September 1995 1

Online Citations Pass

2-Million Mark

Foreign Literature Translation

Service

RECON Training Dates

A publication for users of the NASA scientific and technical information program

In This Issue

STI

National Aeronautics and

Space Administration

Scientific and Technical 


Information Office


BULLETIN

RECONplus

Completes Alpha Test

Phase

The RECONplus project recently

completed alpha testing for the

character-based and command line

interfaces. This follows approximately 11 weeks of testing by 28

searchers from 14 NASA center

libraries and affiliates, one NASA

Technology Transfer Center and

the NASA Center for AeroSpace

Information. The alpha testers

spent over 350 hours testing the

system to identify problems and

suggestions for improvement.

Responses were collected throughout the alpha test period. This

changed to provide a separate

Report Status index that allows

searching on final, interim, and

quarterly reports. A new index of

the expanded Subject Category

Code was created. The results of a

search can be sorted by the expanded

version of the coded value.

The system also uses a BASISplus

function called “term switching,”

which allows a field to be searched

with a coded or expanded

(uncoded) value. For example, if

you are interested in documents

only in German, you can search

on “Germany” or on “GR,” the

Internal Standards Organization

(ISO) language code equivalent.

Similar functionality will be

provided for document type and

media type fields.

Interface Improvements Feature

Speed, Easy Access

Changes were also made to each interface. The character-based interface was modified to include more

direct navigation between screens

and functions, therefore requiring

Web at no cost to our users. The

cumulative indexes for these bibliographies will be discontinued

after the 1995 publication (calendar) year. Alternative search and

retrieval mechanisms are available

via the NASA STI Database

through RECON, CASI TRS

and RECONplus. We plan to

provide executable searches that

will retrieve the information in

these subject areas by usersupplied date ranges.

NASA Patent Abstracts

Bibliography Now Online

In an effort to move quickly toward this new environment, the

latest issue of NASA Patent

allowed the RECONplus development team to begin modifications to

the software and database structure

almost immediately. The changes

fell into two categories—changes

that span the entire system and

changes specific to each interface.

Evaluation Prompts System-Wide

Changes

Changes that span the entire system include the redesign of default

display formats so that they are

compact yet readable. Header information is provided so that information of most importance for

document identification and ordering is located at the beginning of

each display. In addition, the indexes to the databases were

Continued on page 2

September 1995 Issue

Electronic Access for STI Program Publications

Like any organization, NASA is

constantly re-evaluating program

budgets, and the NASA STI

program’s budget is no exception.

Recently, reproduction and distribution costs were reviewed for

Aerospace Medicine and Biology,

Aeronautical Engineering, and

NASA Patent Abstracts. These continuing bibliographies were created

as announcement tools for newly

added citations to the NASA STI

Database. Recent advances in electronic access now provide quicker

and more cost effective means of

announcement. Beginning in

1996, we plan to provide AeroMed,

AeroEng, and Patents only electronically, using the World Wide Continued on page 3
2 STI Bulletin

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The STI Bulletin, published every other

month, informs NASA STI users about

the products, services, and news of the

NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office.

For additional information, contact

Roland Ridgeway

NASA Headquarters, Code JT

Washington, DC 20546-0001,

e-mail rridgeway@sti.nasa.gov.

Online Citations Pass 2-Million Mark

World Wide Web (WWW) access to the STI Database via the NASA

Center for AeroSpace Information Technical Report Server (CASI TRS)

now offers greatly expanded coverage. The number of citations and abstracts referencing NASA technical reports, journal articles and conference papers available for browsing on the CASI TRS passed the 2-million

mark in July 1995 with the addition of records dating from 1962 to

1969. Records covering 1970 to the present had been available previously. Current records continue to be added to the database weekly. In

addition to these older NASA reports, citations for documents of the

National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA’s predecessor, covering the years 1915 to 1960, have now been loaded. CASI

TRS can be accessed free of charge along with several other NASA STI

online products and services through the NASA STI home page. The

Universal Resource Locator (URL) for the NASA STI home page is

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/STI-homepage.html.

The NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS) home page is a popular

means of accessing the CASI TRS as well as several other NASA technical

report servers. The URL for this homepage is

http://techreports.larc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/NTRS.

Some users of the NTRS report problems displaying citations and

abstracts from the CASI TRS after obtaining their list of search results.

Often this problem results because the user is connecting to the NTRS

from a site that has a firewall or proxy. Firewalls can tend to break the

very long URLs used on the WWW, resulting in an error message. Technicians are looking into possible solutions to this problem. Meanwhile,

connecting directly to the CASI TRS may bypass this type of firewall

problem in some instances. The URL for direct access to the CASI TRS is

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/casitrs.html.

