| Abstract: | ABSTRACT Current awareness is something that librarians do, at least informally, passing on relevant current information to their patrons on a regular basis. The type of current awareness service considered here entails running preselected searches against electronic databases. The availability of these electronic bibliographic databases allows automating much of the current awareness process. Any successful current awareness service will have three key attributes: speed, ease of use, and relevance. The flexibility and accessibility of the National Library of Medicine's PubMed make it ideal as the basis for a current awareness service. Six freely available services are evaluated according to uniform criteria with notes made of special features. Four services use PubMed as the source for data, and the other two use MEDLINE. Recommendations are made for modifying one of the services to embody the key attributes of a successful service. Particular attention is given to local needs. Such a service can be run from a single desktop machine with a dial-up connection to the Internet. |
