Database alerting options

ingenta

ingenta is a comprehensive multi-disciplinary current awareness service, covering more than 30,000 publications from more than 190 publishers.

ingenta offers a free service - ingenta select - that allows registered users to create and maintain up to 5 ejournal Table of Contents (TOC) alerts from the online journals component of the ingenta database, with delivery format options of plain text, HTML, or Procite and Endnote compatible attachment.

There is also a subscription service - Reveal Alerts - where authorized users may select an unlimited number of TOC alerts as well as keyword search alerts from the full ingenta database. The Virginia Tech Libraries subsidize the Reveal Alerts service for university faculty, staff, and students.

To use Reveal Alerts, go to the Virginia Tech ingenta Gateway and sign up for a user ID and password. You must specify a Virginia Tech email address (pid@vt.edu) in your profile in order to participate in the Reveal Alerts service. If your Virginia Tech email is not your primary address, please forward your Virginia Tech email to the preferred address.

You can create a search alert by using the search box on the ingeta homepage after you have created an account and logged in. After you have created a well focused search, use the Manage My Ingenta link in the right navigation bar and choose Saved Searches. Switch to the Search History tab to see a list of recent searches you have performed. Select one or more searches using the checkbox and using the Save button at the top or bottom of the list. (You will probably want to save your selections as an individual item, unless you have many saved searches to manage.)

Once you have one or more saved searches, you can then create an alert based on those searches. On the Saved Searches tab, select one or more items from the list, then change the popup menu to Create Alert and click Go. For each search alert you create, you will receive an email each week with new matches to your search criteria.

You can also create Table of Content alerts to have TOCs emailed whenever new issues are added to the ingenta database. From the ingenta homepage, search for journal titles or browse by title of subject. You can limit to subscribed journals, but many indexed journals are not part of our ingenta subscription. You can still access the articles from the journals, often from other subscription sources or by requesting the article through interlibrary loan. Once you have selected or browsed to the journal of interest, use the Receive New Issue Alert link to add this journal to your account. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds for this journal.

You can modify or delete search alerts and new issue alerts (TOC alerts) by using the appropriate link under the Manage My Ingenta menu in the right navigation bar.