Revolution in current awareness services

Reviews the market-place for existing current awareness services and uses the main features of these products as standards against which to assess three new current awareness services: Inside Information; SwetScan; and UnCover. Inside Information, from the 1British Library Document Supply Centre, provides a short listing of the key features of each article in the world's principal scholarly periodicals. Approximately one million references are added to the database each year. SwetScan, from Swets Subscription Service covers 7000 periodical titles and provides title, ISSN, year-volume, some article names, authors, page numbers, and, if the library is a Swets subscriber, the library's subscription number. An average of 111073 references are added to the database each month. UnCover is a collaborative venture between Blackwells and CARL and offers access to a multidisciplinary database based on the holdings of the participating libraries. UnCover covers 14 000 periodicals representing the holdings of participating libraries together with additional titles for which Blackwells act as subscription agents. The main focus of UnCover is speed of document delivery and the intention is to provide a fax of a document within 24 hours or less (and within the hour if the document is stored on optical disc). Concludes that, if these three services are successful and lead to wider availability and use of current awareness services in the academic community, this will have a significant impact on libraries and their relationships with end users.