[SAO/NASA ADS]   What's New with the ADS Announcements: 1998-2001


07-Nov-2001

We have the following news to announce in ADS:

  1. 300,000+ Physical Review Abstracts
  2. Full Mirror Sites in China and India
  3. EndNote, ProCite with ADS
  4. New ADS Site Map and Help Text
  5. Scanning Summary

300,000+ Physical Review Abstracts

In collaboration with the American Physical Society (APS), we have added over 300,000 abstracts from the Physical Review Series to the ADS Physics Database. In addition, we have added over 3 million citations from these articles. More links and better interoperability between the ADS and APS web sites are expected in the future as part of this collaborative effort.

Full Mirror Sites in China and India

We are pleased to announce that our mirror sites in China and India are now full mirror sites containing all ADS article scans as well as abstracts. In addition to China and India, our mirror sites in France and Japan (as well as our US site in Cambridge) also contain all articles which have been scanned by the ADS.

EndNote, ProCite With ADS

We have revised the options at the bottom of the query results page, including an option to return references in EndNote, ProCite, BibTex, and several other standard formats. This should assist users using ADS to create reference lists for papers to be published.

New ADS Site Map and Help Text

A new ADS Site Map is included in our list of links at the bottom of all ADS Pages. We have also revised our help text to make it easier to find useful information. Users should visit the Site Map and help text pages to find out about additional ADS features and capabilities which may be new to them.

Scanning Summary

We have recently scanned and put online:

  • African Skies (v.1-5: 1997-2000)
  • Antarctic Meteorite Research (v.4-13: 1991-2000)
  • Astronomische Gesellschaft Abstract Series (v.1-13: 1988-1997)
  • Australian Journal of Physics (v.46-49: 1993-1996)
  • Chinese Journal of Astronomy & Astrophysics (v.1: 2001)
  • The Observatory (v.50-66, v.69-120: 1949-2000)
  • Zeitschrift fur Astrophysik (v.22-23: 1942-1944; v.38-69: 1955-1968)

We have also added full-text scans from several conference proceedings to the ADS article archive (including several IAU Symposia). Please see the full-text journal and proceedings service pages for more information:

     http://adshelpabs.harvard.edu/article_service.html
     http://adshelpabs.harvard.edu/proceedings_service.html

We are missing a number of hardcopy publications (both individual journal volumes and more extensive sets) which we would like to scan, including a number of missing IAU Symposia. Please see the list of publications that we are after and let us know if you can help in any way:

     http://adshelp.harvard.edu/pubs/missing_journals.html





14-Aug-2001

Joyce Watson died last Wednesday, August 8. Joyce was the Chief Librarian of the SAO branch of the SI library from 1969 to her retirement in 1991; following her retirement she continued to work part-time at SAO on the Simbad and ADS projects until 1998.

Joyce was a pioneer in bringing library services to astronomers through the use of computers and wide-area networking. Her 1983 paper, ''Information sources and services in astronomy, astrophysics, and related space sciences'' is the intellectual foundation for what is now the NASA ADS Abstract Service, which is used daily by nearly every astronomer. Joyce was also the Principal Investigator on the Simbad/US project, which provided US access to the French Simbad data service long before the existence of the World Wide Web.

Joyce was very active in the Physics-Astronomy-Math division of the Special Libraries Association, even past her retirement; she served as chair 1985-86.

At a time when few librarians recognized the potential of the new technologies Joyce took bold moves, sometimes at substantial professional risk, to bring these advances to astronomers. She will be greatly missed.

According to her family's preference, anyone wishing to commemorate her do so by either donating to a preferred charity or sending flowers to a loved one in her honor.

In several weeks, according to Joyce's wishes, her family will scatter her ashes off the coast of Monterey County, an area about 3.5 hours south of San Francisco called Big Sur. She loved the beauty of cliff-like rocks that climb out of the surf.




13-Apr-01

We have the following news to announce in ADS:

  1. New Russian, Brazilian, and Indian Mirror Sites!
  2. Solar Physics Online
  3. More data links
  4. Scanning Summary

New Russian, Brazilian, and Indian Mirror Sites!

We are pleased to announce three new mirror sites for the Abstract Service at the Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia, at the Observatorio Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India.

     http://adshelp.inasan.rssi.ru
     http://adshelp.on.br
     http://adshelp.iucaa.ernet.in

In addition, we are pleasd to announce that the mirror sites at CDS and IUCAA have recently become a full mirror for the scanned articles. Sites with full articles now include SAO, CDS, NAO, IUCAA, and BAO (Beijing Astronomical Observatory), while the University of Nottingham site contains a partial mirror of the articles.

