What's New on Dialog Issue 3
Dec. 2005
A community-of-interest newsletter for Dialog customers
In This Issue

More Electronic Newsletters from Dialog

Dialog Search Engine Enhancements Add Power to Your Searches

Download DialogLink 5 Update

Use RSS for Up-to-Date Bluesheets

Additional Databases eLinks Enabled on Dialog

Sci-Tech Content Updates

News Content Updates

Search Techniques

Training


Announcements

Use RSS for Up-to-Date Bluesheets

You can now receive the latest news on files of interest to you through our new RSS (Really Simple Syndication) service, which provides immediate notification of updates made to the Bluesheets of our more than 500 databases. This means you will have more insight into our latest content offerings and changes than ever before.

RSS is an XML-based format for sharing and distributing Web content. To view the content available from the Dialog Updated Bluesheets RSS feed, you will need an RSS reader, many of which are free. Once you have an RSS reader, go to the Dialog RSS Feeds page and follow the instructions for subscribing to the RSS feeds of interest to you.


Additional Databases eLinks Enabled on Dialog

Dialog has expanded its collection of databases that are enabled for eLinks. The new databases are Arts & Humanities Search® (File 439), Social SciSearch® (File 7), and Zoological Records Online® (File 185). With the addition of these databases, Dialog customers can use the eLinks service in 82 databases.


Search Techniques

New SORT Option

Command Language users can now take advantage of a new SORT command option to improve relevancy in retrieval. The command format is: SORT <set> / <range of records> / HITS. This SORT command option creates a new set where records containing the most occurrences of your search terms are placed first in the set. This can save you both time and money in reviewing results.

The new SORT command option is especially useful in fulltext databases, such as Dialog NewsRoom, when your search retrieves a large set. This new feature is best used in combination with other fulltext search techniques: restricting terms to the title (/ti), descriptor (/de) and lead paragraph (/lp), and preferring proximity operators to Boolean AND and OR.


More Electronic Newsletters from Dialog

Subscribe to e-newslettersThis issue of What's New on Dialog features enhancements to the core Dialog search system, as well as to the super-searcher tool, DialogLink 5. Be sure to check out the related Search Techniques and Content News in this issue.

Your response to the new community-of-interest newsletters from Dialog has been exciting and gratifying. Thanks for your comments and feedback. They are always welcome! As a result of your suggestions, three new e-newsletters will be offered beginning in 2006: Energy & Environmental News, Biomed/Life Sciences News and Business Information & News Update. Be sure to check out the other available electronic newsletters on Patents, Pharma/Biotech, Trademarks, Engineering, Chemistry, Aerospace/Defense and Competitive Intelligence. All newsletters are archived online at support.dialog.com/enewsletters and are searchable in File 410 on Dialog.

Don't miss an issue. Sign up to receive future issues of What's New on Dialog, or any of the other community-of-interest newsletters before December 31 and get complimentary publications, plus a chance to win US$500 in free Dialog usage.

Happy holidays from all of us at Dialog!


Dialog Search Engine Enhancements Add Power to Your Searches

Several new enhancements have been made to the core Dialog search engine to meet the needs of Dialog power searchers who conduct very sophisticated or extensive searches, especially in the intellectual property or scientific files. A brand new SORT feature debuts to help increase relevancy in your search results (see Search Techniques in sidebar). This new feature sorts retrieved documents based on how many times a search term appears.

Several system limits have also been removed or expanded:

  • A set can be SORTed containing up to 250,000 records.

  • The number of sets created per BEGIN limit has been raised to 999.

  • Each SELECT statement can now process more than 20 million occurrences of each search term.

  • REMOVE DUPLICATES (RD) and IDENTIFY DUPLICATES (ID and IDO) can now be applied to sets of up to 250,000 records.

  • The RANK command can now be applied to sets up to 250,000 records.

  • Processing status messages now offer more details as to the number of records processed when using SELECT, RANK, and REMOVE DUPLICATES commands.

Download DialogLink 5 Update

A new version of DialogLink 5 is now available with several new enhancements, including:

  • Ability to display multiple chemical structures per record
  • Ability to self-correct chemical structure Alerts syntax
  • Options for scaling retrieved images in post processing

Other additional minor enhancements include the ability to copy and paste from the retrieve buffer, open and edit log files in the Marked Text window, and move between the tabbed windows. And for a DIALINDEX® (411) search, files are not pre-selected, so the order of files searched can be more easily controlled by the searcher and reflects the file selection order.

If you are interested in chemical structure searching, you should download the DialogLink 5 November 2005 release, which will support the Edit Molecule feature for files that have multiple structures for a single record. Also, the new release makes it easier to set up Alerts by chemical structures. Other DialogLink 5 users are also encouraged to download the new release to take advantage of the enhancements available.

Download Instructions

To download the updated version of DialogLink 5:

  1. Log on to DialogLink 5.

  2. Click the Download link in the Welcome screen.

  3. Click the Save button in the File Download dialog box.

  4. In the Save As.. dialog box, select a location to save the executable (.exe.) file.

  5. Locate and click on the executable file.

  6. Follow the on-screen instructions in the Installation wizard.

Training

Learn the Basics of Chemical Searching Using DialogLink 5

A new online session— Introduction to Chemical Information Featuring DialogLink 5—provides an introduction to DialogLink 5 and Dialog command language using examples targeted to chemical researchers.

Section one covers the features and benefits of Dialog; section two reviews the Dialog chemistry collection. The third section covers basic techniques using chemistry applications: substance searching; the MAP command; searching the chemistry literature; and author searching. Practice exercises are included.


2006 Dialog Pharmaceutical Forum

Sci-Tech Content Updates

PsycINFO® Reloaded on Dialog

PsycINFO (File 11) was reloaded on Dialog resulting in some changes to the functionality of the file. A number of new fields have been added and the functionality of existing fields has changed. For more information, see the Bluesheet.


2006 Pharmaceutical Forum

The 2006 Dialog Pharmaceutical Forum will be held Tuesday, February 28, 2006, at the Woodbridge Hilton in Iselin, New Jersey. To view the agenda or to register to attend this exciting event for our pharmaceutical customers, see our Web site or contact your Dialog sales representative for more information.


Prous Science Drug News & Perspectives Database Users Directed to Prous Science Daily Essentials

Prous Science Drug News & Perspectives (File 455) ceased updating on November 1, 2005, but will remain Dialog as a closed file for the foreseeable future. Use Prous Science Daily Essentials (Files 458, 459) as a replacement for File 455. Alerts set up in File 455 will be transferred to Prous Science Daily Essentials.


Search Techniques

Use Variant Spellings in Dialog NewsRoom

In Dialog NewsRoom, British spellings may appear with no American spelling equivalent used in the controlled vocabulary, for example:
EN=PRIVATISATION EN=ORGANISATIONS AND INSTITUTIONS
EN=LABOUR RELATIONS

Use the British spellings in the /DE field, or use alternative spellings for Basic Index searches:
?S ALUMINUM OR ALUMINIUM

When in doubt, use the EXPAND command to determine the correct spelling.


News Content Updates

Dialog NewsRoom: New Titles from Around the World

More than 160 new sources were added to Dialog NewsRoom between September 14 and October 26. Several of the latest additions include:

  • New titles from Access Intelligence (formerly PBI Media)

  • New Australian titles from News Bites

  • New regional Canadian newspapers from the Toronto Star

  • International country-specific Riskwire, Viewswire and Executive Briefings reports from the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU)

Focus on the news you want... with Dialog e-newsletters

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