LANL Research Library Newsletter - October 1999
| New BIOSIS� at LANL |
A new interface and search engine is now available for BIOSIS� at LANL, our version of the world's leading database for the life sciences. The new system uses Verity's Topic search engine and is similar to SciSearch at LANL. Features include:
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The BIOSIS database has 12 million records covering the literature from 1969 to the present and updated bimonthly. BIOSIS indexes approximately 6500 journals and 2000 meetings/year, as well as books and other materials. Subject coverage includes biological and biomedical sciences, botany, biochemistry, biophysics, biotechnology, medicine, public health, radiation biology, ecology and the environment.
Jeane Strub
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| Wiley electronic journals via IP access! |
As of September 2, 1999 LANL customers are no longer required to go through the registration process for access to Wiley electronic journals. As an Unregistered User you now have unchallenged access via IP address to the Wiley electronic journals provided by the LANL Research Library. No username or password is required.
Although usernames and passwords are now optional, you will continue to need them to continue access to or create your Personal Home Pages. Personal Home Page services include the ability to bookmark your favorite journals and articles and save search queries.
If you are already a Registered User, but no longer wish to be identified by username and password, you can fill out a form requesting removal from the Wiley InterScience user database. This form is available at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/deregister.html.
Wiley electronic journals can be accessed through the Wiley e-journals list.
Carol Hoover
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| The cost of books |
We all know books are expensive, and we continue to buy them, even as prices inch upward. Remember your shock when you paid your book bill at the university bookstore each semester? Yet we know books are full of valuable information, and we are in an environment where information is required, precious, appreciated -- and paid for dearly.
The Research Library is in the book buying business, and subsequently we carefully track the cost of the items purchased for the book collection. Care to venture a guess at the average cost for a sci/tech reference book? $270. Chemical reference books top the chart at $655! Main collection books which you're able to borrow fall in the $100 range, hardly pocket change. The cost breakdown by broad subject categories is outlined on the chart below. If you have any questions about costs of specific titles, feel free to give me a call (7-5809) or send me an e-mail.
Marie Harper
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| You may have the old book we need |
The Research Library collection doesn't only grow with the newest journal issues, conferences and books, but Laboratory patrons constantly need and use information from the past. Unfortunately sci/tech books go out-of-print very quickly, so we would like to ask employees to consider donating older books that they may no longer use. From time to time we will list specific titles that would be valuable to the Library and to the Laboratory community. Copies of the following books would be gratefully accepted.
Donna Berg
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| Organic chemists! Beilstein Abstracts is now on the Web -- free |
Frustrated by the lack of Web-based Chemistry research sources? Beilstein, the leading organic chemistry reference source, is now available free of charge on ChemWeb.com. Users are able to access titles, abstracts and citations from the top journals in organic and related chemistry, published from 1980 to the present. There are currently approximately 600,000 articles in the Beilstein Abstracts Database.
You may search by author or by words included in the title or abstract of the paper. You may also restrict your search to a certain journal or time range, and a table of titles is delivered for your inspection free of charge. You can then view all detailed information by choosing the "Full Record" hyperlink. The full record is displayed in the following format:
Title, Author, Reference, CNR, Abstract
For your organic chemistry research needs access it at: http://chemweb.com/databases/beilstein
Lou Pray
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| New electronic journals from the Research Library |
The following new electronic journals have been added to the library collection and are available from your desktop:
The journal of immunology http://www.jimmunol.org
Journal of manufacturing systems http://sciserver.lanl.gov/journals/02786125
Practice periodical of hazardous, toxic, and radioactive waste management http://ojps.aip.org/hzo
Carol Hoover
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| Search engine profile: Google |
With so many Web search engines out there to use, the Research Library has decided to highlight a favorite from library staff members each month. If you have a favorite send it to us to feature with reasons why.
Google's site www.google.com, founded in 1998 by two Stanford University Ph.D. students, has a number of features that appeal to someone who needs relevant information fast and doesn't want to weed through thousands of so-called "hits."
As the growth of the Internet continues at an unprecedented rate -- recent industry figures estimate that 1.5 million pages are added to the Internet each day -- the average search returns an overwhelming number of results for users to sort through. Google helps users save time by delivering highly targeted results. It also has a clean, uncluttered look, sans advertisements.
Google only returns pages that match all of your search terms, and analyzes the
proximity of
those terms within a page. Results are presented with context-sensitive summaries so users
can easily tell if the corresponding web pages will satisfy their need.
Users can also enter a query and click the "I'm Feeling Lucky™" button, which takes users directly to the website of the first search result. For example, entering smithsonian into the Google search field and clicking the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button takes the user directly to www.si.edu, the official homepage of the Smithsonian Institution.
In late September, a new feature, GoogleScout™, was added that that expands a user's access to related information. The new GoogleScout feature offers a continuous source of relevant recommendations of where to go next on the web, and takes users to similar sites without additional keyword searching.
Patent-Pending PageRank Technology: Google's PageRank™ technology performs an objective measurement of the importance of web pages that is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 2 billion terms. Google does not determine results by counting links. Instead, Google's PageRank uses the vast link structure of the web as an organizational tool. In essence, Google interprets a link from Page A to Page B as a vote by Page A for Page B. Google assesses a page's importance by the votes it receives. It also analyzes the page that cast the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Important, high-quality pages receive a higher PageRank and are ordered higher in the results. Google is objective and fully automated and does not use human editors to judge a web page's importance.
Google, Inc. also offers Google/Unclesam at http://www.google.com/unclesam, a good tool for finding government information, indexing about 4 million pages found at sites that end in .gov or .mil. This is a comparable size to its main competitor, usgovsearch, with the advantages that Google/Unclesam is free and offers all the useful searching features of regular Google.
Lou Pray
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| MIT Computers and God lecture series with Donald Knuth |
The MIT God and Computers Lecture Series for Fall 1999 is starting next week. This year's series features Donald Knuth, Professor Emeritus of Stanford University, author of The Art of Computer Programming.
"Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About"
• 1. Introduction (10/6/99)
• 2. Randomization and Religion (10/13/99)
• 3. Language Translation (10/27/99)
• 4. Aesthetics (11/3/99)
• 5. Panel Discussion (11/17/99)
• 6. Glimpses of God (12/1/99)
• 7. God and Computer Science (12/8/99)
These lectures will be broadcast via technetcast (http://www.technetcast.com). All
sessions start at 4:30pm ET. Two streams will be available during the live sessions:
A 16Kbps audio-only stream and a 36Kbps video stream. A higher bandwidth (80 Kbps) version
and an mp3 version will also be made available in the days following the live events. All
programs will be available on-demand from
our archives after the live events. For more information see the lecture series web
page at http://web.mit.edu/bpadams/www/gac/index.html.
Take advantage of this "at-home" opportunity to hear Donald Knuth.
Frances Knudson
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Need 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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