Solar Physics Online

Thanks to the cooperation of Kluwer Academic Publishers, we have recently added scans of Solar Physics back to volume 1 (1967).

More Data Links

Over the last year, we have added approximately 70,000 links to datasets at he Multimission Archive at the Space Telescope Science Institute (MAST) from the HST, IUE, EUVE, COPERNICUS, HUT, WUPPE, UIT, and BEFS missions. These data sets are all linked to papers published from those observations, and are available for users to download as needed.

Scanning Summary

We have recently completed the scanning of the following journals:

  • Journal of the American Ass. of Variable Star Observers: v. 1-28 (1972-2000)
  • The Minor Planet Bulletin: v.1-26: (1973-1999)
  • Solar Physics: v. 1-169 (1967-1996)

We are currently scanning the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Astronomische Nachrichten, and Astronomy Letters (1994-1998).

Please feel free to contact us with questions or comments, and as always, do let us know when you notice errors in our database. In particular, a check of your own publications for correctness is always a good idea.




15-Dec-00

We have the following news to announce in ADS:

  1. Search Multiple Databases
  2. Also Read Feature
  3. Citation and Reference Queries

Search Multiple Databases

We recently added a feature on the main query page which allows users to search more than one database at a time. This is particularly useful if you work in a field where important papers may appear in physics or instrumentation journals. To use this feature, select the appropriate databases to query below the top ``Send" button on the main query page.

Also Read Feature

Another new feature we have recently added is the ability to see articles which were also read by users who read a given article. This is useful in showing what papers other researchers thought were relevant to the paper in question. To use this feature, click on the ``U" link in the Available Items list of a results page.

Citation and Reference Queries

We have expanded the citation and reference query capabilities and moved them from the top level query page to the bottom of the list of results page which is returned from a query. The new location allows users the option of selecting only those papers for which they want to see references or citations, rather than being forced to use every paper in the list as was done previously. Another new capability is the ability to sort by citation count on a list of papers which is done by selecting that sorting option at the bottom of a results list.

As usual, users should be reminded that the citations in ADS are incomplete due to our inability to match 100% of references (e.g. in press, private communications, author errors, some conference papers, etc.). Anyone using the citations for analysis of publishing records should keep this in mind. More work on expanding the citation and reference features is planned over the next year.

Thank you. Please feel free to contact us with questions or comments, and as always, do let us know when you notice errors in our database. In particular, a check of your own publications for correctness is always a good idea.




12-Sep-00

We have the following news to announce in ADS:

  1. Job Opening! Looking for an ADS Programmer
  2. New PhD theses
  3. Missing IAUS volumes

Job Opening! Looking for An ADS Programmer

Note: this position has been filled, and the URL below removed

The ADS is looking for a programmer to join our team. Primary responsibilities will include processing journal scans to put online, OCR'ing scans to extract abstracts, references, and full text, and writing software to gather and format new data for inclusion in ADS. A full job description along with details on applying are located at:

     http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/hr/postings/20-92.htm 

This is a great opportunity for a person with programming experience interested in joining an exciting project which is transforming the way astronomers conduct their research.

New PhD Theses

We recently added about 2000 PhD theses which we generated from electronic references, and therefore they are missing titles and other information such as affiliation. In addition, the year of publication may be wrong due to author errors in referencing. If your PhD thesis hasn't been in ADS so far, now is the time to add it!

Please feel free to submit any missing information to us, preferably through the form provided at

     adshelpabs:submit_abstract.html
so that we can update the database.

Missing IAUS Volumes

In cooperation with the IAU, we are now scanning the IAU Symposia to place online. However, we are missing about 70 volumes which we need to be complete. If you are willing to donate a copy of any of those we are missing, we would greatly appreciate hearing from you. The list of missing IAUS (as well as missing volumes of other journals we are scanning) is at:

     http://adshelp.harvard.edu/pubs/missing_journals.html

Please feel free to contact us with questions or comments, and as always, do let us know when you notice errors in our database. In particular, a check of your own publications for correctness is always a good idea.




17-May-00

We are pleased to announce another mirror site for the Abstract Service at the Beijing Astronomical Observatory in Beijing, China. Users in China may want to use that site for faster response:

     http://baoadshelp.bao.ac.cn

This site contains only the abstracts for our databases, so transfer of articles must still be done from SAO, NAO, or CDS.

