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Thursday, 29 May 2008

Database RSS alerts #2

Continuing on my investigations of what alerts various (engineering) databases provide...

ACS
  • daily or weekly
  • contents alerts
  • by email or RSS (copy and paste the URLs listed)

ASCE
  • on publication
  • by email: contents and topic alerts
  • by RSS: search alerts - but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you're using the database through a proxy server

Earthquake Engineering Abstracts
  • when database updated
  • search alerts (contents alerts for PsycArticles journals)
  • by email or RSS - but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you're using the database through a proxy server

IEEE Xplore
  • on publication and you can set an expiry date
  • contents alerts
  • by email or RSS - but the RSS link has to be manually edited if you're using the database through a proxy server

ProQuest
  • by email: search alerts daily, weekly, monthly, or trimonthly, and you can set an expiry date and choose the subject header
  • by RSS: search or contents alerts on publication; expires after 3 months "unused"; the RSS link has to be manually edited if you're using the database through a proxy server

NZ Index
  • interface and features haven't been updated, near as I can tell, since sometime last millennium, so basically nothing

I'm continuing to wish that databases wouldn't automatically form RSS feeds to include the ezproxy.institution.ac.nz stuff which has to be edited out by hand before the feed is any use at all. Really how hard can it be to provide an url that works out of the box?