ABSTRACT:

Today, there is a proliferation of information in all technical fields. In the geotechnical community, publication of relevant data occurs in many journals, magazines, and conference proceedings. This paper reports on a number of approaches to assist people in locating items of personal interest. Details are given for one example of a database search for thermal fracture of rock. The resulting citations are then manipulated by Pro-Cite, a personal bibliographic software package.

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the main purposes of holding an annual symposium on rock mechanics is to bring together a diverse group of people involved in different aspects of geotechnical engineering. Whilst the resulting annual proceedings provide a window to the multitude of publications available, there are now additional methods to obtain information about previously published material (such as reports, books, and papers). Because numerous disciplines are involved in the area of rock mechanics, it is often very difficult to find much of the relevant information, particularly when one is branching into a new area or when one is attempting to write a definitive survey report. Years ago, in these circumstances, one had to resort to many hours of toil in the library working through Chemical Abstracts, Physics Abstracts and others. With the advent of mainframe computers, abstract information was transcribed to computer storage. Then, as communication and computer storage technology improved, access to this electronically stored information became easier and cheaper. There are now a number of national and international specialized databases which include thousands of indexed citations. Parallel to the development and improvement of the databases, search services became available which allowed access to the information in a relatively easy and painless manner. At first, the information requested was supplied as hard copy produced either at the search service or at a local computer printer. Subsequently, information could be captured on small disks for transfer to PC's; manipulation by * The majority of this work was performed while the author was a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona. Prof. Ashworth's permanent affiliation is: Mining Engineering Department, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Rapid City, SD, USA any word processor was then possible. Currently, the market place offers personal and specialized databases designed to assist the user in searching, editing, and adding information, and printing the specifically selected citations in a variety of formats to meet the requirements of any publisher.

2. DATABASES AND SEARCH SERVICES

A search service acts as the interface between the user's library computer and the many available databases. An annual membership fee buys easy access to many different databases and the user needs only to learn one protocol language to access all the databases available through a given search service. There are a number of national search services. Some concentrate on specialized types of information, such as social sciences, political affairs, or scientific publications. Others try to offer a large range of databases. Other costs include charges for connect time, costs of searches, and costs for items captured.

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