July 2000 Newsletter - LANL Research Library

LANL Research Library Newsletter - July 2000

Learning opportunities and pizza at the Open House, July 11th

Please visit the Library between 12-2 on July 11 for the Research Library's Summer Open House. There will be training demos on R&D databases and desktop research resources and at 1 pm, an opportunity to hear and talk with guest speaker Tom Meyer, Associate Lab Director for Strategic & Supporting Research.

As always, there will be door prizes and giveaways. Please join us!

Lou Pray
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FlashPoint 1.1 offers Advanced Search

FlashPoint (http://flashpoint.lanl.gov) is the multi-database search tool that was released in April. FlashPoint takes a look at 8 top databases to narrow down the wide array of possibilities for a particular topic. What database has the largest number of hits for quantum chemistry? Where is the journal Few body systems indexed? What database contains articles written by J. Trewhella?

The new version 1.1, released June 27th, adds an Advanced Search module. How the two modules compare:

Quick Search offers one input box, with a choice of three basic indexes: Author, Title/Subject/Abstract, or Source/Journal. The date range is preset to 1998 to the present, and 50 records are retrieved per search.

Advanced Search offers three input boxes for search terms, so that you can search several terms at once and combine them with Boolean operators AND,OR and NOT. More indexes are available: conference, institution and report number have been added. Institution can be helpful to track research at other labs, universities or companies. You can now specify date ranges for your search back to 1970, or as far back as each of the databases reach. You can specify larger result sets.

FlashPoint continues to search the following Research Library databases: BIOSIS, DOE Energy, Engineering Index, e-Print arXiv, INSPEC, Science Server, SciSearch, and Social SciSearch. You can see at a glance which database contains the most matches to your query. As you click on specific results, you enter the native environment of each database. You can then view records, go to full-text documents online, mark records and download or email search results.

Why "FlashPoint?" Webster's Online defines FlashPoint as "a point at which someone or something bursts suddenly into action or being." FlashPoint is the place to begin your information search.

Please send your comments and suggestions for new features to cic14-lww@lanl.gov.

Frances Knudson
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Appeal to replace library books lost in the Cerro Grande Fire

The recent Cerro Grande fire brought no physical damage visually to the Research Library, but 230 books and 1 report from the collection have been identified as having been lost in peoples' home or offices. 105 of those books are no longer available in print. For 134 of the titles, the Research Library has lost the only shelf copy -- and of that 134, 63 may not be able to be replaced, since they fall into the out of print category. One way of the other, for those books which might be replaced, the cost is a staggering $13,000.

You can help the Research Library by donating any of the following titles as replacements for the lost items. Look on your book shelves -- do you have any of the titles listed below that you would be willing to contribute to the Library collection? If so, send the copy (or copies, if you can help with more than one title) to the library, MS P-362, attention Cerro Grande Fire replacements. If you have questions, please contact Marie Harper at 7-3065 or mharper@lanl.gov.

List of books by Author

List of books by Call Number

List of books by Title

Marie Harper
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The Mathematics Genealogy Project

http://hcoonce.math.mankato.msus.edu/

"The intent of this project is to compile information about ALL the mathematicians of the world." Quite an undertaking, this project was started by Harry B. Coonce, a retired Minnesota State University-Mankato mathematics professor. As of 6/28/00, there are 40,460 records in the database.

This site allows mathematicians to trace their academic "family tree" and discover their advisor's advisor, their advisor's "siblings" at graduate school, and so on. Compiled from the respective universities or Dissertation Abstracts, the records include name of degree recipient, university, year in which degree was awarded, dissertation title, name of advisor (linked to a list of their other students), and a list of the degree recipient's students, if any. Users can search the database by personal name (first, middle, or last), school, or year of degree, or browse by first letter of the last name, but due to the size of the database this last option is not recommended.

According to the database, Paul Halmos, Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1938, has 21 students and 167 descendants. David Hilbert, Ph.D. Universität Königsberg 1885, has 70 students and 3899 descendants. One of Hilbert’s students, Richard Courant has 28 students and 661 descendants. Otto E. Neugebauer, was advised both by Hilbert and Courant, and has 5 students and 7 descendants currently listed in the database.

Frances Knudson
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New electronic journals in the Research Library

Search techniques: Title/Subject/Abstract index

The index databases available with the Research Library's interface offer a combination index called "Title/Subject/Abstract."

To search the literature on a topic, you might think first of the "Subject" index, which contains subject terms assigned by indexers from a thesaurus. However if you're not sure what specific subject terms are used in a database, the combined Title/Subject/Abstract index is a good place to start.

Title words will be taken from journal articles, books, books chapters, conferences, and other kinds of material.Years are commonly found in the titles of annual reports, progress reports, and conference proceedings, and these may be used as search "words." Journal titles are not included, rather they are in the Journal or Journal, Exact indexes.

A few notes on searching:

phrase searching is the default when more than one word is entered in a search box
automatic word stemming is performed, for example, microwaves retrieves microwave, microwaves, microwaving, microwaved)
if you are looking for an exact phrase, you can limit the results by enclosing the entire phrase in quotes, for example: "genetic algorithms" "theoretical atomic physics".
To find two words which may not appear together, enter with <and>, for example: 1990 <and> superconductors.

(See the help files in the databases for more details on entering search terms.)

The Title/Subject/Abstract index is found in BIOSIS® at LANL, DOE Energy Science and Technology at LANL, e-Print ArXiv, Engineering Index® at LANL, INSPEC® at LANL, and Nuclear Science Abstracts at LANL.

SciSearch® at LANL and Social SciSearch® at LANL have a similar Title/Abstract/Keyword index. This searches titles, and since 1991, abstracts and keywords. Keywords here are computer assigned words taken from titles in the bibliography or identifiers assigned by the author. Since these databases do not have a subject index of indexer-supplied terms, this is your best bet for searching by topic in these databases.

Access these databases through the Electronic Databases page.

Kathy Varjabedian
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Search engine news: Yahoo to use Google's search engine which is now the largest

Google Inc. (www.google.com), one of the fastest growing search engines on the web, announced it has released the largest search engine on the Internet. Google's new index, comprising more than 1 billion URLs, offers users the web's most comprehensive collection of websites, which can be easily searched with Google's fast and highly relevant search technology.

Google's new index is the first of its kind and represents the most comprehensive collection of the most useful web pages on the Internet. According to a recent survey conducted by the NEC Research Institute, there are more than 1 billion web pages online today. Google now offers users the ability to search almost all of this content, providing access to 560 million full-text indexed web pages and 500 million partially indexed URLs.

The key benefits of Google's search engine include its ease of use and clean interface, and highly relevant results. Google is based on a variety of innovative technologies, including sophisticated text matching and its advanced, patent-pending technology called PageRank™, which ensures that the most important results always come up first.

Last week, Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com) and Google announced they have entered into an agreement that makes Google Yahoo!'s® default search results provider. Under the agreement, Google will provide its underlying Web search engine to serve as a complement to Yahoo!'s popular Web directory and navigational guide. Yahoo! expects to integrate the services within the next 30 days.

Lou Pray
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Want a reminder?

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

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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