Most alerting services you can set up will allow you to set up an alert to be delivered to via two mediums:

• an email alert delivered to a provided email address
• updates from selected sources delivered as an item in an rss feed, which you can subscribe to and access via an online rss reader (such as Feedly, Reeder or NetVibes), or save in some web browsers. Although the benefits of RSS have in part been surpassed by social media tools, many websites and publishers still deliver content in an rss format. 

• Publishers will often give the option of setting up alerts for new books in your field - try looking for 'email notifications' or look in the information for researchers.
• New books in the library: the tab Acquisitions located above the search bar provides lists of print books added to our collections in the last three months.

Journal alerts allow you to keep up to date with newly published articles from your favourite journals.

• BrowZine draws together many of our e-journals in an easy to use interface. Download the app to create your own bookshelf of journals and to be alerted to new issues. You can save articles to read at a more convenient time, or export the citation details to EndNote or another referencing system.
• For the largest freely available collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs), use JournalTOCs. It is for anyone who's looking for the latest or most current papers published in the scholarly literature. JournalTOCs is free, searchable, and provides alerts on request.
• Most journals offer an alerting service on their website. 

Search alerts can be set up within databases to provide automatic notification when new results are available. They are an easy and effective way of gathering scholarly information on your subject without having to constantly re-enter the exact search terms into a databases.

• You can set up database search alerts to notify you by email when new results relating to your search are added to the database. Many databases, including Google Scholar, Academic Search Complete, Web of Science and the Leiden University Library Catalogue, provide this option. You will usually need to register in order to save your search.
• Citation alerts are a good way of keeping track of essential articles in your subject area by building on resources you have already identified as being very helpful. If an article, which cites your selected article or author, is added to the database you will be alerted. Citation databases, such Web of Science and Google Scholar, offer the option of citation alerts.

Joining a mailing list is a good way to ensure you don't miss out on key discussions around a topic. 

• Catalist is the official catalogue of over 50,000 publically accessible LISTSERV discussion and mailing lists. From here you can search and browse all lists by host country, size of membership and subject.
• JISCmail is a service designed specifically for the education and research communities in the UK. You can search or browse by subject category to find lists on a specific topic and subscribe to receive email alerts.