Online Bibliographic Resources in Astronomy and Astrophysics

Extract

Online searches may be performed in astronomy and astrophysics either by OBJECT or by SUBJECT. Until recently, although object searches could be performed on a variety of databases in the physical sciences, results were poor and incomplete. Only if an object were mentioned by name in the title or abstract could one hope for any hits at all. The greatest blessing to befall the astronomical community was the advent of SIMBAD (Sets of Identifications, Measurements and Bibliography for Astronomical Data), a database in which searches are conducted by OBJECT only. It is produced and accessible from the Centre de Donnees de Strasbourg (CDS), Observatoire Astronomique, and is the result of many years of arduous work by a few dedicated astronomers and computer scientists. It is comprised of the merging of two earlier databases, the Catalog of Stellar Identifications (CSI) and the Bibliographical Star Index (BSI)