In addition, due to a technical mixup, some users may not have seen our previous announcement on Dexter listed below.




23-Mar-00

The following is new in ADS:

  1. ADS tops 2 million references
  2. Dexter Data Extraction
  3. Scanning of LPI, MNRAS, AREPS, and BICDS
  4. Downtime for SAO site Friday evening 4/7/00

ADS Tops 2 Million References

Recent updates to the databases have brought the total number of references in the ADS Abstract Databases to 2.02 million:

  • Astronomy/Astrophysics Database: 557,202
  • Instrumentation Database: 577,783
  • Physics/Geophysics Database: 877,721
  • ADS/LANL Preprint Database: 3,925

Dexter Data Extraction

We have implemented a Java application which allows users to extract data from plots in scanned articles. This application, Dexter, is linked on all pages containing scanned images. It does not require downloading or installing any software as long as your browser has Java enabled. We welcome user feedback on Dexter.

Scanning of LPI, MNRAS, AREPS, and BICDS

We have recently scanned and placed online the abstract books from all past Lunar and Planetary Science Conferences abstract volumes (LPI), Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS) back to 1936 (Volume 96), Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences (AREPS), and Bulletin d'Information Centre Donnees Stellaires (BICDS). We are currently scanning Soviet Astronomy Letters, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, and the Observatory.

Please note that contrary to what we have previously announced, we will not be scanning Icarus for the time being since the publisher did not grant us the required copyright clearence.

Downtime for SAO Site Friday Evening 4/7/00

There will be an electrical outage on Friday evening 4/7/00 beginning at 5pm EDT, at the main SAO site which will cause ADS to be unavailable. If you intend to use ADS during this period, we suggest bookmarking one of the mirror sites so that you can go directly there on that evening.

Please feel free to contact us with questions or comments, and as always, do let us know when you notice errors in our database. In particular, a check of your own publications for correctness is always a good idea.




17-Nov-99

The following is new in ADS this month:

  1. New citations
  2. Scanning of IAU Symposia Series
  3. Printing articles at full resolution

New Citations

We have recently added a large number of citations to the database. These come from two sources:

  • References from papers created by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software performed on the scans of articles we have created (1.17 million citations)
  • References from papers provided by University of Chicago Press (UCP) for ApJ, ApJL, ApJS, AJ, and PASP since mid-1998 (120,000 citations)

This brings the total number of citations in our system to 2.5 million.

Users should be reminded that even with these additional citations, the citations contained in ADS are incomplete due to the partial coverage of journals used to build the citation database and our inability to match 100% of references (e.g. in press, private communications, author errors, some conference series, etc.). Anyone using the citations for analysis of publishing records should keep this in mind. Work on the OCR of references is ongoing, as is the addition of reference information from data provided by UCP and other journal publishers.

Scanning of IAU Symposia Series

We have received permission to scan the IAU Symposia Series, and are looking for donations of missing volumes. The list of those volumes that we need is available online at:

http://adshelp.harvard.edu/pubs/missing_journals.html

Since the binding needs to be cut in order to scan them, we would prefer to have copies which we can dispose of once they have been scanned. If you have any to donate, we would be happy to accept them at our exhibit booth at the AAS meeting in Atlanta in January, or to arrange to have them mailed to us.

We have also received permission to scan Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Soviet Astronomy Letters, the Observatory, and Icarus. We plan to make these journals available online over the next few months while also completing the scanning of A&AS, MNRAS and PASP back to volume 1.

Printing Articles At Full Resolution

Users should note that the default for printing of articles is set to retrieve a low resolution (200 dpi) version of the document which is considerably less sharp than the high resolution one (600 dpi). If you have the resources, we recommend changing your preferences to print with the higher resolution instead.

Please feel free to contact us with questions or comments, and as always, do let us know when you notice errors in our database. In particular, a check of your own publications for correctness is always a good idea.




10-Sep-99

The following is new in ADS this month:

  1. Three new mirror sites!
  2. Author address database
  3. Abstracts from Scanned Articles
  4. Abstract Service Hints
  5. Scanning Summary -- ARA&A, BAICz, and ASPC

Three New Mirror Sites!

We are pleased to announce three new mirror sites for the Abstract Service:

Select the mirror site closest to you for best response. All user comments and questions should continue to be sent to adshelp@cfa.harvard.edu

Author Address Database

The ADS has begun maintaining an author address database directly instead of relying on outside sources for them. We have set up an entry and update mechanism which allows users to enter/update their information. Users can do this by following the links on author names from the full abstract display page.

