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Refworks
The Refworks citation management system helps researchers keep their sources organized and easily created bibliographies or works cited lists. Refworks is available to all University of Iowa students, faculty and staff through the University Libraries.
Using RSS feeds to create a current awareness service
An increasing number of databases, journals, websites and other news sources, including our Smartsearch system, allow you to subscribe to updates through RSS feeds. This easy technology can let you create self-updating article lists: you can save a search in a database, for example, and have it periodically run and the results sent to you.
The box to the left is an updating list of articles from Academic Search Elite. RSS feeds from library databases can also be sent into your ICON class or to a feedreader.
Step one:
Search a database for articles of interest to you. Use the help menu of that database to learn whether the database supports RSS feeds.
Step two:
If RSS is supported, use the information in that database's help menu to create an RSS feed - different databases do this in different ways. Ask Dan Gall or another librarian for help.
Step three:
Add the feed to your feed reader (Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.) or use a translator service like Feed2js to convert your RSS feed to javascript that can be displayed on a webpage or in ICON. ICON support has instructions specifically for adding RSS to ICON.
Step four:
Watch as you are notified about new articles that interest you.
Not all databases allow RSS feeds. Ask Dan Gall or another librarian for help.
Linking directly to an online article
Have you wanted to share a particular article with a particular student? Persistent URL's, links to particular articles in University of Iowa Libraries databases, let you do just that. Different databases provide persistent URL's in different ways and not all databases use this technology - you can learn about them in the particular database's help menus. Here are two methods that should consistently work.
Digital Object Identifiers:
Some providers of online articles, such as ISI, assign a unique code to each article called a digital object identifier (doi). A DOI looks like a series of numbers (10.1108/00400910310508955) and to use it you will need to run it through a link resolver website - http://dx.doi.org. The total link to this article would be http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00400910310508955 and will work fine from on campus but might not work from outside the University of Iowa web space.
To make sure University of Iowa users can access the article away from campus, copy our proxy server address (proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/login?url=) into the URL so that the whole thing looks like-
http:proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/00400910310508955.
This will trigger the website to ask for HawkIDs and passwords to allow access to protected content.
Using InfoLink:
Even if the provider of the online article does not provide a DOI, you can still persistently link to an online article through InfoLink, our online article linker. Find an article in a University of Iowa database and click the InfoLink button to see if it is available online. If so, copy the website address from the InfoLink window that pops up. InfoLink includes our proxy information and will automatically ask for HawkID and password.
University of Iowa Library's Course Reserves department:
Persistent URL's are a great way to build a list of course reserves readings, but the Libraries' Course Reserves Department can help you create an electronic course reserves list using persistent URL's when they are available and scanned copies of articles when needed.