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January 2009

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From the Editor:

Happy New Year from all of us at Dialog! As the new year begins, I am pleased to introduce a couple of new features you can look forward to seeing in the Chronolog.

• Our Free File of the Month on Dialog debuts with World News Connection (WNC) (File 985). Each month, be sure to review the overview highlighting unique features and content about the featured file.
• In each issue, starting in February, we'll feature an interview with one of the many Dialog specialists who will discuss how he or she contributes to enhancing the success of your experience with Dialog.

You may also note a common theme running through many of the articles. One of Dialog's differentiating strengths is our indexing, which makes searching our databases more precise. In this issue, for example, Ron Kaminecki's column describes using code indexing in the patent files. You'll also see an article on PASCAL, which illustrates how language indexing lets you find scientific topics in different languages along with an article by Ron Rodrigues demonstrating how indexed descriptors let you home in on medical devices in BIOSIS Previews^®, a database you may not have considered searching for that topic.

We hope that these new features — a Free File, a focus on how Dialog works for you, and an interview on special skills held by Dialog staff whether they directly service customers, write training materials — teach you about Dialog products and content and where to get support if you need it.

The Chronolog is your guide to all news at Dialog. Watch for other new features as we venture further into 2009.

Dialog Choice: Get Dialog and DataStar sources at a set price

Dialog offers flexible contracts to meet every need, including an option for unlimited access to essential content at a fixed price. Dialog Choice gives you a simple, easy-to-manage way to offer unlimited access to specific content from Dialog throughout your organization — at a single, annual subscription price. Corporations, government agencies, law firms and other organizations benefit from this sensible option for enterprise-wide deployment of critical, in-depth information resources directly to the desktops of researchers and other knowledge workers.

Dialog Choice is flexible and enables you to provide unlimited, targeted access to specific departments or work groups, as well as to the entire enterprise. Pricing is based on the databases selected and the number of individuals to be granted unlimited access to those resources. As an enterprise, you can distribute your Dialog Choice content through your portal, intranet or other in-house information-sharing system.

Customized Content
Content available through Dialog Choice includes high-quality intellectual property data, scientific research, business information and news that are often unavailable on the open Web. More than 260 databases provided by over 100 information providers are available through Dialog Choice. For example, a pharmaceutical company might make databases of clinical and toxicological data available to its research and compliance departments worldwide, while a law firm might select a global collection of databases containing fulltext patents for its intellectual property department.

Dialog Choice is a good option for virtually any organization that recognizes the importance of giving workgroups immediate access to the best information resources available. Sharing targeted, relevant research and news through the Dialog Choice plan can help you make your executives, managers, researchers and others more competitively astute, sensitive to markets and successful in any number of business pursuits. For more information about Dialog Choice, contact your account representative or request a quote by sending an e-mail to .

 Business and News Content Updates

Free File of the Month — New from Dialog

Designed to let you try out new or unfamiliar sources, the "Free File of the Month" promotion begins this month with World News Connection^® (WNC^®) (File 985). WNC provides an extensive array of translated and English-language news and information produced by local media sources from around the world. View an overview of File 985.

Each month a different "free file" will be offered, enabling you to use up to $100 of free searching (either DialUnits or connect time) in the featured file. Output and Alerts charges are not included. Just a few items of note as you use this free file offer:

• All searching usage accumulating throughout the month will be free until the $100 threshold is reached. This applies to both connect time and/or DialUnits in File 985 at the user ID level.
• Output and all other charges will be billed as normal under your contract.
• The free usage will display as a promotional credit on your invoice for each user ID that accesses File 985 during the month.
• If you are under a subscription or Choice plan for File 985, this promotion has no impact on your monthly cost.

Each month, you can learn about the free file in the Chronolog, as well as on the Dialog website. Start using File 985 now to get news about countries that no other sources cover.

 SciTech Content Updates

The power of Dialog indexing in the sciences

One of Dialog's many strengths is the power of its indexing. To illustrate this point and show you how this powerful feature can help you, we will take you through just how the indexing makes a difference in two particular files: PASCAL and BIOSIS Previews^®.

PASCAL—research for the international scientific community

PASCAL (File 144/PASC) is a true interdisciplinary database, designed for the international community. Produced by the Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (INstitut de l'Information Scientifique et Technique — INIST) of the French National Research Council (CNRF), PASCAL is one of the world's leading sources of life and physical sciences that provides access to the world's scientific and technical literature. Discipline topics include pure and applied biology, homeopathy, medicine, botany, psychology, pharmacology, toxicology, biotechnology, agriculture, physics, chemistry, information sciences, telecommunications, construction industry, mechanical engineering, metallurgy, earth sciences, oceanography and astronomy. Approximately 450,000 new citations are added to PASCAL each year in these diverse disciplines. The database contains references to 3,100 journals analyzed in 2008, including major international journals, reports, doctoral dissertations and conference proceedings in all aspects of medical science.