Abstracts From Scanned Articles

In the past few months, we have extracted approximately 15,000 abstracts from scanned pages. These abstracts, which used to be unavailable, have been OCR'd and indexed so that they are now searchable. On the full abstract display page, we now show a GIF image of the abstract (and sometimes keywords as well). This work has been done for all of the major journals and we will continue to do it for the minor journals which we have scanned.

Abstract Service Hints

We recently began including one-line hints at the top of the Abstract Query Page. Different hints come up each time the page is accessed. A complete listing of the hints is available at the top of the FAQ page. If you have ideas about other hints we should include, please send them to us! We would like to include more hints on a regular basis.

Scanning Summary -- ARA&A, BAICz, and ASPC

Scanning continues as fast as resources permit. Recent additions include Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ARA&A), Bulletin of the Astronomical Institutes of Czechoslovakia (BAICz), and additional Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conferences (ASPC). Additions planned for the near future include PASP back to volume 1, followed by A&AS back to volume 1, followed by MNRAS back to volume 1.




28-May-99

The following is new in ADS this month:

  1. ApJ back to Volume 1 Online!
  2. More Conference Proceedings Online
  3. Physics Database Updated

ApJ Back to Volume 1 Online!

ADS is pleased to announce the availability starting 1 June 1999 of the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ) scans back to Volume 1 (1895). In conjunction with the upcoming AAS meeting in Chicago, we will provide electronic access to all AAS journals for their entire lifetimes (ApJ, ApJL, ApJS, AJ, and AASPB). We thank the AAS for their enthusiastic cooperation in granting us the permission required to make this possible.

More Conference Proceedings Online

We have been putting more effort into obtaining conference proceeding listings and have recently added to the system complete entries for all ASP Conference Series, IAU Symposia Series, and IAU Colloquia Series. We have also added table of contents from approximately 150 other conference proceedings.

Physics Database Updated

In the last few months, we have updated the Physics database with table of contents of journals from Elsevier, Academic Press, American Institute of Physics (AIP), and Institute of Physics (IOP). This has resulted in a 50% increase in the size of the database, entirely due to recent data. We still hope to obtain table of contents of journals from the American Physical Society (APS) to continue to improve the quality of this database.




01-Apr-99

We are pleased to announce another mirror site for the Abstract Service at the European Southern Observatory in Garching, Germany. Users in Germany may want to use that site for faster response:

    http://esoadshelp.eso.org

This site contains only the abstracts for our databases, so transfer of articles must still be done from SAO, NAO, or CDS.






01-Feb-99

The following is new in ADS this month:

  1. More Conference Proceedings
  2. Citations Updated
  3. New Associated Article links
  4. E-mail Searches
  5. Chile Mirror downtime
  6. Scanning update -- AJ, ApJS, and PASJ back to Volume 1

More Conference Proceedings

We have been putting more effort into obtaining conference proceeding listings and have recently added to the system the past 5 years of conference proceeding references from the ASP Conference Series, the IAU Symposia Series, and the IAU Colloquia Series. We are also in the process of adding table of contents listings from several hundred more conference proceedings. Many thanks to the following librarians, without whom this effort would not have been possible: Ellen Bouton, Liz Bryson, Donna Coletti, Brenda Corbin, Donna Cromer, Marlene Cummins, and Sarah Stevens-Rayburn.

We have recently scanned and placed online ASP Conference Proceedings, Volumes 1-34 (except for vol. 6 and vol. 23). In addition, we have scanned and placed online the following conference proceedings:

  • Chondrules and their origins (1983)
  • Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century (1985)
  • Origin of the Moon (1986)
  • First MONS Workshop (1998)
  • The Local Bubble and Beyond (LNP 506, IAUCo 166, 1998)

All of these are available from our online proceedings page:

    adshelpabs:proceedings_service.html


Citations Updated

We have recently added more than two years of citations to the Abstract Service, bringing citations current through September, 1998. These citations, from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), producers of the Science Citation Index, are available by following "C" and "R" links. Note that because the cross-references used to create the lists of citations and references in this dataset are self-contained, we cannot guarantee their completeness (not even in a specific time-span). We are working to add more cross-references on a regular basis by cooperating with the publishers of electronic journals in the creation of links to and from them, and by automatically recognizing references from the scanned images of older journal articles.

New Associated Article Links

We have added an "O" link for other associated articles in the Available Items Column. This allows linking of errata to their main paper, and linking of articles appearing in a series. We encourage users to send us bibliographic codes which are associated with each other so that we can properly connect them in the system. There is a form set up for this purpose at

    adshelpabs:submit_associated.html

Note that the former use of the O link, for original author abstracts, has been folded into the A link. The source of the abstract can be determined from the Origin field.

