Slide 1
Welcome to Part 2 of Learning Dialog Using DialogClassic Web. This part will discuss choosing a Dialog database.
Slide 2
Let us now move to the first skill that you will need to search Dialog. As stated earlier the basic command that Dialog follows is Find for me all of the documents with these words in them. The first thing, therefore, that you need to tell Dialog is where to look.
Slide 3
In Dialog the content collection is divided into databases. There are approximately 600 databases in Dialog. These databases contain documents of a similar type and focus; thus there are databases that are collections of news articles or patents or scientific and medical journals or investment analyst's reports, to name a few. Dialog databases are numbered and named.
As you saw in the search example in the previous section, we use the BEGIN command to start databases. My command Begin 154 told Dialog that I wanted to open the database containing medical and healthcare sources on Dialog.
Slide 4
With the myriad of Dialog databases to choose from, your task is to choose the best set of databases that will answer your question. Clearly, if you are looking for a patent with a specific inventor's name; searching a news database may not be your best choice. However, it may be more challenging to figure out which of the patent databases would be best to search if that inventor was Chinese. In order to help you choose the best database for your search, Dialog provides three tools to DialogClassic Web users:
Slide 5
The Dialog Database Catalog is very popular with users. The Catalog gives you a short summary of every database in Dialog as well as our sister product, developed in Europe, called DataStar. You can view the Catalog online section by section at http://support.dialog.com/publications/dbcat or download a PDF copy. The databases are arranged alphabetically in the Catalog, but are also arranged by subject area.
Slide 6
Here is a page out of the Database Catalog showing some of the Subject listings. If you look at the top right of the screen, you will see the Medicine Category with several numbered databases listed underneath. You may begin any of those databases by entering B and the number; for example B 5, will begin the file known as BIOSIS at the top of the list. However, you can also begin all of the files in this category by entering the acronym in red opposite the category name. In this case, the command would be: B or BEGIN MEDICINE. To enter the Medical Engineering category, type B or BEGIN MEDENG. While the Dialog Database Catalog gives you some information about each database, the Bluesheets give you more information on each file.
Slide 7
The most information about an individual database can be found in Dialog's Bluesheets. Here you will find several pages of information on each database's content, search techniques for each database, as well as sample records and pricing information. The print version of a Bluesheet was indeed printed on blue paper and today can best be found by clicking on the link in DialogClasic Web or through Dialog's Web site at the address on this screen.
Slide 8
Here is part of the Bluesheet for the MEDLINE database we searched earlier. On the online version there are links to each section of the Bluesheet. Clicking the Basic Index link near the middle of the page will take me to the Basic Index.
Slide 9
That portion of the Bluesheet that discusses how, for example, to search in the Title of an article.
Slide 10
Both the Bluesheets and the Database Catalog are excellent ways to find out more about databases and categories. On DialogClassic Web you can also simply enter the command BEGIN with no database name or number and be led to categories that might answer your questions.
Slide 11
Here for example is the part of the Begin tree for our Technology Patents databases. Where you see a + sign next to a category you will know that you can drill down farther. Here I started with Technology Patents and clicked the + sign to see a list of the databases in the category. Selecting one of the boxes will allow you to choose that database or category.
Slide 12
In conclusion you now have some tools that will help you in your choice of databases: The Dialog Database Catalog, the Dialog Bluesheets and the BEGIN Tree. In the next section you will be searching for documents.