Search results

Technical librarians scarcely need to be reminded of the growing crisis in the field of chemical literature—the problem of efficiently retrieving facts about chemicals from the 1,200,000 technical and scientific articles that have been abstracted during the past fifty years, and the problem of finding sufficient shelf space for the rapidly increasing weekly and monthly additions in the 5,236 periodicals that are recognized as references by the chemical societies.

Contrary to what might be expected from the rather pessimistic view of library literature taken in another paper in this issue, the production of this annual review of the literature intended for special librarians becomes progressively more difficult, owing to the growth in the volume of the material from which the selection must be made. The aim of this survey has always been to pick out from the literature generally available in Great Britain in the year in question those items likely to be of practical assistance to library and information workers—particularly those with little experience or training working in small libraries. It therefore lists important reference works and tools which the special librarian ought to know about, even if he doesn't possess them, but omits all articles of purely theoretical interest, and those which describe practice in large libraries, except where they are capable of application in small libraries. Much of the increase in the volume of literature is due to an increase in the number of works of reference, many produced under the encouragement of bodies such as Unesco, but there is also a definite tendency for a closer link between theory and practice in much of the writing on library work. In these circumstances, the selection of a list of a hundred items becomes more than ever a matter of personal judgment, on which no two persons could be expected to agree, but it is hoped that all items included will prove useful, and that all sections of the field are fairly represented.

In this issue of Aslib Proceedings we are glad to be able to include papers from two of the series of winter meetings held in London by Aslib, papers given at the Annual General Meetings of the Northern and Scottish Branches, and three contributions to MEMBERS' FORUM.

The year 1977 was the first in the tenth collective period (1977‐1981) for Chemical Abstracts. Thus during that year the important and very voluminous Tenth Collective Index began to appear on library shelves, but as this review is being written in 1978 there are still volumes of the formula and chemical substance indexes that have to be added. Librarians will have recently received two Index Guides: one as part of the Ninth Collective Index, and the other as the first Index Guide for the tenth collective period ‐ to be supplemented annually, and finally superseded by the Index Guide which appears as part of the Tenth Collective Index.

Chemical Abstracts Service has recently introduced a new data base, CA SEARCH, which is supposed to replace CA CONDENSATES and CASIA, and which is, in effect, a combination of the two. Two major U.S. search services, Lockheed Retrieval Service (LRS) and System Development Corporation (SDC), offer access to CA SEARCH. Bibliographic Retrieval Service (BRS) will also soon load CA SEARCH, but is presently offering CA CONDENSATES.

All items listed may be borrowed from the Aslib Library, except those marked, which may be consulted in the Library.

The chemistry librarian has been better served by professional literature than any other subject specialist in the library, except perhaps the medical librarian. A new series of papers on chemical substance searching in Online Review continues this tradition. If the first installment of this series is an indication of what is to come, chemistry librarians and online searchers can look forward to a lot of valuable (and readable) literature on this most important topic. The useful column by Buntrock has, I am sure, already made valuable contributions to more efficient and effective online searching in chemistry.

1. Carter, Ernest F. Dictionary of Inventions and Discoveries. New York, Crane, Russak, 1976. 208pp. $6.50. This, the second revised edition of a dictionary first published in Great Britain in 1966, presents over two thousand inventions and discoveries, inventors and discoverers in a single alphabet. Although a few of the entries run for over a page, most are very brief.

March WED.4. One‐Day Conference on In‐Training of Library and Information Staff. Imperial College, London.

To make it easier for searchers to determine which databases contain citations on a specific question, BRS has developed an automatic cross‐database search capability named CROSS. This new feature enables users to ‘browse’ various files and identify which of them contain records of potential interest. Using CROSS the searcher can specify which databases he wishes the system to search. As a convenience, the system has grouped certain files, such as life sciences databases or business databases, so that, if desired, the user may simply enter a single digit to specify which files should be searched. Once the specified files have been identified, a ‘postings’ list appears, telling the user how many appropriate citations are present in each of the files. Once the user determines which databases will yield the desired results, however, it is still necessary to change over to the individual databases to enter the strategy and retrieve the actual items. Nevertheless, this facility should prove very valuable to searchers with cross‐disciplinary queries.