E-mail Searches

Users are reminded that they can take advantage of searching the Abstract database by email in order to find out what has been recently added to the database which is of particular interest to you. Users can do this one of two ways: 1) by sending a saved query form to "adshelpquery@cfa.harvard.edu" or 2) by sending a specially formatted email message to the same address. The first method returns an ascii results list in plain text, the second method gives the user the option of returning html so that links may be followed.

To try the first method, enter some parameters in the query form, including a "start_day" of -31 in the filter section. This will query the database for everything that matches those parameters for references added to the database in the past 31 days. Save this query form with the button "Return Query Form", and email that form to adshelpquery@cfa.harvard.edu

To try the second method, and to see more details on automating queries, see our FAQ:

    adshelpabs:abs_doc/faq.html#email


Chile Mirror Downtime

The abstract mirror in Chile will be unavaiable from Friday, 29 January 1999 until approximately Monday, 1 March 1999 while a building upgrade is performed. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

Scanning Update -- AJ, ApJS, and PASJ Back to Volume 1

We are proud to announce the completion of scanning and placing online articles back to Volume 1 for the AJ (1849), the ApJS (1954), and the PASJ (1950). This brings the total to eight astronomy journals (also A&A, M&PS, RMxAA, BaltA, JKAS) which are available electronically from Volume 1 to present. Special thanks go out to the Princeton Librarians, Jane Holmquist and Alain Tschanz, who scanned and formatted the table of contents for the first 50 volumes of AJ. Within the next year, we anticipate adding several more complete journals, including the ApJ, A&AS, and PASP.

We have also added the past two years of MNRAS scans to the system to close the gap between what was previously scanned and the present, now that the journal is available electronically.

For a full listing of what journals and conference proceedings are scanned and available through ADS, see our listing at

    adshelpabs:adshelp_articles.html




19-Nov-98

The following is new in ADS this month:

  1. SAO server downtime this Friday/Saturday
  2. CDS Article Mirror Online
  3. ApJ and AJ Plates Moved

SAO Server Downtime This Friday/Saturday

The main server at SAO will be unavailable from Friday afternoon, 11/20/98 at approximately 4pm EDT to Saturday 11/21/98 at approximately noon while electrical work is being done in the building. Users are reminded that we have 3 mirror sites which can be used during this time:

We are sorry for any inconvenience.

CDS Article Mirror Online

Thanks to new hardware purchased by the CDS we are expanding the ADS mirror site in Strasbourg to serve as a partial archive for full-text articles. The site will contain only a portion of the articles available in full-text, caching the most frequently requested documents. If an article is requested which is not available from the local archive, the request is automatically forwarded to the full article mirror at SAO. Users of the CDS site should change their abstract service preferences (http://cdsadshelp.u-strasbg.fr/cgi-bin/pref_set?2) to retrieve articles from that site when available. Please note that we are currently in the process of populating the article holdings on that host, and while at the moment it contains only about 10% of the articles available from SAO, we expect it that over the next week this number will increase to 30%.

    http://cdsadshelp.u-strasbg.fr/article_service.html


ApJ and AJ Plates Moved

We have recently moved ApJ and AJ plates to their respective article directories. This means that when accessing an ApJ or AJ article through the article service, if that paper contains a plate, that plate will be displayed together with the pages from the article, and printing the article will also print the appropriate plate(s). We had already done this work for ApJL and PASJ as well.




22-Sep-98

We are pleased to announce the following ADS news this month:

  1. New Mirror Site in Chile
  2. On a slow link?
  3. Notes about Available Item links
  4. Scanning Summary

New Mirror Site in Chile

We are pleased to announce another mirror site for the Abstract Service at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (PUC), in Santiago, Chile. Users in South America may wish to use that site for faster searching:

    http://adshelp.astro.puc.cl

This site contains only the abstracts for our databases, so transfer of articles must still be done from SAO or from NAO.

On A Slow Link?

We are considering investing in a new compression technology which would enable us to provide scanned articles compressed by up to a factor of 10. This would particularly help users on slow links, as it would increase the transfer rate of downloading articles. All the currently supported output formats for full-text articles would still be available indefinitely, but users would have the option to set their preference menus to indicate whether articles should be downloaded in this new format.

