You can find information on the release of new books from websites of bookshops, publishers and retailers. For automatic current awareness book updates, you can in some cases use the RSS feed or email news alert in the same way as for journal current awareness updates.
New books purchased for the library collection can be browsed not only from the new acquisition shelf but they can also be found from the collection catalogue. You may be able to find good advice on interesting new books in book reviews.
Many internet bookshops, publishers and retailers have tools for current awareness facilities on their websites. Often you can get information on new titles already before they have been released, and sometimes the table of contents and sample pages can be available.
Bookshops
You can be informed about new releases on Amazon with a subject specific RSS feed.
Source: <http://www.amazon.com> 26.5.2009.
When you become an Amazon registered customer, you receive recommendations about new books, or books that are soon to be released, on the basis of previous purchases or your wish list.
Source: <http://www.amazon.com/> 14.5.2009.
Publishers and suppliers
Dawson Books is one of the University of Oulu's suppliers, and they offer customers a New Titles Alerts service. The service requires a user name.
Source: <http://www.dawsonbooks.co.uk/> 9.4.2009.
The academic publisher Wiley offers on its website a possibility to order RSS feeds on new books from different disciplines.
Source: <http://www.wiley.com> 26.4.2009.
In the reference databases and e-book databases, for current awareness on books you can use the same alert and RSS feed tools as the database uses for citations. Some services might require creating a personal profile on the service providers' website.
Safari is an e-book database which has books to read online from several different publishers, mainly from the technical field. You can keep up with new Safari e-books with an RSS feed.
Source: <http://my.safaribooksonline.com/>11.05.2009.
With the Safari Rough Cuts service, you can buy rights to read book manuscripts, even before the final version is published. This service is not part of the University of Oulu Safari package, which means that the rights for reading a book must be acquired separately for each book.
Source: <http://my.safaribooksonline.com/roughcuts> 26.05.2009.
In the Academic Search Premier (EBSCO) database, which includes article and book references, you can order new book RSS feeds or alerts using your information search profile by selecting books as the search type. In this example, a search has been done with the words "virtual reality". On the search results page, by clicking the Alert link you are offered a choice of alert services.
Source: <http://web.ebscohost.com> 25.11.2008.
In the online catalogue databases of libraries, there are often at least lists of new books that have been recently added to the collections. However, these 'new' books can be old in terms of when they were published, because the list shows all the books that have been added to the catalogue.
You can get information about new books through book reviews on websites of journals, databases and scientific societies. However, the book review may well be about an older work.
The example is from the web edition of Plus Magazine, a mathematics teaching journal that also publishes book reviews. The magazine offers an RSS feed and the articles have a bookmark and share facility.
Source: http://plus.maths.org 29.05.2008.
