What resources are available for a scholarly literature search? How do you get started? How to be effective in your search?

Below is a list of possible resources.

1. A chapter or section in a book may have some introductory material. Search the bibliography at the end of the book for useful articles and books. Note that some textbooks have a bibliographic section at the end of each chapter.

2. For overview articles consult the Encyclopedia of Computer Science, second edition (1983) and third edition (1993) by editors Anthony Ralston and Edwin D. Reilly, Van Nostrand Reinhold, publisher. Both editions are in the Reference Section of Library under QA76.15. The newer edition does not replace the second edition. Many times I have found what I wanted was in second edition and not in the third. Other useful encylopedias of computer science are on the same and nearby shelves.

3. The ACM Guide to Computing Literature supplies a good coverage of the computing literature. Unfortunately, it takes several years to compile. Therefore, the latest year is 1994. This annual publication is indexed by author, title and keyword. The keyword search is the most valuable. The volumes are found in Reference Section.

4. Near the ACM Guide to Computing Literature are copies of Computing Reviews another publication of the ACM. In Computing Reviews (CR), experts review current books and articles in the field of computing. CR organizes all of computer science into a classification scheme. Authors of articles for ACM publications must supply the CR Classification as well as keywords. The CR classification scheme may be found in the front of the second edition of Encyclopedia of Computer Science.

5. Another source of articles is to search through a collection of abstracts, for example, Science Abstracts: Series C - Computer and Control Abstracts. An index of all the abstract collections is at the Information Desk.

6. The Library also has several electronic databases which usually contain abstracts. Two are Applied Science and Engineering and General Science.

7. A valuable resource is the Science Citation Index. This resource has the usual author, title and keyword index. However, it also contains a citation index, i. e., all the works in that year that cited a previous work. Once you have found a key article, you can use this tool to find all the articles that cited the key article in later years. The many volumes in this collection take up much of counters 7 and 8.

8. Select several key journals in your area and browse through the last several years for possible articles. This is especially useful if you have drawn a blank on a keyword search or are not sure what keywords to use in a search.

9. Find or ask for a current bibliography on the Internet. Also, many abstracts and even whole articles are now on the Internet. Use DEC's altavista as a search engine.

10. Attend a conference or workshop. Conference proceedings are more up to date then journal articles. Unfortunately, very few conference proceedings are in the library. If you know the reference, the article can be acquired by Interlibrary Loan.