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April 1994 LANL Research Library Monthly Newsletter
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1. The Moving Books and Journals Puzzle
2. New Journals at the Library
3. Hold that Title!
4. Finding Conferences in the Library's Online Catalog
5. Current Awareness Service for Report Literature
6. New E-mail Services
7. Favorite Gopher Hole
8. April Training Opportunities
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1. The Moving Books and Journals Puzzle
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For the past two years, books and journals in the Library have moved in several different
directions. "That stack where the math books used to be is suddenly empty! Where are
they, what is happening here, and why?"
The answer to the puzzle is this: We are trying to make the best use of our limited space. Our journal collection continues to grow. The new books are cataloged using Library of Congress (LC) numbers, and the Dewey collection grows smaller and less frequently used. Add to that the confusion of the Dewey collection being in three separate areas. We had to figure out a way to cope.
It became a librarian's version of Rubik's Cube, moving items into empty shelves, trying to get the next section prepared, and moving items again into the next empty space. We began two years ago to get the journals into a more logical order downstairs, and to expand the shelving with room for growth and for new titles. At the same time we cleared the compact shelving downstairs, removing high use journal titles from this area. We then began moving the Dewey books into this shelving, swapping out space in the journal area.
The last phase of this moving is almost complete: we are moving the Dewey books from upstairs to the downstairs. When we are done, we will have all the Dewey call numbers (001 - 999) in the compact shelving area (no more trying to figure out if they are upstairs or down). We have some expansion room in the journals. And we will have room to expand the growing LC book collection.
All of the physical shifting of materials has been done by our stalwart and dedicated
staff in the circulation area -- the folks you see in the stacks doing the moving and
shelving and answering questions of "where is this book today?" They've dealt
with confusing alphabetization, measuring and figuring space down to the quarter inch,
problems with shelves needing reinforcing and other safety issues, and figuring out ways
to keep books from sliding on movable shelving. It's been a long hard road, but we think
it will make the layout of the library easier to use. And when the pieces come together,
the puzzle will be complete.
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2. New Journals at the Library
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StandardView (Association for Computing Machinery)
Standards affect everyone in computing,
and this new journal shares practical and theoretical information about producing and
using standards. StandardView is a cross-disciplinary publication focusing on all aspects
of standardization in information technology (including reasons not to standardize) with
an emphasis on workaday utility. The first volume reflects the view of producers and users
of standards on human-computer interaction and ergonomics, object-based standards, open
systems, internationalization and localization, and standards' impact on users' needs.
Optical Materials (North-Holland)
The purpose of Optical Materials is to provide a
means of communication and technology transfer between researchers who are interested in
materials with potential device applications. The journal publishes original papers and
review articles on the design, synthesis, characterization and applications of optical
materials. There are three major focus areas: optical properties of material systems,
materials aspects of optical phenomena and the materials aspects of devices and
applications.
McGraw-Hill's Federal Technology Report
This biweekly newsletter covers new
technologies, legislation, Department of Energy reports, and commercial opportunities
available to federal laboratories. Contact personnel are listed in most articles. Los
Alamos is covered in the March 17, 1994 issue in an article "Lab-assisted centrifuge
spins usable oil from tank bottoms."
Shock Waves (Springer International)
Shock Waves - an international journal aims to
publish theoretical and experimental results on shock-wave phenomena in gases, liquids,
solids, and two-phase media from both the fundamental research and the applications points
of view. Physicists, chemists, and engineers working in aerodynamics and gas dynamics,
physical chemistry, hypervelocity impact, detonation and reactive flows, computational
fluid dynamics, dynamic high-pressure research, and plasma physics will find essential and
up-to-date results on shock-wave phenomena, the most recent experimental techniques, and a
comprehensive overview of the development of the field.
Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry (Royal Society of Chemistry)
The Journal of
Analytical Atomic Spectrometry is an international journal for the publication of original
research papers, communications, and letters concerned with the development and analytical
application of atomic spectrometric techniques. The journal is published twelve times a
year, including comprehensive reviews of specific topics of interest to practicing atomic
spectroscopists and incorporates the literature reviews which were previously published in
Annual Reports in Analytical Atomic Spectroscopy.
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3. Hold That Title!
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The online catalog offers an option called HOLD TITLE. If you see a book that you would
like, you can choose this option to have the title "held" for you. If the item
has the status IN LIBRARY, your hold will appear on a report, and the circulation staff
will retrieve the item from the shelves, check it out to you, and send the item to you. If
the item is checked out, the book will be sent to you when it is returned to the Library.
(The person who currently has the item will not be able to renew the book with a hold on
it.) This option appears whenever you display an item on the screen, whether you are in
the Library or not.
Here is how it works: first find and display the title you want. A list of options will
appear at the bottom of the screen:
Options: Prior level Extend Search Detailed Display Copy Search Print Hold title Review
search New search ? help
Choose the Hold title option. The system will ask you to "enter your Z number." Be sure to enter all six digits, including the initial zero. (Note: this is a change from the original set-up which would not accept the initial zero.)
The system will give you one of several responses: Your HOLD IS PLACED and has an expiration date of MM-DD-YY (All holds are set to expire after 2 years.) No copies of this title may be held (Holds are not allowed on Reference material or items on extended loan.) You already have a hold on this title (For those of us who are forgetful.)
Please note that this option works best for book titles only. If you place a hold on a
journal title, the system assumes you want the entire run of the journal! Don't worry,
Circulation will call you for more specific information. Questions about holds? Call
Circulation at 7-4175, or send us e-mail at circinfo@lanl.gov.
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4. Finding Conferences in the Library's Online Catalog
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Finding conferences can be tricky at times because one is never quite sure what the
sponsors of the conference have decided to title the published proceedings. Sometimes the
title is just "Proceedings," other times it is "Proceedings of the
international conference on ..." or "Proceedings of the XIth conference on ...
." Following are a few helpful pointers.
1. Conference sponsors are searched as authors, as are the editors of the proceedings. If you know either of these, try an author search.
2. If you are certain as to the actual published title of the proceedings, try that as a title search.
3. If the title has a unique word in it such as Compcon, try that word as a title keyword search. Or, if the sponsor of the conference has a unique word it, try that word as an author keyword search.
4. Conference locations are part of the title so if the conference was held in an unusual location a title keyword search should retrieve the proceedings. For example, if the conference was held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, do a title keyword search on Garmisch.
5. Try an expert search if none of the terms that you know could be considered unusual. If you are looking for a 1992 conference on fusion, try searching for "fusion" and "1992" as title keywords. If it was a conference sponsored by the ACM in 1992, search for author word "ACM" and title word "1992."
If none of the above retrieve the conference, check with the Research Desk (7-5809).
The librarians are experienced at searching the online catalog and may think of more
possibilities to search.
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5. Current Awareness Service for Report Literature
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The Library's Report Section is soliciting volunteers to test a new document delivery
service for technical reports. This service involves receiving technical reports in
microfiche that match a profile developed by reference librarians with interested patrons.
The profile would be first tested against DOE's Energy Database to verify that citations
retrieved were relevant to the patron's needs. Then, the Report Section would submit the
tested profile to DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) located in
Oak Ridge, TN, which would run it against its weekly production of microfiche reports,
select those that matched the profile and send it directly to the patron. If the chance to
build your own collection of microfiche reports in a select research area is of potential
interest and you would like to participate in this pilot effort, contact Ken Collins at
7-4446 or e-mail kac@lanl.gov. ======================================================
6. New E-mail Services
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The LANL Research Library continues to expand its e-mail services for users by adding a
new address for the Circulation desk. If you need to renew a book or want to request that
a library book or journal be sent to your office, use the new address, circinfo@lanl.gov.
