Searching the Literature

Search Alerts and RSS Feeds

Database search alerts are optional notifications that alert you when there is new database content that matches your saved search criteria. These are especially useful if you:

• have an ongoing interest in a topic.
• are conducting a systematic review.
• need to monitor publications over time.

 Instead of repeatedly running the same search, you can set an alert and let the database do the work!

Alerts usually arrive by email, but some databases use RSS feeds instead. RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication," a way to corral updates from websites or databases into an RSS reader, or one big email. Summa doesn't allow the use of the built-in RSS functionality of Outlook, but you can use a service like Blogtrottr to convert the RSS feed into an email notification.

Here is an example of how we use search alerts in the library. Each year, we track publications by Summa-affiliated authors. To do this, we conduct both a manual search and employ search alerts. Using regularly-scheduled search alerts allows us to spread the work over the course of a year. To set up the search alerts, we:

1.  test different search terms to capture all of the different ways authors list their affiliation: everything from "Summa Health System" to "Barberton Hospital" (and no mention of Summa!). We also test the best fields to search (all fields versus affiliation) and attach relevant date filters.
2. save the tested search in each database and attach it to an alert, scheduled to arrive weekly or monthly. 

Set up a Search Alert in a Database