Our resource of the month for January was a little different. As we were welcoming library users back after a holiday break, we thought they could use some tips about a bunch of different resources to help them keep their knowledge current and get up to date again. Current awareness tools are a really helpful way to save time and make sure you’re not missing new developments in your field of research, work or study.

We were tweeting links to all these tools, and we’ve now gathered them in one place for ease of reference.

Our first resources were NHS bulletins and alerts, and NICE Evidence Summaries, all of which can be subscribed to via email.

You can also keep up to date by signing up for NICE Evidence summaries – again, subscribe via email. https://t.co/iuKnzjyy6Y

— Cambridge Medical Library (@cam_med_lib) January 3, 2017

We also recommended Journal TOCs and Zetoc. These are websites where users can sign up for alerts whenever a new issue of their chosen journal is published, and in this way let the website do the work of keeping track of the publication schedule of relevant, key journals in their field.

Zetoc is free to staff, students&other members of the University of Cambridge – browse,&sign up for email alerts: https://t.co/4AHw9Mjkdh

— Cambridge Medical Library (@cam_med_lib) January 9, 2017

The search alerts function on databases is also a great current awareness tool. Most medical and healthcare databases have this feature, which allows signed-in users to receive email updates every time a new article that fits their search criteria gets added to the database. The Medical Library’s ‘teach yourself’ guides go into more detail about how to use this feature in various databases, and we’re also happy to provide advice and training on this and other aspects of literature searching to all library users.

Did you know you can set up alerts to notify you every time a database adds an article that fits your search criteria?

— Cambridge Medical Library (@cam_med_lib) January 16, 2017

Web of Science and Scopus also allow you to set up citation alerts for articles, or alerts when an author publishes a new article.

— Cambridge Medical Library (@cam_med_lib) January 16, 2017

Several other bulletins we recommended included NHS Choices Health News and The King’s Fund. The Medical Library’s own newsfeed is also a useful source of information about developments in resources, training and technology.

This week we're recommending some more mailing lists and bulletin boards.

— Cambridge Medical Library (@cam_med_lib) January 23, 2017

The King's Fund is another useful service with email bulletins and updates: https://t.co/A56IfSIlYM

— Cambridge Medical Library (@cam_med_lib) January 23, 2017

We'd also like to hear from you – what tools do you use to keep up to date? Let us know here on Twitter!

— Cambridge Medical Library (@cam_med_lib) January 23, 2017

We’re also interested in hearing from you. What current awareness resources do you use, and what do you like best about them? Let us know via Twitter, and do be sure to follow us there for new resources each month.