RESOURCE CENTRE MANUAL
HEALTHLINK WORLDWIDE
7.9 Current awareness services
A current awareness service is a way of letting users know about materials that
have been newly received in the resource centre. Current awareness services
include:
• current awareness bulletins
• selective dissemination of information
• circulating documents
• displaying newly acquired materials and using noticeboards.
Current awareness bulletins contain details of new materials, book reviews,
announcements about meetings and conferences, and news of resource centre
activities. Current awareness bulletins are particularly useful for larger resource
centres, or for resource centres whose users are widely dispersed. They help
users to keep up with a range of new developments. They also help to generate
specific enquiries, which resource centre staff can deal with more efficiently
than general enquiries. The practicalities of producing a current awareness
bulletin are similar to those of producing a newsletter (see Section 7.13:
Newsletters).
Selective dissemination of information (SDI) means notifying individual users,
or groups of users, about materials that will interest them. It is possible to keep
up-to-date with what different individuals or groups are interested in through
ongoing needs assessment work, advisory services and reference interviews.
Circulating materials means passing materials to individuals to pass in turn to
others on a circulation list. There is a disadvantage to this service, in that
materials can take a long time to reach the last person on the list. It is often
more useful to circulate a contents page than the actual item.
Displaying newly arrived materials helps users to notice new materials, and
makes the resource centre look lively and attractive. Noticeboards can be very
useful for displaying the contents pages of newly received periodical issues, or
copies of the covers of new books, reports and audiovisual materials. Displays
are useful for attracting the attention of non-regular resource centre users, and
visitors to the organisation.
SECTION 7: INFORMATION SERVICES
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