Wow, this is very helpful-- to me, at least. Does anyone have any similar
recommendations for journals in the social sciences or in the humanities?
Pat Thompson

University of the South
Sewanee, TN

> It's a good question.  If you have access to Current Contents Connect,
> http://scientific.thomson.com/products/ccc/ it offers multidisciplinary
> coverage of journal contents, and you can sign up for e-mail alerts on
> topics, authors, keywords. ScieFinder Scholar also is useful for current
> awareness.  Many academic journals offer table of content alert services
> by e-mail.
> For your patron, and for open access patrons generally, the Public
> Library of Science, PLOS may help; the link below describes their
> e-alert services.
> http://www.plos.org/connect.html
> Popular science and technology magazines online, science sections of
> major newspapers, (The New York Times, Science, Nature) and
> subject-specific scholarly and popular science communities, including
> scholarly societies and larger professional associations, with their
> related e-newsletters and e-portals, provide much of the electronic
> version of scanning the browsing section of a good periodicals library.
> For research news, try Science Watch http://sciencewatch.com/
>
> You can sign up for e-alerts at Google News, but must be specific in
> defining terms. In advanced Google Scholar, you can date restrict, or,
> once you have executed a search, you can click on the hyper-linked words
> RECENT NEWS, at the top.
>
> I haven't used SciTopia, but it is supposed to offer open access table
> of contents alerts:
> Scitopia.org
> currently accesses the electronic libraries of these  thirteen
> participating sci-tech societies:
>
>  * American Geophysical Union (AGU; www.agu.org)
>  * American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA;
> www.aiaa.org)
>  * American Institute of Physics (AIP; www.aip.org)
>  * American Physical Society (APS; www.aps.org)
>  * American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE; www.asce.org)
> * American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME; www.asme.org)
> * The Electrochemical Society (ECS; www.electrochem.org)
> * IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.;
> www.ieee.org)
> * Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP; www.iop.org)
> * Optical Society of America (OSA; www.osa.org)
> * SPIE (International Society for Optical Engineering;
> http://www.spie.org)
> * SAE International (Society of Automotive Engineers; www.sae.org)
>  * Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM; www.siam.org)
>
>
> Patricia Pettijohn
> Head, Collection Development & Technical Services
> Nelson Poynter Memorial Library
> University of South Florida Saint Petersburg
> 140 Seventh Avenue South, POY 118
> Saint Petersburg, Florida 33701
> ppettijohn@nelson.usf.edu
> 727-873-4407
>
> " I see skies of blue and clouds of white
> The bright blessed day,
> the dark sacred night
> And I think to myself: what a wonderful world. "
> ~ Louis Armstrong
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: SERIALST: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum
> [mailto:SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU] On Behalf Of Thompson, Allison
> Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2008 9:33 AM
> To: SERIALST@LIST.UVM.EDU
> Subject: [SERIALST] Cross-discipline journal discovery
>
> In the McMaster libraries, we have done away with current issue displays
> (as of last week); all issues are shelved in the stacks once they
> arrive.
>
>
>
> I had a patron come in with a very interesting question: Now that the
> current journal issues are not displayed, what means of serendipitous
> discovery of journal content across disciplines is there?
>
>
>
> Though his specialty is Biochemistry,  he used to go to our science
> library to look at the new issues of ALL journals on display
> (mathematics, computer science, etc.) He now believes that because the
> current issues are 'hidden' and you have to know what you are looking
> for to find them, that his research will suffer from lack of a wider
> viewpoint.
>
>
>
> I pointed him to databases, RSS alerts and publisher's webpages, but in
> these instances you still have to know a little something about what you
> are looking for before you find it.
>
>
>
> Does anyone have any other suggestions for cross-discipline journal
> discovery?
>
> Are there websites you know of that meet this need? Or do your libraries
> have 'homemade' solutions?
>
>
>
> Your input is appreciated!
>
> Sincerely,  Allison
>
> __________________________________
>
> Allison Thompson
>
> eResources Librarian
>
> Health Sciences Library
>
> McMaster University
>
> Hamilton, ON
>
> 905-525-9140 ext. 22609
>
> http://hsl.mcmaster.ca
>
>
>