet groups), publications
• keeping track of trends in a particular field of interest
(for example by means of the tables of contents of
journals)
• keeping track of new research projects in order to
react in a timely manner
• keeping track of Internet-related development
 1.Current Awareness list
 2.SDI (Selective Dissemination of
Information)
 3.Press Clipping Services
 4.Research in Progress
 Current Awareness List are being published at
different level to different audiences.
 These are being published by international
agencies, professional organisations and other
who are far away from the group of potential
users.
 Eg. Current content
 In1958,Hans Peter Luhn gave the concept of
SDI
 SDI is a current awareness system which alerts you to
the latest publications in your specified field's of
interest.
 User registration- Creating a search profile.
 Newspapers are the best media to reflect the
image of any society.
 A Newspapers clipping service of this nature
can be of considerable help to the scientific
community and this can be called a new type
of current awareness service.
 Eg: VIPRIS CLIPSET,TERI NEWSWIRE
 Announcement of research in progress appears chronologically
 Find out new developments related to user’s working field.
 E.g.- TRB Research In Progress
• Many of the web alerting services build on
traditional services
• Electronic newsletters
• Discussion lists or electronic mailing lists
• Weblogs
• News and RSS feeds
• Mobile Alerting Services
 A e-newsletter is a regularly distributed publication generally
about one main topic that is of interest to its subscribers via
electronic medium
 It is by the users for the users
 Some of these are available for subscription
and some are for free.
 Widely used by news content providers to
deliver news 'headlines' on the Internet
 Can syndicate content to third party web sites
 RSS feed use newsreaders or news aggregator.
 Mobile Alert Services provide a simple and
cost-effective method of managing
important e-mails.
 Mobile Alert enables our e-mails to be sent
directly to our mobile phone via a text
message.