The Cartesian Perceptual Compression (CPC) is a novel image compression method developed by Cartesian Products, Inc., which was specifically designed for 1-bit/pixel document image storage and transmission systems. In many instances this proprietary compression scheme has shown to reduce the size of scanned image files by almost an order of magnitude (typical compression ratios range from 5 to 10 over TIFF G4 encoding, the currently used compression scheme).

The Astrophysics Data System is considering making its collection of full-text articles available in this format, and would like to receive some feedback from potential users who may benefit from it. A number of viewers capable of displaying and printing images in this format are currently available from Cartesian Products, Inc. (see Download info). Please note that a only limited number of options for viewers are currently available, and that the viewer for Windows platforms is currently free only on a trial basis, though we have been assured by CPC that the CPC-only version will remain available free to users.

To be able to use this feature would require the user be on one of the platforms for which a viewer is available. The user would need to download a free software package, similar to PDF, for display of these compressed articles.

We are looking for feedback from users to help us determine whether or not we should spend the money on the compression software package. Would you be interested in such a feature? Do you anticipate benefitting from this feature? Would your primary use of it be from home or from the office? More information is available here.

Notes About Available Item Links

A/O links
We recently merged O (original abstract) links into the A links (abstract). A links used to always be the rewritten NASA/STI version of the abstract, and now may be either the STI version or the original abstract. When we have both, the default version displayed is currently the STI version (with a link to the author abstract on the top of the page), but we are in the process of changing the default to be the original author abstract when both are available.
E/F links
Users are reminded that E and F links point to electronic versions of the paper (HTML, PDF, and/or Postscript) which are provided by other sites, usually the journal publisher. Any access restriction on these has been imposed by them, and access problems need to be resolved with them, or with your institition's library, who may have a password or access control list.
G links
These are links to articles which ADS has scanned, and continue to be available free for all users.
Scanning Summary

We have been adding new scans on a regular basis and currently have the following online:

     AcA   v.42-47       1/1992-7/1997         ** new **
     AJ    v.51-114      6/1944-12/1997
     A&A   v.1-316       1/1969-12/1996
     A&AS  v.72-120      1/1988-12/1996
     ApJ   v.178-473     11/1972-12/1996
     ApJL  v.195-473     1/1975-12/1996
     ApJS  v.69-107      1/1989-12/1996
     BaltA v.1-5         1992-1996
     BASI  v.8-23        3/1980-12/1995
     JBAA  v.92-107      12/1981-6/1997        ** new **
     JKAS  v.1-29        12/1968-10/1996
     M&PS  v.1-32        1953-12/1997
     MNRAS v.1,v.147-280 1827,1970-6/1996
     AASPB v.1-43        1969-1986
     PASA  v.1,v.3-13    1967,9/1976-10/1996
     PASJ  v.1,v.27-49   1949,1975-4/1997)
     PASP  v.1,v.87-109  1889,2/1975-12/1997
     RMxAA v.1-32        4/1974-4/1996
     CoSka v.11-27       1983-10/1997 (missing a few volumes)

Plus the following conference proceedings:

     RvMA  v.1-8         1988-1995
     RMxAC v.1-6         1995-1997
     2nd Conference on Faint Blue Stars
     Horizontal-Branch and UV-Bright Stars
     Roentgenstrahlung from the Universe
     Spectroscopic and Photometric Classification of Population II Stars
     Star Catalogues: A Centennial Tribute To A. N. Vyssotsky

Recent additions include Acta Astronomica, the Journal of the British Astronomical Assocition, and some issues of ApJS. We expect to be adding 5-year old ASP Conference Series, more ApJS, and more A&AS soon.






05-Aug-98

As some of you may have noticed, we experienced a hardware failure over the weekend which resulted in the loss of one of the large disks containing scanned articles. We have managed to restore approximately 80% of the 43,000+ articles which were on the disk, and expect to be able to recover most of the rest from our mirror site in Japan. The remainder of the articles will be re-processed from our original scans. This will take some time. If you are unable to get to a scanned article this week, please have patience while we finish restoring the data which were lost.






Section Jul98
09-Jul-98

We are pleased to announce the following ADS news this month:

  1. New Page Formatting Options
  2. ApJL Plates with their Articles
  3. U.S. SIMBAD Mirror is Operational
  4. Article Service Page for Proceedings
  5. Explanation of electronic "E" abstracts
  6. Scanning Summary -- A&A back to volume 1 and some ApJS!

New Page Formatting Options

We have added new page formatting options in the article server preference page which gives users the option to specify paper sizes other than 8.5x11 inches (letter size). In addition to letter size, we now have options to print articles on A4 paper, ledger paper, and user-specified custom sized paper. In particular printing on A4 paper is important for our European users to prevent text from being cut off.

