Script:
Dialog On-Demand Recorded Training:

Introduction to Dialog Using DialogClassic Web
Part 1

Slide 1
Welcome to Learning to Use Dialog. This is an online course which means that you can take this course from any computer attached to the Internet. You may also stop and resume the course anytime you wish. This particular course assumes that you are not yet familiar with Dialog or online searching. If you have had some experience with Dialog or other search services like it, this course may serve as a refresher for you. The content found in Dialog is available through many interfaces. (multiple search tools). For this course we will concentrate on one of those Web-based interfaces, called DialogClassic Web.

Slide 2
This course is approximately 1 hour long and will be divided into these 4 parts: The first part provides an overview of the Dialog service and the DialogClassic Web interface. The next 3 parts will look at the 3 critical tasks that you will need to be able to do in order to search Dialog: How to choose a database, how to search within those databases for the documents that will satisfy your search and how to retrieve the documents that you have found. Finally we will summarize this course and tell you about your next steps. As I said earlier, this online course may be stopped and resumed whenever you'd like.

Slide 3
Let's begin with an overview of Dialog. Dialog is a computerized search and retrieval service. Services like Dialog help researchers sift through many millions of documents looking for those that best satisfy the researcher's question. Dialog follows the fairly simple command: "Find for me, all of the documents that have these words in it." In order to best use Dialog, therefore, the searcher must be able to: Choose the best sources for the question they are trying to answer, search for the documents that contain the words that best describe the question they are trying to answer; analyze the results of that search and then retrieve the specific documents that answer their question.

Slide 4
We think that Dialog is the best solution to your search needs in conjunction with the search tasks:

• First, when choosing sources, Dialog's strength is the breadth and depth of our data. Dialog has in its databases billions, yes billions, of professionally produced documents in the areas of science, technology, business and news. The variety of the types of documents include journal articles, patents and trademarks, company directories and even transcripts of television news shows.
• Second, while the amount of data on Dialog rivals that that is available on the public Worldwide Web, we have, as another strength, a search engine that will search all of the Dialog data in the same way. This search engine also allows for much greater precision than anything on the Web.
• Once you have retrieved your set of data, Dialog has many tools that allow you to do such tasks as sort the results by author, statistically rank them by the number of times your company was mentioned or analyze the relevance of each document.
• Finally, Dialog has the ability to deliver the documents you choose on the screen, in print, via e-mail and, in many cases, as a full-image document complete with original charts, graphs or pictures.

Slide 5
Most of this course will concentrate on the three activities you see here in red. We will touch on some aspects of analyzing results and there are subsequent courses that you can take that will help you explore even more about searching Dialog.

Slide 6
Now that you have a short explanation of what Dialog is, we'd like to give you some background on the search interface we will be using in this course.

DialogClassic Web is the latest Web-based interface for Dialog command language that Dialog users have been using for many years. DialogClassic Web is designed for information professionals who want to use the sophisticated search capabilities offered by Dialog Command Language with the added versatility of a Web-based environment. All DialogClassic Web features are browser-based. Some enhancements in the most recent version of DialogClassic Web include: especially good output options allowing you to download the documents you find in HTML and XML formats. That output can be easily converted to Microsoft, Adobe and other types of documents enabling you to create customized tables and reports. Also built into the interface is a capability to link to your organization's electronic journal subscriptions, as well as fulltext journal articles and other documents including document images for D&B^® Company Reports, NTIS Technical Reports, and Investext^® Broker/Analyst Reports.

We will review other features of the DialogClassic Web interface in a moment. The URL for DialogClassic Web is http://www.dialogclassic.com/. This URL and other helpful URLs will be shown again at the end of this session.

We would like to now take you on a tour of DialogClassic Web and give you a demonstration of a simple Dialog search. We have incorporated a 10-minute movie into the next slide.

Slide 7
The DialogClassic Web screen is divided into three areas: the Output buffer, the section of the screen which displays all of the results from commands that you enter.

