NDRL Radiation Chemistry Data Center About the Bibliographic Database

Searching the RCDC bibliographic database (RCDCbib).

The bibliographic database may be searched using title phrases and author names as search terms. For many papers keywords from the RCDC thesaurus have been added (and may be searched) but these terms have not been added since 1995. A prototype RCDCbib search form is provided to assist you. The search design is based on an author / title search. This form will generate a search for documents which simultaneously satisfy the criteria contained within the three text boxes on the search form. Each text box can contain either author names or title phrases, determined by selecting the appropriate "radio button" preceding the text box. Each line within a text box represents a search term logically ORed with the other lines in that text box.

This query produces a list of references written by Author 1 AND (Author 2 OR Author 3) AND containing Phrase 1 OR Phrase 2 OR Word 3 in the title.

The wildcard characters used for this form are:

• percent sign ( % ): any one or more characters,
• asterisk ( * ): any one or more characters, and
• underscore ( _ ): any single character.

These wildcards can be used anywhere in the search string. The web server will return a web page with a list of names or keywords satisfying the search criteria. The desired search terms can be copied from this web page and pasted into the appropriate fields of the RCDCbib search form. This search will then return a web page satisfying the author/keyword search criteria specified. This page may be saved and/or printed as an HTML file for future reference, or the bibliographic information copied and pasted into another application.

Author names in RCDCbib are stored as a capitalized surname, followed by initials. Surname prefixes, such as de, da, van, von, and van't are not capitalized. Since authors frequently use multiple forms of their names over their publication history, it may be necessary to use several author search terms to retrieve all database references for a given author. For example, the fictional author John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, Ph.D., could be indexed as all of the following:

• Schmidt, J.J.J.(used full name on paper),
• Schmidt, J.J. (used surname, first name, and middle initial), or
• Schmidt, J. (used surname and first initial).

In order to retrieve all of Dr. Schmidt's papers, one would need to include all of the above search terms in an author name box of the RCDCbib search form. Alternatively, one could use the wildcard search Schmidt, J.* to retrieve the three name forms shown above; however, the references of all other authors with a first initial of J and the surname Schmidt would also be recalled.

Keywords in RCDCbib are contained in the Thesaurus for Radiation Chemistry, developed as a guide for the indexer, and published to aid users of RCDC on-line resources. The list is arranged alphabetically, and a given keyword entry may contain broader (BT), narrower (NT), and related (RT) terms. Synonyms are denoted by the terms USE and USED FOR (UF). The size of the thesaurus may prove to make it unsuitable for regular on-line browsing, but it can be saved upon one's local disk as a text file for rapid, convenient reference.

E-mail: madden.1@nd.edu Author: K.P. Madden