The easiest way to find out about new questions is to visit our list of open questions frequently, www.oregonlibraries.net/ask/open. Log on early, log on often.

It is easy to check a website, but it may not be easy to remember to do it, so you have a few other options.

You may subscribe to an RSS feed for any tag in the system. You may want to subscribe to multiple feeds. The URL for a feed is the same as the URL for a list of questions, only replace 'answer' with 'feed'.

For example:
List of questions tagged 'Deschutes': http://oregonlibraries.net/ask/answer/deschutes

RSS feed for questions tagged 'Deschutes':
http://oregonlibraries.net/ask/feed/deschutes

Feeds contain only the time a question was sent, a link to the question, and any additional tags. They do not contain the text of the questions themselves or information about the patron.

Last, you may sign up for e-mail notifications by editing your preferences. Click "My account", then "Account Settings" and then "Notifications".

To turn notifications on or off, check or uncheck the box labeled "Yes, please send me notifications of new questions".

Set whether you want to receive notifications of questions based on their tags, the words in the question, or both.

Finally, choose a few tags or words to match against. Separate them by commas.

Different librarians may tag a question for your library using a variety of different tags. It's a good idea to set up your alerts so that you will receive notifications for all the variations of your library's name that you can think of. So Beaverton City librarians may set up their notifications for Beaverton, Beaverton City Library, BCL.

Some librarians are also setting up their accounts to be alerted to subject words, such as history, art, biology, etc.

If you don’t already have an account, follow these steps to create an account.

1. Visit www.oregonlibraries.net/user/register to create an account.

2. Wait for Caleb or Emily to confirm your account.

3. Log in to your account at http://www.oregonlibraries.net/user/login.

4. Click ‘My Account’ and follow the steps above to set up notifications.

5. In the ‘account settings’ section, you can upload a picture of yourself (or whoever you want to be online). Be sure to submit any changes by scrolling to the bottom and clicking the button there.

6. In the ‘personal information’ section, tell us about yourself. You don’t have to fill out every field. If there’s something you’d like to say that doesn’t seem like it has a place, just let Caleb know and he'll add it in. Be sure to click submit at the bottom.

7. Your profile will be available at www.oregonlibraries.net/librarians.