Slide 8
The Type-Ahead buffer, in which you enter your search commands. You can enter your commands one at a time or prior to logging on to Dialog. Note that at the bottom of the Type-Ahead buffer the Status Bar shows you the amount of time you have been connected to Dialog and any commands that have yet to be executed.

Slide 9
The third section contains two panes: the Databases pane and the Session pane. You can view Bluesheets and other reference materials in the new Databases pane at the top right of the screen. You will learn more about Dialog documentation, including the Bluesheets, in Section 4 of this course. The session pane on the bottom right lists all commands that you have entered to search Dialog. You can navigate easily back to a specific place in your search session by using the new Session navigation pane. You can also check previous commands and click the new "Send to buffer" icon so commands display automatically in the type-ahead buffer. This saves you time re-entering commands.

Slide 10
Four tabs at the top of the screen let you move from your current search session to previous search sessions or to text that you have marked for later use.

• The Command tab is where you enter search statements and view results. You can type search statements while connected to Dialog or enter and edit your search before going online at your own pace.
• The Editor tab contains text that you have marked from a search session. When you select content in the Output buffer and use the Mark function, the selection is automatically copied and pasted into the Editor tab. The contents of the Editor buffer may be edited and saved in a variety of formats. In the Editor Tab you can modify, add or delete text using typical editing features like Bold and Italics.
• The History tab displays a list of your previous search sessions in the Session pane. The sessions are grouped by date and BEGIN command. When you click a previous session, the search then displays in the Output buffer of the Command tab.
• The Preferences tab lets you set options such as size of images, search term highlighting and more.

The focus of this course will be on using the Command tab functions. The Toolbar includes icons for standard Windows operations like the Disk for saving files, as well as icons for DialogClassic Web features. In this course you will use the logon/logoff icon, which is circled.

Slide 11
To logon to DialogClassic Web, go to http://www.dialogclassic.com. Then enter your Dialog User ID and password and click the Log in button. Note other items of interest on the Log In page include a link to the Dialog e-Newsletter sign in page where you can sign up for free community-of-interest newsletters containing product and content news, search tips, and items of general interest in topical areas. You can also click links to training classes and the Alerts Bureau to help you set-up Alerts on Dialog.

Slide 12
Once you have logged in to Dialog, you are ready to begin your search. We will search for a medical device called a gammaknife that is used for radiosurgery. Type BEGIN in the type-ahead buffer followed by the number of the database you want to search. You will learn more about selecting a database in Part 2 of this course. We will enter 154, the number of the MEDLINE database and hit the <enter> key to execute the command.

Slide 13
You will see the file name and number for MEDLINE in the output buffer. Note that there is a link to the MEDLINE Bluesheet in the Databases pane in the upper right corner of the screen and the commands you have entered—LOGON and BEGIN 154 appear in the Session pane. Now enter your next command SELECT and the word or words you want to search for. In this search we are looking for the term "gammaknife,"

Slide 14
The results from our Gammaknife search display in the output buffer. Note that we have retrieved 11 records for this search term from the MEDLINE database. The next step is to take a look at the records. To view records, we enter the TYPE command in the type-ahead buffer. By entering just TYPE by itself we will see the first record from the set we just created (S1). You will see more details about viewing records in Section 3 of this course.

Slide 15
We see that the first record in this set is talking about gammaknife irradiation. So this record appears to be related to the topic we want. Let's look at the rest of the record.

Slide 16
Note that in the Descriptors field we see radiosurgery, among the keywords which is done with a gammaknife. This suggests further that this record is on target and that radiosurgery might be another search term for this topic. Once we have viewed all the records we want to see, we want to logoff from Dialog. To disconnect from the Dialog system, type LOGOFF in the type-ahead buffer or click the LOGOFF button on the toolbar.

Slide 17
When you have logged off from the Dialog system, you will see the cost of your search session displayed on the screen.

Slide 18
In this section you have learned about the Dialog service and the DialogClassic Web interface. You have also reviewed a simple search including logging on to Dialog, Beginning in a database, selecting search terms, typing out a record and disconnecting from Dialog. The next sections of the course will provide more detail and show you how to use the features of Dialog to conduct a more complex search.