| | | Electronic indexes of paper resources |
Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), not all the information in the world exists in electronic form. Sometimes you will have to go to the library to consult physical books and journals! Still, the computer can be a big help in finding out what interesting materials are available in the library.
It was not so long ago that all libraries had card catalogues filled with index cards. Now most library catalogues exist only in electronic form. You can consult many library catalogues over the Internet.
For example, you can search the main catalogue at the Evans Library at Texas A&M University.
You can also consult the library catalogues of many other universities from your terminal. If you would like to know if The LaTeX Companion is held by the Rice University library, or by the University of Houston library, or by the library at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, you can find out. Start from Yahoo's list of University Libraries and follow the links. (Of course, you will have to figure out how to navigate each library's on-line catalogue.)
Finding books is rather straightforward, but how do you find
journal articles? There is a comprehensive index of
publications in mathematics since 1940 called
Mathematical Reviews. You
can consult the paper version (exercise: find the call
number--it's at your finger tips!), but even better, you can
search the electronic version. If your World-Wide Web browser is running
on a machine located at an institution that subscribes to
MathSciNet, the
electronic version of the Mathematical Reviews database, then
you can go to
http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/
and use the intuitive search form. (If you are a student or a
faculty member at Texas A&M University, then you should be able to access
MathSciNet from any
computer on campus. For off-campus access, read the
instructions about using the Texas A&M University library proxy server.)
Exercise
How many papers did the late Paul Erdös publish in 1994?
There is another database of mathematical publications called Zentralblatt für Mathematik und ihre Grenzgebiete, formerly a subscription service but freely available online under the name zbMATH Open since 2021.
The Math 696 course
pages were last modified April 5, 2005. | | | Electronic indexes of paper resources |