Keeping Up-To-Date : Current Awareness

The scheme below presents the main steps in setting up current awareness activities.

Scheme adapted from Alloing, C., Chantrel, F., Raffestin, A.-L. & Zimmer, T. (2011). Regards croisés sur la veille. https://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/documents/49487-regards-croises-sur-la-veille.pdf et de Dumas, L. (2004). La veille marketing en hôtellerie : une pratique de gestion à exploiter. Théoros 23(3), 42-49. https://journals.openedition.org/teoros/775.

STEP 1 – Determine needs and identify sources

Defining your information needs is the essential first step to any current awareness process. This will help you choose your information sources, which are to be periodically scanned as part of the awareness process.

STEP 2 – Collect information

This step involves setting up current awareness activities. Strictly speaking, the information is not actually collected at this step, but rather a system to amass information is set up by choosing the collection methods and their relevant tools and by establishing their parameters.

STEP 3 – Process information

Next, the information found should be analyzed. There are some tools that can help viewing and processing the information collected.

STEP 4 – Evaluate results

Once one has received, processed, analyzed, organized and cited it is important to periodically check again the effectiveness of the method used.

For information on how to build an effective search strategy, consult the guide Finding Scientific Articles.

Use an awareness plan to establish information needs, select sources, and set up current awareness tools for each search profile (or areas of interest).

You can include in this plan your notes and comments throughout the process.

Centralizing information in this manner gives you a basis from which to work when it is time to follow up.

If not, you might receive a large number of alerts that may or may not be pertinent and whose processing would needlessly waste your time. It is more efficient to create targeted queries in order to obtain pertinent results.