Your tool-box contains more than Google
Before : Library Head, Corrado Pettenati, worked diligently in the Library...
After : Corrado Pettenati still works diligently, but much more efficiently at his own desk.
Don't panic if you don't find what you are looking for using Google. Remember that there are many important information sources that are not picked up by Internet search engines. Looking for quality assured information, online dictionaries, encyclopaedias and databases might respond more to your needs.
The Library therefore provides the CERN community with access to a set of such resources - among them the most prestigious ones in their respective fields: the Oxford English Dictionary, Encyclopædia Britannica, Compendex and INSPEC.
The Oxford English Dictionary is the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past.
The Encyclopædia Britannica is the world's most comprehensive reference product, a distinction it has held since its first publication in 1768. The online version includes the complete encyclopaedia, as well as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and the Britannica Book of the Year. You can also search an Internet directory that includes more than 130,000 links to Web sites selected, rated, and reviewed by Britannica editors.
Compendex is the most comprehensive interdisciplinary engineering database in the world, with over six million summaries of journal articles, technical reports, and conference papers and proceedings, dating from 1970.
INSPEC, including Physics Abstracts, is the leading bibliographic information service providing access to the world's scientific and technical literature in physics, electrical engineering, electronics, communications, control engineering, computers and computing, and information technology. The database covers over 3500 scientific and technical journals, a wide range of conferences, and numerous books, reports and dissertations are examined for relevant articles to abstract and index for inclusion in the database. The database contains over 7 million bibliographic records and is growing at the rate of 350,000 per year.
In addition the Library also offers a collection of nearly 1000 electronic journals, many of them having been scanned retrospectively. In the case of the Physical Review you can actually access all published volumes back to 1893!
Not to forget the CERN Document Server, offering more than 430,000 bibliographic records and 170,000 fulltext documents about particle physics and CERN. The database covers preprints, books, periodicals, reports, photographs, and much more.
The tools are all there on your desktop - there to help you perform your tasks more efficiently.
CERN Library
