Current Awareness Service (CAS)

Somipam R. ShimrayResearch Scholar (JRF)

Dept. of LISPondicherry Central University

PondicherryIndia

Contents• Conceptual• Current Awareness Service (CAS)• Characteristics of CAS• Steps in Current Awareness Service• Forms or Types of CAS

– List of Additions/Current additions to the Library – Current Awareness List/Bulletin – Current Contents/TOC (Table of contents)– Research in Progress – Employment Opportunities – Forthcoming Events List

• Factors to be taken care while designing CAS• Different Modes of CAS

– In-house Generation– Outsourcing CAS

• Evaluation of CAS• Conclusions• References

Current Awareness Service (CAS)

• Current awareness services keeps the seekers of information abreast with the latest development in the respective fields.

• Dr. S.R. Ranganathan defines CAS as listing the documents appearing during the period covered, and without being selected to suit the requirements of a particular reader or of a specific topic under investigation.

• Hamilton defines CAS as a service which provides the recipient with information on the latest developments within the subject areas in which he or she has a specific interest or need to know.

Characteristics of CAS

• It is an announcement mechanism. • Keep users i.e. teachers/scientist/students abreast with latest

developments is his/her area of interest.• Fulfill the current demands of the users.• Selection has to be made from different types of documents.• CAS may be print or electronic. • CAS does not answer any specific/particular query.• It is aimed at a large group of users and not single person based. • No feedback mechanism of input document selection criteria is

present. • Speed and currency are important.• CAS is a perishable commodity.

Steps in Current Awareness Service

1. Review or scan documents immediately upon receipt.2. Select information and record individual documents pertinent to the

programme of the individuals or groups of the organization being served. This may be done by comparing the documents/information with the needs of users being served.

3. Send notification to the users about items or information of interest to them.

Forms or Types of CAS

a) List of Additions/Current additions to the Library b) Current Awareness List/Bulletin c) Current Contents/TOC (Table of contents)d) Research in Progress e) Employment Opportunities f) Forthcoming Events List

Forms or Types of CASa) List of Additions • Information about the books addition to the library during a month.• Materials acquired by the library during a specified period. • The arrangement could be under broad subject headings or by departments,

projects, programs, etc.• Specify accession number or the date of acquisition. b) Current Awareness Lists or Bulletins • Libraries index articles from journals subscribed by them. • The periodicity of the service, number of citations included would vary.c) Current Contents/TOC (Table of contents)• Information about the content pages of the journals received by the library

during a week.• Services are offered by many professional journals. With TOC alerts the latest

table of contents is sent to you via e-mail or RSS feed.• Publishers also allow the end user to register himself at the website.

Forms or Types of CAS

d) Research in Progress•Information can be culled out from leading periodicals and newsletters and distributed in the form of a newsletter.

Example: NCL - Punee) Employment Information Newsletter •Final year students would like to be informed about suitable employment opportunities. •Newsletter covering about corporate companies coming for campus interviews, job opportunities, links to jobs-related websites like naukri.com, jobsahead.com, etc.f) Forthcoming Events List•Forthcoming events like seminars, symposia, workshops, and conferences in areas of interest.

Example: Lis Links

Factors to be taken care while designing CAS

• The requirements of the user group.• Type of literature to be included: books, journal articles, patents,

standards, events, awards, reports, etc.• Degree of detail to be included: title, author, abstract, keywords, etc. • Lay-out, presentation and fonts.

Different Modes of CAS • CAS may be generated in-house. • CAS may be outsourced or purchased from readily available

sources.

Different Modes of CAS

In-house Generation• CAS provided by the library

staff using internal resources. • List of Additions and Content

Pages reproduction. • CAS products require a central

master database of bibliographic records.

• Indexing using a thesaurus involves technical competency of the Library Staff.

Outsourcing CASCAS may be done better by external agency because: • Where outside agency

produces full or partly a CAS product.

• Where, instead of using in-house database, an external database (either online, CD-ROM or onsite) is used.

Evaluation of CAS

• Timeliness: In some organization there is a need for immediate notification of relevant items in the literature, in other organizations, timeliness is not so important.

• Source coverage: It is generally desirable to be as comprehensive as possible in coverage of the subjects, literature and databases for Current Awareness item selection.

• Selectivity: In some situations it may be desirable for the Current Awareness Service to select only substantial item and to ignore micro or trivial items.

• Readability: Some computer output is unsympathetically arranged for readers, some is excellent.

• Cost: The cost of the provision of Current Awareness Service, should include labor, materials, equipment's, computing and subscription costs, plus any ancillary cost. The librarian should compare the cost with the output of the service.

Conclusions

• Abreast users with current trends and latest development.• CAS aid to develop ‘current’ approach in users minds. • Promote quality research.• Avoiding duplication of efforts. • Aid creation of new ideas.• CAS save user’s time in searching current information/literature.

References

• Chandel, A. (1988). Current awareness service and selective dissemination of information from periodical literature. Lucknow Librarian, 20(3-4), 147-151.

• GHSL. (n.d.). Galter Health Sciences Library. Retrieved 01 30, 2017, from World wide web: https://galter.northwestern.edu/guides-and-tutorials/current-awareness

• Uzohue, C. E., & Yaya, J. A. (2016). Provision of Current Awareness Services and Selective Dissemination of Information by Medical Librarians in Technological Era. American Journal of Information Science and Computer Engineering, 2(2), 8-14.