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Issues in Science and Technology
Librarianship |
Summer 2000 |
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DOI:10.5062/F4VM498W |
Bob Heyer-Gray
Engineering Librarian
Physical Sciences and Engineering Library
University of California, Davis
rheyer@ucdavis.edu
Sharon Shafer
Science & Engineering Librarian
Science & Engineering Library
University of California, Los Angeles
sshafer@library.ucla.edu
Fluidex is an online bibliographic database published by Elsevier Science. It provides a source of information for all aspects of fluid engineering, fluids' behavior and applications.
The database provides abstracts of articles from approximately 500 scientific and technical journals. It contains 274,000 records from 1974 to the present with 15,000 records added annually. There are links to full-text articles if your library has access to electronic journals via Science Direct.
Subject coverage includes instrumentation, experimental techniques, pneumatics, fluid mechanics, seals, mixers, sealing, mixing processes, separators, coastal engineering, separation processes, offshore engineering, process equipment, operations & utilities, heat exchange, ports & harbors, lubrication, pipes & pipelines, applications, hydraulics, industrial corrosion, and pumps.
AUTHORS(Stolzenbach, k!) | 16 hits |
AUTHORS(Stolzenbach) | 16 hits |
AUTHORS(Stolzenbach k) | 0 hits |
AUTHORS(Stolzenbach k*) | 0 hits |
AUTHORS(Stolzenbach kd) | 0 hits |
AUTHORS(Stolzenbach k.d.) | 16 hits |
AUTHORS(Stolzenbach*) | 16 hits |
Links to PDF versions of some journal articles only became visible at the abstract level. It would be better if full text items were clearly marked at the first display level. The only PDF links we saw were to Science Direct titles.
It is impossible to navigate by number from the results list so it is necessary to use the previous page and next page buttons multiple times.
Marking records and redisplaying as a smaller list worked fine. As stated earlier, we like that they show the search statement in the proper format which is useful as a guide to the Enhanced Search.
It would be extremely useful if the Index terms were hyperlinks to other records.
The message, "View articles by clicking on the links below," may lead users to believe that they will get the complete article.
The help screens were written at a generic level to be used with all of the databases. Although there was an elaborate table of contents and separation of help by database, it was actually much of the same generic information repeated. Some of the help screens were full of examples while others simply stated the obvious.
We found the Enhanced Search HELP to be especially lacking. The Enhanced Search HELP screens did not offer field names and format HELP for enhanced search statements. Using the Basic Search mode and then looking at what the system translated the query to be was much more informative than the HELP screens.
We used the HELP screens to find the wildcard character. The following graphic is the HELP screen on that topic.
Search | Fluidex hits | Compendex hits |
AUTHORS (catton I) | 32 | 110 |
Of the 32 hits in Fluidex:
10 were not duplicated in Compendex.
Out of the 10 not in Compendex, 4 were found in INSPEC and 1 more was found in
CURRENT CONTENTS. So, 5 records out of 32 were unique to Fluidex.
Search for works by Ann Karagozian
Search | Fluidex hits | Compendex hits |
AUTHORS (karagozian a.r.) | 2 | 13 |
Of the 2 hits in Fluidex:
1 was duplicated in Compendex.
The other one was duplicated in Aerospace Database.
No unique Fluidex hits.
Search for works by Mohamed Abdou
Search | Fluidex hits | Compendex hits |
AUTHORS (abdou, m.a.) | 2 | 38 |
Of the 2 hits in Fluidex, both were also in Compendex
No unique Fluidex hits
I searched All Years for Hafez, M! and got 24 hits. He shows up in the literature (not just in Fluidex) as:
I scanned the citations and found I had a sampling of citations from 1976-1999, which given his age/career made sense.
I then re-ran the search in Compendex and got 57 hits after eliminating the false hits and anything before 1974.
I then re-ran the search in INSPEC and got 48 hits after eliminating the false hits and anything before 1974.
10 of the Fluidex citations were in Compendex. 13 of the Fluidex citations were in INSPEC. With the overlap between Compendex and INSPEC, 10 citations were unique to Fluidex. Initially, I thought that seemed like a fair number of unique citations. A closer inspection of those 10 citations revealed:
This left me with 6 papers, one journal article and 5 conference papers. One of the conference papers is included in Aerospace Abstracts and one is from a publisher of dubious merit.
In looking over these citations, I realized that there were large gaps in the coverage in Fluidex for an author who has published consistently for the last thirty years. Papers from journals like International Journal for Numerical Methods in Fluids, Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Computers & Fluids and AIAA Journal (on fluid topics) were not appearing in Fluidex (although some were). The coverage just seemed a bit spotty to me.
The same search in Fluidex gave me 1 citation.
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