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Newsletter August 2001 
Newsletter index 
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Table of Contents
Unlike journals, conference proceedings articles are usually not refereed but are simply collected by conference organizers. Conference staff prepare the proceedings volume as part of their responsibility to the conference. This time-consuming process involves editorial work, preparing camera-ready copy, and interacting with a publisher for printing and distribution. Using the SLAC eConf system completely eliminates this work. SLAC's eConf makes direct distribution of conference proceedings possible in a stable electronic archive; it makes it possible to locate and download individual conference papers or complete proceedings. eConf restricts itself to conferences in High-Energy Physics and related
fields.
ACM has launched a new online service called the ACM Portal. Access to the Portal is free through Sept. 30, 2001. The fundamental components of the ACM Portal are an enhanced version of the ACM Digital Library plus the new Online Guide to Computing Literature, consisting initially of more than a quarter-million citations of core works in computing. These works are of all types (journals, proceedings, books, technical reports, theses, among others), and from all the major publishers in the discipline. The guide currently contains over 320,000 bibliographic citations. The ACM Digital Library features a new interface and dramatically improved search capability (non-DL subscribers can tour, search, and experience the new DL functionality, but cannot access full-text during the free trial). The Research Library currently subscribes to the ACM Digital Library. Based on user comments we will decide whether to subscribe to the Online Guide to Computing Literature. Please share your opinions with us.
Now is the time to get ready for the new vocabulary we will all need for using our cell phones to send and receive text messages. Already sweeping Europe, over a million text messages an hour are being sent in Britain, even more in Finland. In order to deliver content on a screen the size of a commemorative stamp you'll need to use your old set of emoticons such as ;-) and add to them the new shorthand language of SMS. Easy to remember are abbreviations for OIC (oh I see), F2F (face to face) and ATB (all the best)--the Concise Oxford Dictionary is monitoring the new language and you can track SMS on their web page at: http://www.askoxford.com/betterwriting/emoticons/?view=.
I think the Los Alamos ski area web site has one of the most useful collections
of weather sites; but if you crave more information on weather then don't
miss Weathertalk.net. This site is
a directory to over 1600 weather sites and has them logically arranged
on the home page so you can quickly drill down into topics such as satellite
images, hygrometers and avalanches. There is also an interesting page
called "Fantasy Weather Forecaster" where you can compete with
other amateur weather-folk on the accuracy of your predictions.
The Tibetan community in Santa Fe may have piqued your interest in the
language, customs, and history of this fascinating country. Now the University
of California Press has brought us a new dictionary of modern Tibetan
edited by Melvyn C. Goldstein, T.N. Shelling and J.T. Surkhang. Their
purpose was to provide Westerners with a dictionary to enable them to
read the newly created written materials from Modern Tibet. The dictionary
contains terms used in political, social, economic, literary and scientific
writing; including many new words that have come into use since 1951.
Additionally the volume contains core terms used in everyday conversation
and proverbs that will certainly bring a smile to the reader who takes
the time to leaf through this scholarly reference tool. [Ref PL 3637 .E5
N48 2001]
One of the new publications in the Research Library is the Harvard Medical School Family Health Guide [Ref RC 81 .H38 1999]. According to accompanying literature for the Guide, "…[the authors] have gathered the most authoritative, comprehensive, easy-to-understand, up-to-the-minute information about the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease in every stage of life." But the Guide is more than the printed book on the shelves in the Research Library collection: it is also a Web site, http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/, which allows the publishers to claim that the Guide is "first family health guide that will never go out of date." The web site is not the whole book online: most of what is provided is information not in the book - because it is new information since the book was published, or because it supplies greater detail than the book. The online Guide also takes advantage of the interactive power of the Web. For example, the Symptom Charts asks a series of questions about a symptom that you have, and helps you determine what steps to take next. As another example, there is an interactive program that allows you to type in the name of two drugs that you use to determine whether any potentially serious interaction between the two could occur. The Guide does not attempt to be a substitute for visits to your doctor's
office, but can help users become more informed consumers.
The following new electronic journals have been added to the library
collection and are available from your desktop: Biology
The contract providing access for LANL users to the Gartner Group site has changed significantly. The number of users is now limited to 15. IM-DO will be administrating this contract. The person to contact regarding access is Margery R. Miller, tante@lanl.gov, 667-7896.
The Research Library recently had two visitors from the Universiti Teknologi in Malaysia: Rosna Taib, Chief Librarian and Rusliza Yaacob, Head of the Information Services Department. They had read about our library in ONLINE magazine (March 1999, pp. 34-42) and wanted to learn more about how our Library has achieved the move from traditional to a world class digital library. The University Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)
Library is a certified ISO9002 institution supporting engineering science,
humanities and social studies. They have taken steps to provide access
to electronic journals and upgrade their infrastructure. They recently
received a quality award, much like our national Baldrige Award for their
country—the UTM Vice Chancellor's Quality Award. Having placed quality
as an important part of their library processes, they felt that our Library,
having won two state quality awards, would be an important institution
to visit and exchange ideas of management, skills of staff members and
ways of reaching out to customers.
The newest search engine with all the buzz is called TEOMA, and while it is in beta test mode, it is lighting fast. Keeping the sweet and simple format of GOOGLE, TEOMA's search page contains a simple box with a check option for "phrase match" (you can also use quotes or dashes between words to tie your phrase together.) There is a very brief "help" page if you want more advice. The defining look for this product is the results page that presents
you with varying types of information. Search results are grouped into
three categories to provide you with distinctly sorted information: The layout of all this information is unique and easily understood even if some of the hits seem odd, weird or totally off-base. I was pleased that folders for some of my searches contained foreign web pages, but the experts' links could be very confusing. Right now speed seems to be the strongest reason to use the engine, but like all the others it is well worth a try to see if it is compatible with your way of finding, displaying and sorting information. 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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http://library.lanl.gov/libinfo/news/2001/200108.htm | Last Modified: 08/04/05 |
Electronic
journals have swept the world of scholarly information, but conferences
have not moved as quickly to electronic publishing. Staff at the Stanford
Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) have recently developed 
