The Online World Part 20

Patent searchers are a very specialized group. They discuss common problems on Dialog's DialMail. Their bulletin board is named PIUG.

Buy user manuals ---------------- Some online services send free user information manuals to their users. Others charge extra for them. If they do, buy! They're worth their weight in gold.

The user manuals from Dialog, Dow Jones News/Retrieval and CompuServe make good reading. The last two also publish monthly magazines full of search tips, information about new sources, user experiences, and more. Dialog distributes the monthly newsletter Chronolog.

NewsNet customers periodically receive a printed listing of available newsletters by subject area, and a presentation of their information providers. The NewsNet Action Letter (monthly) is also distributed by mail.

On some services, you can retrieve the help texts in electronic form. Doing that is not a bad idea. It is often quicker to search a help file on your disk, than to browse through a book.

Monitor the offerings --------------------- Professional information searchers monitor the activity in the online world. They search databases for information about new sources of information, and regularly read about new services.

On most online services, you can search databases of available offerings, and a section with advertis.e.m.e.nts about their own 'superiorities'. Keep an eye on what is being posted there.

NewsNet lets you read and search the following newsletters: Worldwide Videotex Update, Worldwide Databases (#PB44), Online Newsletter, The Online Newsletter, and The Online Libraries and Microcomputers.

The last two are also available as a database from Information Intelligence, Inc., (P.O. Box 31098, Phoenix, AZ 85046, U.S.A.

Tel.: +1-602-996-2283). You can read the text on NewsNet about one week before it appears in print.

These two newsletters can also be read and searched on Dialog and Data-Star, as part of the Information Access PTS Newsletter Database. Information Access is a full-text database with many specialized newsletters for business and industry.

On CompuServe, you can get to Information Access through the IQuest gateway to NewsNet.

Subscribing to THE ONLINE NEWSLETTER costs US$50.00 per year (10 issues) for companies, and US$35.00 for personal use (1991).

For both newsletters, the price is US$75.00.

These newsletters are also available on CD-ROM. The disk contains four databases: the Online Newsletter, Online Hotline, Online Libraries and Microcomputers, Major Online Vendors and *Joblines* with more than eight thousand full-text articles from January 1980 until today.

The CD-ROM version is delivered with a menu-driven searching program. Each word in every article and headline has been indexed and can be located in all databases. The price for subscriptions of the printed version is US$99.95. Price for nonsubscribers: US$199.95.

The September 1991 issue of The Online Newsletter had the following index (partial):

*NEW & FORTHCOMING DATABASES*

10) MULTIMEDIA CIA WORLD FACT BOOK (CD-ROM) [REVIEW]

11) NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS ON CD-ROM (CD-ROM) [REVIEW]

12) WORLD CERAMICS ABSTRACTS (ORBIT) 13) GENE-TOX (TOXNET/NLM) 14) UK TRADEMARKS (ORBIT) [RENAMED]

15) BRS ADDS DATABASES TO ITS OFFERINGS 16) CURRENT PATENTS (ORBIT) 17) NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE ON CD-ROM (CD-ROM) 18) ALUMINUM STANDARDS DATABASE [AAASD] (STN 19) PLASNEWS (STN INTERNATIONAL) 20) EPIC ANNOUNCES NEW DATABASES 21) DISc.l.i.t: AMERICAN AUTHORS (CD-ROM - OCLC) 22) CROSS-CULTURAL: CRIME AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS (CD-ROM) 23) INTERNATIONAL PHARMACEUTICAL ABSTRACTS (CD-ROM) 24) RINGDOC (CD-ROM - SILVERPLATTER) 25) CODUS (ESA-IRS) 26) MOODY'S COMPANY DATA (CD-ROM) 27) FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE (DIALOG) 28) INPADOC DATABASE TO BE MADE AVAILABLE IN j.a.pAN (DIALOG) 29) SOFTWARE CD: DESCRIPTIONS & REVIEWS (CD-ROM) 30) MONARCH NOTES ON CD-ROM (CD-ROM)

An earlier issue of the newsletter reviewed The Encyclopedia of Information Systems and Services, a three-volume "bible" for online users and producers (9th edition): EISS covers more than 30,000 organizations, systems, services, more than five thousand databases, publications, software products, etc. Their international listing covers 1,350 information organizations in 70 countries, and has 535 pages.

Topics: online host services, videotex/teletext information services, PC oriented services, data collection and a.n.a.lysis services, abstracting and indexing services, computerized searching services, software producers, magnetic tape/diskette providers, micrographic applications and services, library and information networks, library management systems, information on demand services, transactional services (new category), doc.u.ment delivery services, SDI/current awareness services, consultants, a.s.sociations, research and research projects, and electronic mail applications.

Contact: Gale Research Company, 645 Griswold, Detroit, MI 48226, U.S.A. Tel.: +1-313-961-2242. Price per set: US$ 420.00.

The European Common Market -------------------------- Many services bring news and information from the European Common Market. The Common Market's free database service, I'M-GUIDE, is a good place to start.

I'M-GUIDE is available through ECHO in Luxembourg by telnet to echo.lu . At the question "PLEASE ENTER YOUR CODE," enter ECHO and press Return.

You can search I'M-GUIDE for information sources, send email inquiries to ECHO, and more. Searches can be done in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, and Portuguese.

If you have problems using I'M-GUIDE, call the ECHO Help Desk in Luxembourg at +352-34 98 11.