ApJL Plates With Their Articles

With help from our summer student, we have assigned and moved all ApJL plates to their articles. This means that when accessing an ApJL article through the article service, if that paper contains a plate, that plate will be displayed together with the pages from the article, and printing the article will also print the appropriate plate(s). We hope to be able to do the same for ApJ and AJ by the end of the summer.

U.S. SIMBAD Mirror is Operational

In cooperation with the SIMBAD project at CDS in Strasbourg, we have made fully operational the U.S. mirror of SIMBAD at the Center for Astrophysics (CfA). Using the USA mirror greatly improves the response time as well as the throughput from the server, so we recommend that all US users consider using this site. The SIMBAD mirror can be accessed at http://simbad.harvard.edu

Article Service Page for Proceedings

The Article Service page (adshelpabs:article_service.html) now contains a link to a page for online proceedings. These are accessible by page and by volume (for the proceedings series). We will soon be adding scanned versions of the ASP Conference Proceedings Series, which will appear listed under this page. The URL is: adshelpabs:proceedings_service.html

Explanation of Electronic "E" Abstracts

ADS currently includes abstracts from some conference proceedings prior to their publication. When conference editors send us abstracts which are submitted to them to be included in meeting abstracts books, we include these with an "E" in the 14th column of the bibliographic code (e.g. 1998bllp.confE...1U). Since these typically do not have page numbers, we use a "counter" in place of the page number and sequentially number the abstracts as received from the conference proceeding editors.

When these are later published in proceedings with page numbers, the E abstracts are replaced with real printed proceedings abstracts containing page numbers. Any E abstracts which are not matched with the printed versions are deleted at this point (presumably because the author did not attend the conference or withdrew the paper). It is therefore not adviseable to create hyperlinks to one of such entries, since they are to be considered "temporary" bibliographic references.

We invite all conference proceeding editors to submit their abstracts to ADS by sending email to adshelp@cfa.harvard.edu either before the conference, after they are published, or (preferably) both.

Scanning Summary -- A&A Back to Volume 1 and Some ApJS!

We have been adding new scans on a regular basis and currently have the following online:

     AJ    v.51-114      6/1944-12/1997
     A&A   v.1-316       1/1969-12/1996     **  new  **
     A&AS  v.72-120      1/1988-12/1996
     ApJ   v.178-473     11/1972-12/1996
     ApJL  v.195-473     1/1975-12/1996
     ApJS  v.93-107      7/1994-12/1996     **  new  **
     BaltA v.1-5         1992-1996
     BASI  v.8-23        3/1980-12/1995
     JKAS  v.1-29        12/1968-10/1996
     M&PS  v.1-32        1953-12/1997
     MNRAS v.1,v.147-280 1827,1970-6/1996
     AASPB v.1-43        1969-1986          **  new  **
     PASA  v.1,v.3-13    1967,9/1976-10/1996
     PASJ  v.1,v.27-48   1949,1975-12/1996)
     PASP  v.1,v.87-109  1889,2/1975-12/1997
     RvMA  v.1-8         1988-1995
     RMxAA v.1-32        4/1974-4/1996
     CoSka v.11-24       1983-1994 (missing a few volumes)

Recent additions include older issues of A&A, ApJS, and the AAS Photo Bulletin, We expect to be adding Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 5-year old ASP Conference Series, and more ApJS soon.






22-May-98

We are pleased to announce the following ADS news this month:

  1. New Sorting/Formatting Options
  2. Translation of Foreign Language Abstracts
  3. Highlighting of Search Terms
  4. The ADS Oracle
  5. Full Japanese Article Mirror
  6. Scanning Summary

New Sorting/Formatting Options

We have added new sorting options on the main query page, and new sorting and formatting options at the bottom of results lists. The sorting options enable users to sort results lists by score, first author, date, or entry date into the system. This will be particularly useful for users trying to finding papers by a given first author. The formatting options enable users to format by the previous methods (html, plain text, tagged output, bibtex), plus a new method a new mthod that allows the user to specify a format string.

Translation of Foreign Language Abstracts

We have added a translation feature which uses AltaVista to translate any abstract in the system into a number of languages. The translation link on the abstract page will translate from the language given in the language tag of the abstract (English if none given) to the language specified in the user preferences. In the case where we have not correctly identified a foreign language abstract, the AltaVista translation engine allows the user to override the input language.

