Wish List: RSS Feeds for New Book Titles

In an earlier post, I noted that Kumarian Press did not provide notification services and therefore represented a good candidate for "watching" via a web page monitoring service. As it happens, Kumarian Press now offers an RSS feed to inform users of its news and activities. (For example, I learned about the new classroom guide developed for Larry Minear's book, The Humanitarian Enterprise, from the feed.) Unfortunately, the RSS feed does not include a new book listing. Or at least, not so far.

KP is not alone. This LLRX.com article laments the fact that very few legal publishers offer RSS feeds of new titles. And my previously-posted brief listing of forced migration publishers suggests a parallel tendency to offer email updates over RSS feeds. One notable exception is Brill/Martinus Nijhoff, which offers an RSS feed for its "Refugees and Human Rights" series, as well as feeds for both forthcoming and newly available titles in various subject areas, including "human rights and humanitarian law."

In the meantime, my personal solution for keeping up with new books is to generate customized feeds for various keyword searches undertaken in Amazon.com, the online bookseller. I explain in this post how I then display the titles in the "new books" feature I make available in my other blog, Forced Migration Current Awareness.

Ten Ways to Keep Up with Humanitarian News

Here are at least ten ways to keep up with humanitarian developments around the world, using RSS feeds and email alerts. In addition, both Google and Yahoo! offer options for monitoring global news.

RSS:

1. AlertNet [web site] [customize your news feed]

2. Human Security News [access] [feed]

3. IRIN News [web site] [news feed options]

4. The Other World News: Aggregated News from the Other World - The Third World [blog] [feed]

5. Pambazuka News [web site] [news feed options]

6. ReliefWeb [web site] [feed for news headlines]

7. UN News Centre [web site] [news feed options]

8. UNHCR [web site] [latest news feed]

Email:

9. IDP News Alert [access]

10. World Refugee [access]

And also...

Google News [access] [customize your news feed/other options]

Yahoo! News [access] [customize your news feed/other options]

Keeping Up with Web Resources

One area I didn't cover in the RSQ article is how to find out about new web resources. There are several tools that you can use to learn about new web sites generally, in the form of newsletters and RSS feeds for subject gateways or directories. Here are some examples of each:

Awareness Watch Newsletter - http://www.awarenesswatch.com/
- Monthly listing with subject focus. RSS feed available for new issues.

DocuTicker - http://www.docuticker.com/
- Daily; this blog highlights selected resources and reports from government agencies and NGOs. RSS feed available for new postings. (Note: Because this blog generates a lot of daily postings, I opted to set up a page monitor to alert me to new additions just to the "immigration" section as an alternative to the RSS feed.)

InSITE - http://library2.lawschool.cornell.edu/insiteasp/default.asp
- Bi-weekly; focus is on legal resources. Both RSS feed and email alerts available.

Internet Resources Newsletter - http://www.hw.ac.uk/libwww/irn/irn.html
- Monthly, with an academic bent. Subscribe to an RSS feed or email alert. (Note: The editor is also involved in a project to promote "journal current awareness." The companion blog provides updates on new developments.)

Intute: Social Sciences - http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/
- Gateway to web resources in the social sciences. Keep track of new resources added to the service by browsing the latest additions, subscribing to their RSS feed or monitoring their blog.

Scout Report - http://scout.wisc.edu/Reports/ScoutReport/Current/
- Weekly, with annotations of both academic and general interest resources. Distributed online or by email.

Alternatively, experiment with a search engine monitoring service, like Google Alerts. You can specify keywords that you wish to have monitored (e.g., >>protracted refugee situations<<, >>humanitarian AND "literature review"<<, etc.). When a match is made, you are sent an "alert" or email message with a description and link to the resource. For information on how to use this service, visit the Google Guide tutorial.