Be sure to include your Z number, mail stop and phone number in your request. The
Circulation desk phone number is 7-4175 if you have questions regarding the service.
The new circulation service rounds out the e-mail capabilities of the Library: reference questions, literature searches and requests for purchases can be sent to ref@lanl.gov; the report collection of the Library is monitored through reports@lanl.gov.
Each mailbox is reviewed numerous times throughout the day; you can expect a response
within 24 hours. ======================================================
7. Favorite Gopher Hole
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WEATHER Gophers
In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside
of four-and-twenty hours. -- Mark Twain, 1835P1910
Weather gophers are a lot of fun. They are useful in travel planning and in just keeping up with the news. In the past two years, we've tracked Hurricane Andrew, the Mississippi floods, and an occasional snow flurry in the northern New Mexico mountains. They also have a lot of images (all those satellite photos and maps).
Some ways to access weather information are listed below. Warning: like gophers everywhere, weather gophers tend to point to one another, and there is always more than one way to access a particular gopher.
LANL Gopher - The Internet via Gopher/Mosaic - Browse The Internet by Subject -
Weather, Climate and Meteorology
Includes access to the NCAR/UCAR gopher, National Weather Service Forecast, lots of
weather images, and telnet access to University of Michigan Weather Underground, which is
the source of much of the weather information on the Internet.
The Weather folder under Gopher Jewels (LANL-Gopher - Internet via Gopher/Mosaic - Information by Subject - More about Information By Subject - Gopher Jewels - Weather) lists several good weather resources:
Florida State University Meteorology Department Gopher
NCAR/UCAR Gopher
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
North Carolina State Univ, Atmospheric Science
RiceInfo (Rice University CWIS)
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Illinois Weather Machine
University of Wisconsin - Madison Space Science and Engineering
Weather Processor Gopher (Purdue University) Of these, our favorite is the University of
Illinois Weather Machine. It is simply organized and has easy to read postings. Check out
the directory called Severe, which has a listing of recent severe weather reports by
state. (Hint: our weather often comes from Arizona and Colorado, so read those too.) It is
also accessible under The Internet via Gopher/Mosaic - National Weather Information (UIUC
Weather Machine.)
As for the others listed here, the RiceInfo directory takes you into some good stuff including a directory called Local Times Around the World. The North Carolina State University directory doesn't have a lot of data (the terminal-based information is NCSU only), but it has a ton of images. If you have image software, this is worth a stop. And the University of Wisconsin directory has satellite images from the Antarctica Meteorology Research Center.
The LANL Gopher has two ways to get local weather conditions. One is under News and Events-Current LANL Weather Conditions. This is a brief listing of temperatures. More useful, under Information by Subject, is a directory called Weather Around LANL.
And last, in one of our other favorite gophers, The Pipeline, there is a directory
called Weather Everywhere. The latest Severe-by-State (from U of Illinois Weather Machine)
is identified here as: VERY BAD WEATHER. Sounds like a good place to look for those April
showers! ======================================================
8. April Training Opportunities
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Date : Database
5: Science Citation Index (1 pm)
6: Melvyl (11 am) UC's catalog and associated databases
6: Biological and Environmental Abstracts (1 pm)
12: Physics, EE and Computer Abstracts (1 pm)
13: Melvyl (11 am) UC's catalog and associated databases
13: Aerospace, Engineering & Metals Abstracts (1 pm)
19: Energy and NTIS (reports) databases (1 pm)
20: Melvyl (11 am) UC's catalog and associated databases
20: Science Citation Index (1 pm)
26: Computer Select (1 pm) (1 pm)
27: Melvyl (11 am) UC's catalog and associated databases
27: Biological and Environmental Abstracts (1 pm)
Training is limited to 4 people at a time. Sessions begin at times indicated and will
last approximately 30 minutes. Please call the Research Desk at 7-5809 or e-mail
ref@lanl.gov for reservations, to arrange a special session or tour or for more
information.
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