More sources about sources -------------------------- The "Internet-Accessible Library Catalogs and Databases" report is available by email from [email protected] Put the following command in the TEXT of your message:

GET LIBRARY PACKAGE

Cuadra/Elsevier (Box 872, Madison Square Station, New York, NY 10159-2101, U.S.A. Tel.: +1 212 633 3980) sells a Directory of Online Databases, which lists databases available around the world.

The catalog can be searched on Orbit and Data-Star.

The Online Access Publis.h.i.+ng Group Inc. (Chicago) sells "The Online Access Guide." Annual subscription for this printed manual costs US$18.95 (six issues - 1992).

The LINK-UP magazine is another interesting source. If living in North America, contact Learned Information Inc., 143 Old Mariton Pike, Medford, NJ 08055-8707, U.S.A.. If living elsewhere, contact Learned Information (Europe) Ltd., Woodside, Hinskey Hill, Oxford OX1 5AU, England, if you live outside North America. Tel.: +44 865 730 275. Price: US$25.00 for six issues/year (1993). An online version is available through ZiffNet's Business Database Plus on CompuServe.

Two monthly magazines, Information World Review (price: GBP 30/year) and FULLTEXT SOURCES ONLINE from BiblioData Inc. in the United States, is also available through Learned Information.

(BiblioData, P.O. Box 61, Needham Heights, MA 02194, U.S.A.) FULLTEXT SOURCES ONLINE publishes their listing of full-text databases twice per year. The price is GBP 50 GBP per booklet or GBP 90 per year.

The newsletter SCANNET TODAY (c/o Helsinki University of Techn.

Library, Otnaesvaegen 9, SF-02150 ESBO, Finland) presents news of Scandinavian databases by country. Subscription is free.

Computer Readable Databases from Gale Research is available both in print and online through Dialog. Write to Gale Research Company, 645 Griswold, Detroit, MI 48226, U.S.A.

Many electronic journals and newsletters are available through the Internet, covering fields from literature to molecular biology.

For a complete list, send a message to [email protected] with the following commands in the BODY of your text:

GET EJOURNL1 DIRECTRY GET EJOURNL2 DIRECTRY

Practical hints about online searching -------------------------------------- We cannot give a simple, universal recipe valid for all online services. What is the best approach on one service, may be useless on others.

Most services offer full online doc.u.mentation of their search commands. You can read the help text on screen while connected, or retrieve it for later study.

Make a note about the following general tricks:

In conferences and forums: -------------------------- Many services have commands for selective reading of messages.

For example, on CompuServe you can limit your search to given sections. You can also select messages to be read based on text strings in the subject t.i.tles. The command

rs;s;CIS Access from j.a.pan;62928

displays all messages with the text "CIS Access from j.a.pan"

in their subject t.i.tles starting with message number 62928.

Online searching often starts by selecting databases. The next step is to enter search words (or text strings), and a valid time frame (as in "between 1/1/90 and 1/1/91").

The following sample search terms are used on NewsNet:

VIDEO* search for all words starting with VIDEO. "*" is a wild-card character referring to any ending of the word.

VIDEO* matches words like VIDEOTEXT and VIDEOCONFERENCE.

SONY AND VIDEO The word SONY and the word VIDEO. Both words must be present in the doc.u.ment to give a match.

SONY WITHIN/10 VIDEO Both words must be present in the text, but they must not be farther apart than ten words. (Proximity operators)

IBM OR APPLE Either one word OR the other.

Many services let you reuse your search terms in new search commands. This can save you time and money, if there are too many hits. For example: if IBM OR APPLE gives 1,000 hits, limit the search by adding "FROM JANUARY 1st.," or by adding the search word "NOTEBOOK*".

In file libraries ----------------- The commands used to find files are similar to those used in traditional databases. Often, you can limit the search by library, date, file name, or file extension. You can search for text strings in the description of the contents of a file, or use key words.

Example: You're visiting a bulletin board based on the BBS program RBBS-PC. You want a program that can show GIF graphics picture files. Such files are typically described like this:

VUIMG31.EXE 103105 07-15-91 GIF*/TIFF/PCX Picture Viewer/Printer

From left to right: file name, size in bytes, date available, and a 40 character description.

You can search the file descriptions for the string "gif". You do this by entering the term "s gif all". This will probably give you a list of files. Some will have the letters GIF in the file name. Others will have them in the description field.

Using ANDs and ORs ------------------ Boolean searching may seem confusing at first, unless you already understand the logic. There are three Boolean operators that searchers use to combine search terms: AND, OR, and NOT.

Use the Boolean operator AND to retrieve smaller amounts of information. Use AND when multiple words must be present in your search results (MERCEDES AND VOLVO AND CITROEN AND PRICES).

Use OR to express related concepts or synonyms for your search term (FRUIT OR APPLES OR PEARS OR BANANAS OR PEACHES).

Be careful when using the NOT operator. It gets rid of any record in a database that contains the word that you've "notted" out. For example, searching for "IBM NOT APPLE" drops records containing the sentence, "IBM and Apple are computer giants." The record will be dropped, even if this is the only mention of Apple in an article, and though it is solely about IBM.

Use NOT to drop sets of hits that you have already seen. Use NOT to exclude records with multiple meanings, like "CHIPS Not POTATO" (if you are looking for chips rather than snack foods).

Often, it pays to start with a "quick-and-dirty" search by throwing in words you think will do the trick. Then look at the first five or 10 records, but look only at the headline and the indexing. This will show you what terms are used by indexers to describe your idea and the potential for confusion with other ideas.

Use proximity operators to search multiword terms. If searching for "market share," you want the two words within so many words of another. The order of the words, however, doesn't matter. You can accept both "market share" and "share of the market."