Page Monitors

What can you do if an information service of interest does not offer e-mail alerts or RSS feeds? How can you keep track of updates to that service? Web page monitors represent a third current awareness alternative. These tools monitor web pages for you. When changes are detected, they notify you accordingly. They are particularly useful for monitoring content that does not change very frequently.

There are web-based monitors as well as downloadable ones. Some are free, some require a subscription. You can read more about the different products at "Current awareness tools" and "Monitoring changes to web pages." There is also a chapter on page monitors in a recently published book called Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web, which is quite helpful.

Which pages might be worth monitoring? Here are a few examples:

Journal of Migration and Refugee Issues
- The publisher of this journal does not offer e-mail alerts or RSS feeds; issues are published three times per year, so the content is relatively infrequent.

Kumarian Press
- This press publishes a number of humanitarian titles, but does not provide specific notification services for its new or forthcoming titles.

These web pages would also be worth monitoring but raise technical issues for monitors that must be considered:

New Issues in Refugee Research
- Working paper series from UNHCR; all pages on the UNHCR web site include a daily updated "today's date;" this element will trigger most page monitors to notify you of a change. However, there might be some products that allow you to exclude certain details from being monitored.

RSC Working Papers
- Another working paper series, provided by the Refugee Studies Centre. Although the RSC web site is frames-based, it is still possible to identify the unique URL for monitoring purposes.

Dag Hammarskjöld Library
- The library maintains a new acquisitions page, with an entry for "humanitarian aid and relief" under "social affairs." Clicking on this link takes users to a list of the latest additions to the library catalogue. However, the URL indicated is a temporary one, created "on the fly" when the link was selected; as such, it cannot be monitored.