Strengths
Among its many strengths several make this database unique.

• French and European literature is particularly well represented.
• PASCAL is especially useful when searching for documents on a topic among several disciplines, seldom covered in specialized databases.
• It provides an exhaustive list of author affiliations.
• Unique tri-lingual indexing features an average of 10 or more descriptors for each record (in each available language).

Search Techniques
Searching with the /DE suffix retrieves descriptors in English, French, Spanish or any language in which descriptors have been assigned in a particular record:

Example: ?s robot arm/de (Dialog)
Example: robot arm.de. (DataStar)

Note: You can also limit to specific language descriptors on Dialog:
?s robot arm/ed (English)
?s robot arm/sd (Spanish)
?s robot arm/fd (French)
?s robot arm/od (Other language — German)

See an overview of PASCAL here. Check the Chronolog for this free file of the month in February.

Medical devices in BIOSIS Previews
By Ron Rodrigues, Senior Content Specialist

To find information on a topic such as medical devices, you might naturally go to a technical database like Inspec^® or Ei Compendex^®. However, you can use the power of Dialog's indexing to identify other databases that you might otherwise not consider. For example, with BIOSIS Previews^® (File 5,55), it's common to look for biological disciplines such as cytology, zoology, genetics, botany, microbiology and related interdisciplinary fields. However, several years ago, BIOSIS expanded its Basic Index to include a number of new fields. These additional fields (e.g., major concept (/MC), MeSH^® heading (/MH) and chemical name (/SY)) were developed to help provide more specific searching within the Basic Index. For example, for subjects of major emphasis use /MC with truncation (e.g., S MEDICAL GENETICS?/MC). And, for simple subject searches, you can continue to limit to the descriptor field (/DE), which encompasses all specialized indexing.

BIOSIS for medical devices
You might also be interested to know that to find specific information on medical devices broadly defined in BIOSIS, you can limit to another of these new fields—Methods & Equipment (/MQ). This field indexes a variety of terms for both clinical and diagnostic equipment, as well as specific medical devices (e.g., stents, defibrillators, etc.). You can also narrow to the MQ field to find information on laboratory methods, processes and procedures used in testing, measurement and analysis. For example, SELECT HEARTSTREAM/MQ to locate information on the heartstream defibrillator product. The MQ field also helps you locate customer feedback and novel uses of medical devices that could be applied to new sales and product applications notes. For instance, learning about Affymetrix gene chip arrays is easy when you search all terms in the MQ field (S (AFFYMETRIX? AND GENE??)/MQ). Moreover, other terms in the MQ field may lead you to additional and, perhaps more useful, search strategies.

Check the Dialog Bluesheet for the database you plan to search before you start your search so you don't miss out on helpful indexing that will focus your search strategy and make it quick and easy to find exactly the information you need.

 Intellectual Property Content Updates

QRCs now available for intellectual property

Dialog Quick Reference Cards (QRCs) are among the most requested and often-used search aids offered by Dialog. Now available are new QRCs for patents, trademarks and copyrights. Each QRC contains all the information you need from search basics to search tips to, in the case of patents and trademarks, a listing of appropriate databases in each content area.

• The Patent QRC includes:
• search basics
• patent search tips, including how to search by class codes, patent assignees, inventors and more
• a patent file selection guide to help you choose the correct database
• a listing of databases containing legal status information.
• The Trademark QRC contains:
• trademark basics
• search tips, such as field searching techniques, database types and limit features
• trademark class codes
• a listing of trademark databases.
• The Copyright QRC provides search basics, tips, limits, class and Library of Congress retrieval codes in U.S. Copyrights (File 120).

Download these Quick Reference Cards and keep them close to your computer when you search intellectual property topics.

A Proximal and a Distal Tip

By Ron Kaminecki

The recalcitrant requestor
I recall one of the first patent searches I was ever asked to do. The requestor sat next to me and told me to logon to the search system, as he cast aside my objections that we should talk about the subject first. I logged on and he just stared at me. So I asked him what he wanted me to look for. He said he couldn't tell me. He was, after all, applying for a patent! All this time, the clock is ticking and the bill is running up, both in my billable hours and the connect time. It took a lot of peripheral questions (really, truly, my first question was, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?"). We danced around the concept for some time while I tried to convert very nebulous concepts into targeted search terms. I do recall not finding too much on his invention, but at the end when he asked how much it all cost, he pulled out a wad of hundred dollar bills and paid cash!

Who's on first, or is it whose on first?
In a similar vein, recall a vaudeville bit by Abbott and Costello called, "Who's on first?" in which two very intense but separately-focused parties innocently speak about the same thing but no connection is being made. In case you are from Mars (like the focus of one of my other early searches), do check it out.

