Guides & Publications

Library Resources in Computer Science

This brief guide is aimed at those who are new to Stanford and is designed to highlight some of the library resources available in computer science. It is intended as a supplement to the pamphlet describing the Mathematical and Computer Sciences Library and its services (available at the library).

Socrates, The Library Catalog

• This IS the place to find out what books, journals, and technical reports are owned by the Stanford University Libraries (SUL).
• This IS NOT the place to look for journal, magazine, or newspaper articles (you will need to use an article index or database for this).

  There are two ways to search: Simple and Combined. You can also browse by call number and search for electronic resources (but NOT online journal articles). Online help is available for all search methods.

• TIP: the truncation symbol in Socrates is $, e.g., comput$ finds any word beginning with this stem, including computer, computers, computing, etc.
• TIP: to search for a numbered series such as Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), type the series title and the volume number and click on the "Title" button.
• TIP: one of the quickest ways to search for conference proceedings in Socrates is to type the conference name into the search box and select "Search Everything" or use the Keyword search box.

• Article and Conference Paper Indexes
• Full-text Resources Online
• Journals & Conference proceedings
• Technical Reports & Preprints
• Organizations
• Library Services

Article and Conference Paper Indexes

Master list of Article/Conference Paper Indexes

Indexing and Abstracting Services for computing information include:

INSPEC

Engineering Index (EI/Compendex)

Engineering Index, also known as EI/Compendex, indexes articles in engineering, including computer engineering. Coverage online is available from 1884 to the present. This resource is also available in print in the Engineering Library's Reference Indexes Section under the call no. Z5851.E62.

SciSearch (Science Citation Index) (LANL)
or Web of Knowledge (select ISI Web of Science)

Although articles indexed in SciSearch are from 1974 to the present (LANL) or from 1945 to the present (Web of Science), references cited by these articles may be from earlier years. Use the Cited Reference Search screen to browse by cited author. Unfortunately, coverage of mathematics, statistics, and computer science journals in SciSearch has been historically poor compared to other areas of research, as it doesn't index many important conference proceedings.

• TIP: when searching for an author with a hyphenated last name, enter it WITHOUT the hyphen, e.g., garciamolina.

Flashpoint

This service enables searching across all databases available through the Los Alamos National Lab, including INSPEC, EI, SciSearch, BIOSIS, Social Sciences Index, and the LANL e-print arXiv. While the results displayed are not a combined list of citations from all indexes searched, one can see which database has the most hits for a given search strategy.

CiteSeer (a.k.a. ResearchIndex; available to all)

This is an autonomously generated digital library and citation index of the scientific literature, concentrating on computer science. It has over 400,000 documents and over 5 million citations. Search terms are displayed in context of the citing document(s), and links to the full text are included when available online.

• TIP: when searching for an author, use the last name only or list all variants found in citations separated with "or", e.g., john c mitchell or j mitchell or j c mitchell.

Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies (available to all)

This is a collection of about 1400 bibliographies of computer science literature from various sources, covering most aspects of computer science. These bibliographies are updated monthly from their original locations and converted to BibTeX format in a standardized layout. The search interface allows you to search all bibliographies at once. You can also browse the bibliography collection by subject. The collection currently contains more than one million references (mostly to journal articles, conference papers and technical reports). More than 18,000 references contain cross-references to citing or cited publications. More than 130,000 references contain URLs to an online version of the paper. There are more than 2000 links to other sites carrying bibliographic information.

DBLP Computer Science Bibliography (available to all)

The DBLP server provides bibliographic information on major computer science journals and proceedings. Initially focused on database systems and logic programming, it is gradually being expanded toward other fields of computer science. As of 9/2001, the server indexes more than 226,000 articles and contains several thousand links to home pages of computer scientists.

Journal Citation Reports (1997- )

Journal Citation Reports, the database of comprehensive statistical information on journal relevance and relative importance (including impact factors), is available online as JCR Web. The data used is drawn from citation indexes such as SciSearch. Stanford has access to both JCR Web Science Edition, which covers roughly 5000 journals, and JCR Web Social Sciences Edition, which covers roughly 1500 journals. Both files include data from 1997 through 2004. Earlier years are available on microfiche (MFICHE 1815) and CD-ROM at the Physics Library.

ACM Online Guide to Computing Literature

The online version of the ACM print publication, one can search a substantive bibliographic database from the key publishers in computing, including books, journals, proceedings and theses. Browsing by author, subject, and type of publication is available.

Computing Reviews

A retooled online version of the ACM print publication, its goal is to provide expert critiques of published work in the computing disciplines in a timely manner, and to stimulate online discussion between the reviewer and readers. Updated daily.

Full-text Resources Online

Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS & LNAI)

Selected volumes of Lecture Notes in Computer Science and Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (published by Springer) are available online. Most are conference proceedings. Links are also available in Socrates records.

Stanford Dissertations (1987- )

Over 4600 Stanford dissertations from 1987 to the present are available for download in PDF. For instructions, see the SUL Dissertations page.

