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If you choose to follow any of the links to the rated Internet sites below, you will be leaving the Strategian Web site. If you wish to return to this page from the site you are sent to, please use the Back option of your browser. xxx.lanl.gov e-Print archive | DOE Information Bridge 1. NASA Astrophysics Data System -- http://adswww.harvard.edu/ (Harvard University--Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and NASA) Rating: 25/30 -- Quality 23/25 -- Uniqueness 16/20 -- Refresh Rate 10/15 -- Loads Fast 6/10 -- Organization 80/100 -- Total **Last Reviewed July 29, 1999** **Reviewed March 2, 1999 -- Scored 78/100** Review: The NASA Astrophysics Data System is a real treasure trove of data. The site offers 5 main services:
This site is a gold mine, yet the immense riches within bring with it a complexity that can create potential problems for the user. The search interface within the Abstracts Service is very complex with a plethora of available options. Searching can be done by author, publication date, words in the title, and words in the text. The search tool offers full Boolean capability plus a wide variety of other modifying features. Once a search has been initiated and results returned, those results--if the full text is available--can then be retrieved/displayed in a variety of different formats including HTML, PDF, PostScript, and other options. It is even possible, with some records, to see the publications which cite that article. Other options include the ability to search for records with abstracts similar to a chosen record and the ability to recreate the table of contents for the issues of certain journals. And, that's just some of the options ... With all these options and with all this data available, help information for using the site effectively is essential. Thankfully, in that regard, the NASA Astrophysics Data System does very well. The help information is plentiful and includes an extensive FAQ. All in all, this is a must link. How-to-use: As mentioned above, reading the help information provided for this site is essential--and not just for first-time users. I use the site sporadically and find it useful to peruse the help information each time before I begin. In particular, 2 sections that I always make sure to take a look at are Available Items and What's New. Back to the Top 1. National Academy Press -- http://www.nap.edu/ (The National Academies of the United States) Rating: 26/30 -- Quality 25/25 -- Uniqueness 10/20 -- Refresh Rate 11/15 -- Loads Fast 8/10 -- Organization 80/100 -- Total **Last Reviewed February 10, 2000** Review: The National Academy Press is the publishing arm of the National Academies of the United States--the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. This site provides access to the complete text of over 1,500 books--reports authored by commissions and panels of the various academies. These reports not infrequently find their way into the daily news as they examine prominent scientific and technical issues facing the United States and the world at large. The panels and commissions that author the reports are often composed of leading experts on the various topics, and the information in the reports has a deserved reputation for being authoritative and objective. The reports can be searched in two ways--by title and bibliographic information and by the complete text of every page of the 1,500+ books. In addition, it is also possible to locate reports of interest by browsing through a list of subject categories. Once a relevant report is identified, the text of the book can be viewed in Open Book format. This format essentially means that the text has the appearance of having been scanned and 1 page is viewable at a time. Each screen, however, includes several controls for moving through the text page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter, back to the table of contents, to options for searching text within that book, etc. Some books also offer the option of viewing the text in sections in HTML format. The National Academy Press Web site is very straightforward and easy to use for the most part. It is optimized for online purchasing of the various books though which makes the full text options a bit less apparent on the screen. All in all though, this site is a marvelous resource--a must link ... How-to-use: The available searching and browsing options are very powerful. I find all 3 of them to be very useful. Back to the Top 3. xxx.lanl.gov e-Print archive -- http://xxx.lanl.gov/ (Los Alamos National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. National Science Foundation) Rating: 20/30 -- Quality 23/25 -- Uniqueness 20/20 -- Refresh Rate 9/15 -- Loads Fast 5/10 -- Organization 77/100 -- Total **Last Reviewed July 29, 1999** **Reviewed March 2, 1999 -- Scored 75/100** Review: xxx.lanl.gov e-Print archive is famous in the world of the Internet and beyond. This site helped start the emergence of electronic journals and has assisted in pushing publishers toward acceptance of electronic versions of their publications. This site "is a fully automated electronic archive and distribution server for research papers" (from General Information About the Archives); it currently covers the fields of Physics, Mathematics, Nonlinear Sciences, and Computer Science. Options are available for either browsing or searching the archives. Searching can be done using names, words, or phrases in the author, title, and abstract fields or by an identification number, while records for new or recent papers added to the archive can be easily browsed. Once the record for a particular paper is identified, information about the paper is available in a number of ways--an abstract can be viewed, the full text can be displayed potentially in a number of formats including PostScript and PDF, and an easy author search feature is available to see what other papers that author may have contributed to the Archive in that subject area. The Archive is somewhat of a spartan-looking site when compared to the graphic-rich orientations of many Internet sites these days. Basically, it provides the essentials quite well and leaves out the extraneous. Also, some of the explanatory pages are written in a rather irreverent fashion. Adequate help information is available and the organization works. Be aware, due to the many data formats in which the full text of the papers can be retrieved, that response time for that purpose can be only so-so. Response time when searching is generally pretty rapid. How-to-use: If you are a first-time user, be sure to check out the available help information. Once you have done so and once you have used the site a couple of times, the Archive is very straightforward. Back to the Top 4. DOE Information Bridge -- http://gpo.osti.gov:901/cgi-bin/entry.pl (U.S. Department of Energy--DOE) Rating: 20/30 -- Quality 19/25 -- Uniqueness 10/20 -- Refresh Rate 8/15 -- Loads Fast 7/10 -- Organization 64/100 -- Total **Last Reviewed July 29, 1999** **Reviewed March 1, 1999 -- Scored 62/100** Review: The DOE Information Bridge allows access to the full text of 37,000+ reports produced by researchers working for the Department of Energy and researchers working for other organizations but funded by the DOE. The subject scope of the reports is broad--Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Environmental Sciences, Engineering, Computer Science, Renewable Energy, and more. Government-funded research is an area too often overlooked when students, faculty, and others search for information on a particular topic. This database provides welcome and much more convenient access to some of this type of literature--in this case, reports that have been received and processed since January 1996. The Web site offers both Easy and Advanced search tools which allow for pretty sophisticated searching of the database. Once search results have been obtained, reports can be viewed/downloaded in PDF and, potentially, a wide variety of other data formats (depending upon how the report was originally received). The DOE Information Bridge is well-organized and provides plenty of help information to assist the user along. Overall, this is a solid site providing good access to a useful body of literature. How-to-use: First-time users should be sure to review the General and Search Help information. Back to the Top Questions about any or all of the above? Do you have a favorite Internet site(s) that you would like to nominate for possible inclusion on these lists? Please let me know. |
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