Database News for April 2004

The Merck Index is an essential source for organic chemistry, pharmacy, and related fields. It offers more than 10,000 lengthy articles describing chemicals, drugs, and biological substances. Now students can search or browse this important reference book online. Users can search by compound name, chemical structure, or organic reaction.

The Institute of Physics will no longer make the INSPEC database available on its Axiom platform after this year. The University Libraries need your help in identifying the best possible database platform for searching the INSPEC database. Produced by the IEE, INSPEC is the leading English-language bibliographic information service providing access to the world's scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers, computing, information technology, manufacturing and production engineering.

During April, try out INSPEC from these three different vendors, then take our INSPEC survey to let us know which version you prefer.

• INSPEC from Ebsco
  The Ebsco version of INSPEC offers a search interface familiar to most students who have used the popular Academic Search Premier or Business Search Premier databases. Provides links to full-text articles from almost 450 journals available full-text in Academic Search Premier. Links to the InfoLinks catalog and the ILLiad ILL system
  
• INSPEC from Engineering Village
  (Change the database name from Compendex to INSPEC.) The Engineering Village version of INSPEC allows users to search across both the Compendex and INSPEC files at the same time. Sort results by relevance, create search alerts and save searches, and combine previous searches in your search history.
  
• INSPEC from Web of Knowledge
  On ISI's Web of Knowledge platform, users can choose "CrossSearch" to search both INSPEC and the Science Citation Index or Current Contents simultaneously. Provides links to full text artlces as well as to the online catalog.

Our INSPEC trial ends on April 31, 2004.

Please take the INSPEC Survey or send your comments to Usha Gupta, Chemistry and Physics Librarian.

Alexander Street Press specializes in throoughly indexed documents collections in the humanities. The University Libraries have three databases from Alexander Street:

• American Film Scripts Online
  An ongoing project to digitize and thoroughly index 1,000 film scripts, beginning with the silent classic, The Great Train Robbery in 1903 through recent releases such as Pi and Boogie Nights
• Black Drama: 1850 to the Present
  The full text of 1,200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present by more than 100 playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries
• Early Encounters in North America
  Draws together primary source materials from the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries on the cultural encounters in the European exploration of and United States expansion into the North American continent

Come learn more about these and other Alexander Street Projects on April 8 at 2PM in Mullins Library 102.