Gopher access to the CASI TRS is also available, although gopher does

not offer field search capabilities. From a Web browser (Netscape,

Mosaic, etc.), use this URL:

gopher://gopher.sti.nasa.gov.

Each of the home pages listed above has a “Comments” page where users

can communicate problems, questions and ideas about NASA’s online

services. NASA STI staff appreciate user comments and will respond to

all messages.

RECONplus

Completes Alpha Test Phase

Continued from page 1

fewer keystrokes. The command

line interface was also integrated

with the character-based interface,

allowing the searcher to switch

between the three search modes.

Quick Search provides single

screen access to the most frequently

used fields: author, report number,

publication date, and subject

terms. The Full Search mode provides menu-based access to all indexed fields. The RECONplus

Command Line uses minimal syntax in a shorthand that can be used

to create more complex searches.

Command Line Interface

The major modifications following

alpha testing were made to the

command line interface. Using the

BASISplus interface development

tool AMIABLE, from Technology

Concepts and Design, Inc.

(TCDI), the RECONplus team

developed a command line that

significantly reduces the number of

keystrokes required to perform a

search. The default command is a

search on the basic index, which

includes abstract, title, and subject/

thesaurus terms as individual
September 1995 3

discontinuing the hard copy

distribution. We hope that our

users will not be inconvenienced

by these changes and will look

on them rather as enhancements.

Please feel free to contact our

NASA Access Help Desk at

(301) 621-0390 or via e-mail at

help@sti.nasa.gov for assistance

and/or to provide feedback. As is

being done elsewhere in the private and public sectors, we too

are moving toward a new world

of information delivery, a movement that is being hastened by

budget considerations.

Electronic Access for STI

Program Publications

Continued from page 1

words. To search the default index, the user need only enter the

search term and press ENTER. A

more complex search involves the

selection of a specific index from a

pull-down menu and the connection of multiple terms within the

same index or from different indexes using standard Boolean

operators, AND, OR and NOT.

RECONplus also provides range

searching for numeric and date

fields, and the NULL operator,

which allows the user to search for

records that do not contain data in

the field specified.

In addition to the aspects of the

system that the alpha testers asked

to have changed, there were several aspects of the system that the

users identified as advancements

over the current RECON system:

• The ability to search nine highlevel indexes and over 60 specifically indexed fields.

• Building complex searches

without combining search sets.

• The NULL operator, which

allows the user to search for

records that do not contain data

in a specific field. For example,

the searcher can exclude records

from the result set that do not

contain abstracts.

• Sort capabilities on any indexed

field.

The next step for the new system is

the beta testing of the characterbased and command line interfaces.

The testing will begin in mid-August

and extend through September. A

graphical user interface (GUI) is

under development and will start

alpha testing with NASA center

libraries in a few months.

Abstracts Bibliography, Section 1,

Abstracts is available via the Internet

through the World Wide Web on

the NASA STI program’s home

page at http://www.sti.nasa.gov.

The Patents bibliography is available in a portable document format

(PDF) and is viewable using Adobe

Systems Inc.’s Acrobat Reader. It

may be viewed on screen or printed

at your locally-attached printer.

Adobe Acrobat Readers are freely

available via Adobe’s home page

http://www.adobe.com/ and are

easily downloaded and installed.

Over the next several months,

AeroMed and AeroEng will become

available in the same way. We feel

that the increased speed and roundthe-clock access to these bibliographies will mitigate the impact of

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You can contact the NASA Access

Help Desk at (301) 621-0390, fax

(301) 621-0134, e-mail at

help@sti.nasa.gov, or write NASA

Access Help Desk, NASA Center

for AeroSpace Information, 800

Elkridge Landing Road, Linthicum

Heights, MD 21090-2934.

Foreign Literature Translation Service

If you find yourself awash in a flood of potentially useful foreign

language documents, the Foreign Literature Translation Service

(FLTS) at the NASA Center for AeroSpace Information (CASI)

offers the foreign language document assistance you need. CASI

offers translation services to any government agency or government contractor at a variety of delivery rates to meet the varying

needs of our customers.

For more information, please call CASI FLTS at (301) 621-0127

or (301) 621-0129.

For a free estimate, fax your documents to the attention of CASI

FLTS at (301) 621-0134 or mail them to

Translation Services

NASA Center for AeroSpace Information

800 Elkridge Landing Road

Linthicum Heights, MD 21090-2934
4 STI Bulletin

National Aeronautics and

Space Administration

Code JT

Washington, DC 20546-0001

OFFICIAL BUSINESS

Penalty for Private Use, $300

FIRST-CLASS PRESORT

POSTAGE & FEES PAID

NASA

Permit No. G-27

RECON Training Schedule

Monday, September 11, 1995

Monday, October 2, 1995

RECON users, keep this in mind: when RECONplus is up

and running, most users will need additional training.