Highlighting of Search Terms

We recently began highlighting those terms which were entered as search parameters in the title or abstract. While this feature is very convenient, users should be warned that it may slow down the display of abstracts, particularly if there are many words to be highlighted. This feature may be turned off on the user preference page.

The ADS Oracle

We have added a feature called the ADS Oracle to the Table of Contents Query Page. The Oracle finds abstracts of interest to individual readers based on abstracts they have read in the past.

Full Japanese Article Mirror

The Japanese mirror now contains the full set of scanned articles that we have available. Users whose connection to Japan is faster than their connection to SAO are encouraged to take advantage of the Japanese mirror site, http://adshelp.nao.ac.jp

Scanning Summary

We have been adding new scans on a regular basis and currently have the following online:

     AJ    v.51-114      6/1944-12/1997
     A&A   v.79-316      1979-12/1996
     A&AS  v.72-120      1/1988-12/1996     **  new  **
     ApJ   v.178-473     11/1972-12/1996
     ApJL  v.195-473     1/1975-12/1996
     BaltA v.1-5         1992-1996
     BASI  v.8-23        3/1980-12/1995
     JKAS  v.1-29        12/1968-10/1996    **  new  **
     M&PS  v.1-32        1953-12/1997       **  new  **
     MNRAS v.1,v.147-280 1827,1970-6/1996
     PASA  v.1,v.3-13    1967,9/1976-10/1996
     PASJ  v.1,v.27-48   1949,1975-12/1996)
     PASP  v.1,v.87-109  1889,2/1975-12/1997
     RvMA  v.1-8         1988-1995
     RMxAA v.1-32        4/1974-4/1996
     CoSka v.11-24       1983-1994 (missing a few volumes)

Recent additions include older A&A, some A&AS, Meteoritics and Planetary Science (formerly known as Meteoritics), and the Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society. We expect to be adding Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 5-year old ASP Conference Series, and ApJS soon.






18-Feb-98

We are pleased to announce the following ADS news this month:

  1. New ADS Server
  2. Email notification of What's New
  3. Article Thumbnails
  4. Article Display Resolution
  5. TOC Queries
  6. Z39.50 Interface

New ADS Server

We recently added a second server which now runs the Abstract Service. Most queries are running approximately 4 times faster (although this may be noticeable only for long searches). In order to ensure that you are using the new machine, you may need to log out of your browser and log back in again so that the old machine IP address is not being cached by the browser. We plan to phase out use of the old ADS server by the end of February.

Email Notification of What's New

This what's new announcement is sent to everyone who has an email listed in user preferences for ADS. If you would prefer not to receive these periodic email announcements (approximately once a month), please go to the user preferences page

    adshelpabs:cgi-bin/pref_set

and check the box next to your email address which says Do not use for announcements.

If you received more than one copy of this notice, it means that you have multiple cookies registered with us (probably because you use multiple machines to access ADS). If you would like to receive only one copy, you need to check the "Do not use for announcements" box (see above) on all but one machine. If you think that a cookie is from an old machine or a previous account, please let us know and we will try to remove the address.

Article Thumbnails

We now provide a screenview of the entire article with thumbnail images of each page for full journal articles included in the database. This feature is linked at the top of the screenview of the first page of an article, arrived at by following a G link. You can select this display type as your default through the preferences settings page, if you desire. Users are reminded the G links (which were formerly F links) provide page-by-page viewing of full journal articles which the ADS project has scanned. F links are the full journal articles which are provided by other institutions and there may be access control at that site.

Article Display Resolution

Now included in the preference settings are preferences for setting article display resolution (dpi and greyscale). Users on slow links, or working from home may want to reduce the image quality or image resolution so that display is faster. Another way to increase speed on slow links is to disable HTML table markup at the top of the preference settings.

TOC Queries

Table of Contents Queries are available by following the TOC_QUERY link beneath the Send button in any abstract query form. Clicking on any of the journals' cover pages will list the contents of the latest volume for that journal (or the one most recently read by the user, depending on preference settings) for many of the journals. Also available is a "custom" TOC Query page which displays only those volumes that have new issues which have not been read. You can select which journals should be included on this custom ToC page from the preferences settings page.

Z39.50 Interface

We currently provide a Z39.50 interface to the Abstract Service. It can be accessed through the Library of Congress Gateway at:

    http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/

This interface allows any library that uses this protocol to access the ADS through their interface. A description of the interface configuration parameters is available at:

    adshelpabs:abs_doc/adshelp_server.htm





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adshelp at cfa.harvard.edu