Searching patents by words is quite often a problem of communication. You as a searcher are trying to guess what search terms best describe the invention and the patent applicant is trying to identify something that by definition has not been created up to now. Because it is hard to describe such heretofore unknown technology, patent drafters use the "black hole" approach and identify things that circumscribe the invention or are closely related to it.

There are other reasons why patent terminology can be difficult. In an attempt to broaden a concept, patent drafters will avoid using narrow terms as too limiting. It could be argued that a carburetor should fit under the hood of a car, but a carbureting device could be of any size so the latter form is used. Pity the searcher who thinks search terms are always nouns! Indeed, this could be carried further and an invention could be hidden in plain view by the use of albeit correct, but arcane terms. For example, equipment that goes underwater is usually termed, "submersible" in English, but if one wanted to help hide a patent from others, the variant "submergible" could be effective. It is best to use both terms in a search.

Classification Codes
One of the best means of getting around problems with English is the tried and true method of classification. However, like booking an appointment with a dentist, the use of class codes is usually put off unless one is forced to use them or must act out of desperate pain. But, some searches will have you pulling teeth.

U.S. class codes evolved over time and they reflect the technologies of different periods. If you glance at the 400 or so topmost codes, you notice the lower numbered ones are for seemingly everyday inventions — Class 2 is Clothing, Class 4 covers various plumbing devices, plus spittoons, 59 is Chain, Staple and Horseshoe Making. Obviously, U.S. codes developed over time and were not the result of a grandiose scheme. As patent applications were received by the patent office, codes were developed and the hierarchies were assigned to cover these new technologies. Long gone is the time when Physical Properties of Chemistry (23) was simply wedged between Textiles (19) and Buckles (24). Indeed, if you look at the latest codes, you can see what has driven commerce for the past few decades: Television (348), Photocopying (355), Dynamic Magnetic Information Storage or Retrieval (360) and even these consecutive codes: Robots (901), Electronic Funds Transfers (902), Hybrid Electric Vehicles (903).

At the recent Northeast meeting of the Patent Information Users Group (PIUG), one of the speakers, a patent attorney and former patent examiner, said that whenever he had to do a search, the first thing he would think of was into what class code would it fit? He was used to the old days when a search was done manually in the search room at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) where a paper copy of every patent was stored in boxes (called "shoeboxes" or, more generally, "shoes") and each was grouped with similar patents based upon its classification code.

Finding a Class Code
Codes can be looked up in various ways, including online in CLAIMS^®/Reference (File 124). It is always a problem to determine which class code works best, but one way to find a class code is to see how it is used. For example, run a search in a U.S. patent database (like U.S. Patents Fulltext, Files 654,652 or CLAIMS^®/U.S. Patents, File 340), using English terms and then check the hits for relevance. If the search worked well, try RANKing the resulting set by class code (e.g., RANK CL). Then investigate the topmost code(s) to determine if they can be fit into the search to possibly find more similar hits. Simply pick out the chosen codes while in RANK, and when you exit RANK, the codes picked will be saved in a SearchSave. Then jump into File 124, EXECUTE the SearchSave, see what the codes mean and apply them to the search as needed. This approach is statistical in nature and it finds codes based upon the way that they have been used instead of how they might have been used. I personally use this method all the time. Email me directly () and I will send you a short example if you want to see how this works.

Finally, why bother using class codes? Because the examiners use them. Indeed, in the "Field of Search" is a list of the U.S. class codes searched by the examiner. At least they are helping you to locate similar patents, contrary to my "bigger than a breadbox" requestor. And, in case you want something to talk about while your mouth is full of dental implements, 433 is the class code for dentistry.

 DataStar Content Updates

First to market—MEDLINE DataStar reload released January 10, 2008

The MEDLINE^® database on DataStar (MEDL, MEYY, MEZZ) has been reloaded with the 2009 thesaurus. MEDLINE is reloaded every year because the National Library of Medicine (NLM) re-indexes relevant documents from the whole database with changed medical terms. This year 446 new MeSH^® headings were added, 123 MeSH headings were replaced with more up-to-date terminology and 26 were deleted.

In contrast to new terms which are usually added and used only from the date loaded forward, changed or deleted headings are usually applied to the whole database during the NLM's end of year processing. As a result, you may need to adjust your Alerts and Saved Searches to take into account the changes introduced in the 2009 MeSH. Contact the if you need help revising your Alerts. For complete details of all changes, read the National Library of Medicine's comprehensive article, "MEDLINE Data Changes — 2009."

Note: The 2008 MeSH is now in the MV08 Vocabulary file on DataStar and MVOC Vocabulary File contains the 2009 MeSH.