Google the term “public health” and you will receive 175,000,000 results, and counting… Keeping up with this overwhelming quantity of information—both published and unpublished—is a real challenge. Here are four ways to keep current:

• Join a list serv.
  Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce posts a list of discussion and e-mail lists specific to public health. List servs allow you to tap into current trends, share knowledge, and build networks.
  
  
• Subscribe to a free e-mail alert service.
  Most journals allow individuals to sign up for free e-mail alerts. Every time a new journal is published, the publisher will send you an e-mail listing the table of contents. For example, you can sign up for American Journal of Public Health e-mail alerts.
  
  
• Register for PubMed’s “My NCBI” feature.
  Using My NCBI, PubMed allows you to save searches and automatically receive updates of those searches via e-mail.
  
  
• Learn more about RSS feeds.
  RSS Feeds, know as Really Simple Syndication deliver news headlines and other frequently updated content provided by web sites right to your desktop computer. Many sources are now available, including PubMed, journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, MMWR, and American Journal of Epidemiology, and Google News. Check out you favorite journal’s homepage and find out if they provide RSS Feeds. Note that it is necessary to download a free RSS Reader in order to receive RSS Feeds.