Books24x7

The ITPro collection at Books24x7.com is composed of many popular computer technical books, including selected books from the Dummies series, Sams, Osbourne/McGraw-Hill, MIT Press, Peachpit Press, and Sybex. There are also books on computers and society and e-commerce. There's no need to register unless you want to personalize the site using the "My Bookshelf" feature.

CogNet

MIT CogNet™ Library Edition, a searchable collection of electronic texts for cognitive and brain sciences and related fields is available to Stanford users on the Web. Intended as an online community for the cognitive and brain sciences, people on the Stanford network can access full-text articles and books in these subjects, find links to other reference tools on the Web, and participate in online discussion groups. More content is added on a regular basis. There's no need to register unless you wish to personalize your "Workspace" at the site or to access members-only profile information.

eBrary

eBrary™ is a searchable collection of electronic texts in a broad range of fields available to Stanford users on the Web. There are at least 800 titles dealing with computing in the collection. Plug-in required. You are charged for copying or printing from the text.

The Online Books Page (Free online books)

Search or browse over 15,000 listings of books available online in a wide variety of subjects. However, computer books are listed with books in mathematics in the QA Library of Congress call number listing.

Journals & Conference proceedings

More journals are becoming available online over time. If you don't find the electronic journal you're looking for on the list of available e-journals or in Socrates, ask us if the journal is available online. However, not everything is available online, and we have many more journals available only in print. If we don't have a copy of the journal article you need, we can usually obtain it from other sources.

Conference proceedings can be difficult to find for two reasons:

1. Stanford Libraries shelve proceedings like books or journals depending upon the conference and there is no way to tell for a given conference unless you know what to look for in Socrates.
2. Often conferences are published as issues of journals and therefore will only be indexed in an article level database - not in Socrates, which just lists books or journals.

Persistence pays to verify if Stanford owns a proceedings. You can always ask for assistance at any of the Stanford Libraries. TIP: one of the quickest ways to search for conference proceedings in Socrates is to type the conference name into the search box and select "Search Everything" or use the Keyword search box.

ACM Digital Library

This site provides searchable and browsable access to many ACM journals and transactions beginning with volume 1 and conference proceedings as far back as 1982, as well as many Special Interest Group (SIG) publications. Many papers appear online before the print issue is available in the library. Part of the ACM Portal to Computing Literature.

IEEE Xplore (IEEE/IEE Electronic Library)

Journal articles, conference proceedings, and standards published by the IEEE and IEE are available from as far back as 1988 to the present via the IEEE Xplore interface. Currently, the print equivalent is sometimes available in the library before it is available online, and some material is only available in print.

Technical Reports and Preprints (available to all)

Virtual Technical Reports Center

This metasite lists institutions that provide either full-text reports or searchable extended abstracts of technical reports on the World Wide Web and contains links to technical reports, preprints, reprints, dissertations, theses, and research reports of all kinds. However, it does not include links to many corporate technical report sites.

Stanford CS Department Technical Reports or ftp://db.stanford.edu/pub/cstr/

The Computer Science technical report ftp server allows access to Stanford technical reports issued by the Computer Science department that are available electronically from 1963 to 2000. The Math/CS Library also has a large collection of technical reports received on exchange from other universities and industry, as well as those produced on the Stanford campus. These are cataloged in Socrates and are shelved in the Storage Area of the library. More recent reports are usually found on the Web.

NCSTRL (Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library)

This site allows one to search or browse technical reports from many academic and other research institutions around the world. However, it doesn't search the full text of the reports, but only the author, title, and abstract.

Organizations and Projects

• Digital Libraries Project - ARPA/NSF/NASA funded grant to the Stanford Computer Science Department
  
• AAAI (American Association for Artificial Intelligence)
• ACM (Association for Computing Machinery)
• Association for Women in Computing
• IEEE Computer Society
  
• Charles Babbage Institute - Centre for the History of Computing
• Computer History Museum

Library Services

Interlibrary Services

If a Stanford University library doesn't have the book, dissertation, technical report, or journal you need, you can request that the library get a copy of the article or borrow the item from elsewhere. Request forms are
available online (SUNet ID required). Or click on "Interlibrary Services" link on the Stanford University Libraries home page, then click on the link "Document Delivery Online Request Forms".

However, if the item is available at UC Berkeley, you can request the item yourself using the RLCP card. To register for an RLCP card, see the Research Library Cooperative Program.
Once you have an RLCP card, you can request the item yourself using the online forms. To find out if UC Berkeley has the item search their catalog, Pathfinder.

Suggesting books or journals for the library

Is there a book that you think the library should have in its collection? Is there a journal that you think the library should subscribe to? You can recommend a book or journal to be purchased for the library online (SUNet ID required).
You can also link to this form from the Math/CS Library home page, or the Socrates home page, or send your recommendations and comments directly to the Math/CS Librarian, Linda Yamamoto.

We're here to help

For questions and comments about these and any other library resources, including tours and instruction, feel free to contact Linda Yamamoto at the Math/CS Library, x3-0864, or stop by the library and we'll do our best to help you find what you need.

Linda Yamamoto