An excellent source of information is the NASA-funded Astrophysics Data System (ADS), which can be found on the web at: http://adswww.harvard.edu/

The abstract service covers four subject areas:

1. astronomy and astrophysics, containing over 400,000 abstracts
2. instrumentation, containing almost 500,000 abstracts
3. physics and geophysics, containing almost 300,000 abstracts; and
4. the Los Alamos Preprint Server, containing over 3,000 abstracts.

You can search by author, astronomy object name, title or text words from the abstracts. There are also links to scanned images for articles from major astronomical journals. Useful links are provided to astronomical data catalogs, data archives, and some scanned books through the ADS Digital Library.

Donna Berg
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The International Astronomy Meetings list in conjunction with ADS now provides direct access from the meetings listed in the database to the proceeding abstracts if they are available via ADS. The International Astronomy Meetings list is available at: http://cadcwww.dao.nrc.ca/meetings/

The site lists meetings from 1996 through 2000 and is maintained by Librarian Liz Bryson at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Kamuela, Hawaii.

Donna Berg
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Need to know the low-down on a particular company or industry? A recent workshop on locating competitive intelligence taught by Helene Kassler, Director of Library and Information Services at Fuld and Company, a competitive intelligence consulting firm based in Massachusetts, covered a variety of web site categories in her class: Company sites, News Sources, Alerting Services, General Web Search Engines, Meta Search Engines, Patents, Trade Shows, People sources, Job Postings, and other assorted sites.

If the competitor has a home page, this should be your starting point for competitive information. Although sites vary, many include annual reports, news, product information, prices, executive biographies, financial information, events, and often lists of customers. Follow the links, follow the money. Check out the customers' and suppliers web pages, as well. Very often the most revealing bits of competitive intelligence can be found by looking at these company sources, in addition to the actual competitor's home pages.

News Sources

In addition to the big news feeds like CNN and Dow Jones, often the best source of news (good and bad) about a company comes not from the big sources but from the local papers or state papers of the city your competitor is based in. American City Business Journals (http://www.amcity.com/) offers 35 business newspapers, from Boston to Wichita, all searchable through one interface. This is a valuable resource for local press and emphasizes business news.

Annual Reports

This is an excellent source for finding out what companies have done and plan to do, mergers, financials, management changes and much, much, more! Watchlist service at Edgar Online (http://www.edgar-online.com/) has an inexpensive SEC-specific alerting service. Receive HTML-enabled email alerts in your mailbox when competitors file with SEC. A new service called "EDGAR Online People" searches proxy filings to show if an executive sits on a board of directors or is a major shareholder in a public company. No patience for downloading big files on Edgar's? Public Register's Annual Report Service (http://www.prars.com) allows US citizens to order annual reports free via the Web.

Patents

Want to find if your competitors are applying for patents? Well, the US Patent Office only reveals what has actually been granted, but the European Patent Office (http://www.european-patent-office.org/) can offer up to a 2-year early warning of technological development over US-based information. By the end of 1998, it will offer access to patent applications at no cost.

Alerting Services

INQUISIT (http://www.inquisit.com), formerly known as Farcast, works via email and derives its stories from major newswires and from an extensive collection of national and international newspapers and magazines (more than 400 in total). You can receive predetermined industry broadcasts or request news based on specific companies or key words. Also offers an archive of the past 30 days and a new Intranet enterprise-wide system.

Trade Shows

Often the latest breaking news is released at conferences and trade shows as press releases. Again, remember to look not just at your competitor but also the customers of your competitors or suppliers of your competitors. A good source for conferences is the speakers, who are most often connectable or who put their presentations on their web sites for a time. For trade show information, visit Trade Show Central (http://www.tscentral.com) You can search by industry, type of gathering, keywords, geographic range and date. It will not search for specific company names but it covers over 30,000 trade shows, conferences, and seminars around the world.

Job Postings

Although companies are getting cagier about what they put in their job postings about particular company features, job postings are still a way to find out where a company is headed technologically by analyzing what skills they are looking for in potential hires.

For other related business sites, visit the Research Library's Business Resources Page.

Lou Pray
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The Research Library took time out on Wednesday to have an awards party in appreciation of the creative collaboration between the Library's marketing team and the staff of CIC-1 and CIC-9, most notably: Kathi Parker, John Allan Hopkins, Chris Brigman, Mable Amador, Leo Torres, Mike Kuchinsky, and Fred Baker. This summer the library received two first place awards and one second place award for our marketing materials from the Special Library Association. These awards would not have been achieved without the partnership of the CIC creative staff in the development of Library marketing materials: a video, web page design, flyers, posters, table tents, and much more. Many thanks to those individuals who helped market the Research Library products and services.

Lou Pray
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In SciSearch® at LANL, the All Fields field can be used to limit an alert by language or to specify multiple languages for a General Search when the pull-down language box will only select one language. To limit a General Search to German or French or to limit an Alert to German or French, change the field in the pull-down box to All Fields. Then type german <or> french.

Jeane Strub
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Classes are free. Pre-registration is appreciated. Register by email to library@lanl.gov or by calling the Library Service Desk at 7-5809. Please include your name, Z#, and the date and title of the session in your message.

Special classes and orientations can also be arranged; call 7-5809 for more information.

Susan Heckethorn
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The Research Library will be accessible to badgeholders during the holiday closure. Library staff will be off but the copiers and computers will be left on for use by our customers. The unclassified elevator in the Study Center, SM-207, will be operating during the closure.

Happy Holidays from the Research Library!

Newsletter Editorial Team: Donna Berg , Helen Boorman, Jack Carter, Lou Pray, and Kathy Varjabedian.

To receive electronic notice of new issues of the Research Library Newsletter, sent at the beginning of each month to your e-mail address, do the following:

• Send an e-mail message to ListManager@lanl.gov
• Leave the subject line blank
• The body of the message should contain the following two-line message exactly as shown:

    subscribe lib-news end

The name and e-mail address of the Library member who contributed an article appears at the end of the article. If you have comments or further questions, please contact that person. If you have general questions or comments about the Newsletter itself, please contact the Newsletter Editor, Kathy Varjabedian.

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