I urge you to get in the habit of regularly keeping up to date with those aspects of the field that are of particular interest to you. The professional association that you join will help you through its publications, meetings, and Web site, but you will want to pursue some topics in greater depth.

• Rutgers Libraries gives you access to Awareness Services, http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/indexes/alert_services.shtml,where you can see the table-of-contents and article alerting services which will save you a great deal of time and effort. These allow you to create search statements for topics you are interested in and to receive regular e-mails with the results. In addition to the obvious sources, one of the most useful for our field is Ingenta
• You can also request tables of contents of journals relevant to your interests from Ingenta and some of the other services. For quite comprehensive access to tables of contents of library/information journals, subscribe to Informed Librarian Online, http://www.informedlibrarian.com/ilofreesubscribe.cfm.
• For a broad overview of publications of current interest, see the regular "Guide to Professional Literature" column in Journal of Academic Librarianship.
• A very selective abstracting service, "Current Cites" comes via http://lists.webjunction.org/currentcites.
• To make sure you have not missed something important, once a year check Bourdon in the Bowker Library and Book Trade Almanac.
• An eclectic collection of resources in librarianship not available through Ingenta may be found through BUBL, at http://bubl.ac.uk/link/l/
• Browsing Myoung Chung Wilson's excellent LIS Research Guide on the Rutgers Libraries website will give you additional leads.
• Radical Reference supports activist communities, progressive organizations, and independent journalists by providing professional research support, education and access to information.
• Keeping Up Website designed to help library and information science professionals develop and maintain a program of self-guided professional development.
• Feed Your Head: Keeping Up by Using RSS -- Roy Tennant's take on this technology or keeping up in Library Journal (128(9) p.30,5/15/2003); dated, but nice explanation
• University of Illinois Current LIS Clips*, an electronic current awareness service, helps you stay up-to-date with the latest issues in library and information science. This free service offers thoughtful, easy-to-read summaries of the key recent publications in the field, for practicing librarians, information professionals and academics. Each issue focuses on a topic of current concern to the Library and Information community.
  *NOTE: This site seems to be currently unavailable. We are keeping it here, however, in the hopes that it will be restored in the future!