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Newsletter December 2001 
Newsletter index 
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Table of Contents
FlashPoint 2.0 was released by the Research Library at the end of November. This version of FlashPoint, the cross-database search tool, now searches the American Mathematical Society's MathSciNet database, in addition to ten locally maintained databases, such as SciSearch, BIOSIS and the DOE Energy database. MathSciNet is the first database not housed at LANL that is searchable by FlashPoint.
MathSciNet covers research in mathematics and mathematically related research in statistics, computer science, physics, operations research, engineering, biology, and other disciplines, and indexes 1800 serials and journals. It is the online equivalent of Mathematical Reviews (updated monthly) and Current Mathematical Publications (updated daily). The Mathematical Reviews portion of the database begins in 1940, thereby providing access to research even earlier than Nuclear Science Abstracts, previously the database with the earliest start date.
The Research Library is currently engaged in a December-long trial of Columbia Earthscape. Please review this site -- call the Library Service Desk for a free password. Send any feedback on its appropriateness for you as LANL researchers to library@lanl.gov. Columbia Earthscape (http://www.earthscape.org/) aims to provide current information and teaching tools concerning the environmental aspects of earth sciences. The portal is organized into four main topics: Research, Education, Earth Affairs magazine, and Links & Resources. The Research section is devoted to papers and conferences, journal abstracts, books, and datasets and databases. The Education section contains a sample curriculum, mini-courses, and a discussion area designed for instructors to share experiences, philosophies, and strategies of teaching, including interactive media in the classroom. The online magazine, Earth Affairs, highlights the interdisciplinary nature of environmental earth sciences. Its focus is not only the science of investigating Earth as a system, but also discussing related public concerns and policy. Links are organized by Earth-systems disciplines, activities, issues, and habitat. The Datasets & Databases section was still under construction at the time of this review. The site pledges, however, that it will present links to datasets, classification and modeling systems, and a range of online databases, with full indexing and search capabilities. Already Columbia Earthscape has been cited in the Scout Report for top Web sites in the sciences, been featured as the month's lead news item of the Association of Research Libraries, and has won a major award from the Association of American Publishers for the "Best New Internet Based Electronic Project." This site is guided and moderated by a large editorial board consisting
largely of Columbia University faculty in addition to some from other
institutions.
Electronic technical report access from the Research Library is currently restricted to .gov and .mil addresses until the reports can be reviewed and released to the public based on guidelines from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). Please contact the Report Library at 7-4446 or reports@lanl.gov if you have any questions.
For the third year the LANL Research Library has taken a close look at the journal titles in our collection that are duplicated in print and electronic formats. Our goal is to make available a small print collection suitable for browsing and reading within the library, including titles such as Science, Nature and Chemical Market Reporter among others. With this goal in mind, after a thorough comparison of the print and electronic versions we have identified over 400 print journals for cancellation, while retaining the electronic access to these same titles. No subscriptions are being cancelled. Print-only cancellation will allow the Research Library many advantages—we save subscription costs in many cases, in addition to staff time for processing, shelf space, reshelving time and expense, as well as binding costs. These funds are reinvested in additional electronic journal products that will be available at your desktop. The list of journals targeted for print cancellation is available to LANL staff. Comments are invited through December 24, 2001. Please send your comments to Carol Hoover.
Google has begun indexing a variety
of document types other than HTML and plain text formats and many folks
are worried about potential security problems. The concern is that there
may be viruses embedded in non-HTML files, and these direct links may
mean that you could unknowingly open an infected file. The new file types
now being included in Google searches are Adobe PostScript; Lotus 1-2-3
and WordPro; MacWrite; Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint Word, Works and Write;
and the Rich Text Format. Google believes that this information is within
their scope, that they are in the business of discovering, crawling and
indexing publicly available information, and they define public as anything
placed on the public Internet. Authentication systems will stop most crawler-based
search engines and our sources say that none of the major search engine
spiders will try to access authenticated information. We also read that
authentication is a barrier, not absolute protection. However, in an article
by search engine guru Danny Sullivan dated December 3, Google says they
have received no e-mail from their users complaining about computer viruses.
To allay fears of viruses, Google has provided for each of these non-HTML
files a link to "View as HTML"; but the whole episode is causing
some interesting discussions about security, protection and access to
information.
The following new electronic journals have been added to the library collection and are available from your desktop: Biology Chemistry Engineering Environment General
Last month FAST (now known as AllTheWeb.com) came out with a new release with some features that have created quite a buzz. The company is now focusing on quicker access to news and information with added technology that has improved relevancy and ease of navigation. The new release includes a linguistic analysis of queries so they are no longer just matching search terms. They are now attempting to interpret the user's intention and then displaying results in groupings or clusters. The top third of the results page provides the user with a grouping of broad topics. You can click on the folder icon for each grouping and open to another display of sites related to that subject area. The central part of the display page is very similar to Google but the results are numbered which might come in handy. If your search was done in the news file then the sites displayed tell you when they were indexed, such as "1 hour ago". This is a needed and useful piece of information to add to the results of a news-based search. A final tab-bar across the bottom of the results page allows you to connect to additional types of web media. The categories are: news, pictures, videos, MP3 files and FTP files. These interesting features make AllTheWeb.com an interesting search to try.
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. If you're planning to come in during the holidays, check ahead of time that your badge works in the Study Center badge reader. If you haven't used this badge reader in the last month or two call 667-7840 (CCN-4) to verify that you're in the system. Library customers have reported problems so it never hurts to check. Happy Holidays from the Research
Library! Want to be notified of new issues? 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/2001/200112.htm | Last Modified: 05/05/08 |
