At a party years ago I met a professor from a major research university who had spent time in Washington, D.C., administering federal grants. When he discovered that I was a librarian, he said that he had just three words of advice for me: Web of Science. We did not have it at SMU. After years of negotiating a satisfactory contract and with the help of a welcome contribution from the Cox School of Business, we now offer this database. Read about it in this issue of our newsletter.

With the addition of Web of Science we have three databases that index current (and older) scholarship in a wide range of subjects. The other two general subject databases are Academic Search Premier and InfoTrac OneFile. The huge importance of interdisciplinary research for scholarship today is no secret. It is perhaps less well known that--although there is significant overlap--every database indexes different materials in different ways. In addition to databases devoted to your specific subject, such as chemistry, literature, or history, I highly recommend using all three of these powerful databases to discover the best research relevant to your studies.

Academic Search Premier and InfoTrac (but not Web of Science) also offer in their databases millions of full-text articles with less overlap than one might expect. Currently, their full-text articles are not easily discovered from most other databases. Coming in a month or two we will offer a link resolver that can find our accessible full-text articles almost no matter where they are hidden. We will also be able to link Google Scholar to our accessible journals. Stay tuned.

The Central University Libraries, in partnership with the Business Information Center at SMU's Cox School of Business, is pleased to provide campus wide access to Web of Science®, a definitive resource for the research of scholarly literature. Web of Science consists of five databases containing information gathered from thousands of scholarly journals in all areas of research:
• Science Citation Index Expanded™ (1996-present)
• Social Sciences Citation Index® (1996-present
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index® (1996-present)
• Index Chemicus® (1993-present)
• Current Chemical Reactions® (1985-present-- includes Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle structure data back to 1840)

A citation index contains the references cited by the authors of the articles covered by the index. Researchers can use these references to do cited reference searching. A cited reference search enables finding articles that cite a previously published work.

In addition to cited reference searching, you can search by topic, author, source title, and address. The citation indexes in Web of Science® provide current and etrospective science, social sciences, and arts and humanities information from nearly 9,300 of the most prestigious, high impact research journals in the world.

The two chemistry databases contain graphic representations of the structures and reactions reported in the journal articles they cover and can be searched by structure, by compound/reaction details, and by bibliographic information (topic, author, source title, address).

Please see the Web of Science Getting Started guide (http://www.scientific.thomson.com/
media/ scpdf/wos_gettingstarted_en.pdf)
for additional database content information and search tips.

Engineering Index, one of the primary science and engineering reference tools, has been around in one form or another since 1884. The first online version appeared in 1969. In 1995 Engineering Information Village debuted on the web as a comprehensive information service for engineers with Compendex (COMPuterized ENgineering InDEX) as one of its central resources. Today, according to the Engineering Village 2 (EiV2) web site description, Compendex contains over eight million references from 5,000+ engineering journals, conferences and technical reports. EI's sources cover 175 different major engineering fields and related areas of specialization including aerospace, agricultural, chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering. Online coverage is from 1969 to present with weekly updates.

With the addition of Easy Search in early 2005, there are four search interfaces: Easy, Quick, Expert, and Thesaurus Search. Together these interfaces facilitate the entire range of search complexity, from a simple phrase or keyword search to one involving controlled vocabulary, classification codes, special indexing, and limits. The CUL subscription defaults to Quick Search, a powerful and flexible interface that supports Boolean searching on a variety of fields from pull-down menus. Limits and sorting capabilities are available and searches are also easily refined by including or excluding specific controlled vocabulary terms automatically generated after a search is performed.

Another useful feature of Engineering Village 2 is the ability to create a personal account. You can save up to 125 searches in your personal account, and you can create up to 125 email alerts. An email alert is a weekly email message with search results updated from a saved search. Complete Guides to Engineering Village 2 are available online.