scitech library question

:: I attended the annual IEEE Breakfast at SLA last week in Nashville. Despite being semi-conscious from lack of sleep, I was able to scribble a few notes, and hope that I can translate them into something coherent for STLQ! Some of the items mentioned included:

• IEEE has a new "warm failover" site, with a mini-IEL configuration; in the event of a disaster like the 2003 power outage, it could be online within an hour
  
• While not new to some of the breakfast audience, it was noted that IEEE Xplore® upgraded to Release 1.7 on April 29, 2004. Included in this release was the Full-Text Search Prototype:

  IEEE Members and users at subscribing institutions now have the option to test full-text search capabilities in IEEE Xplore. The new Full-text Search Prototype allows you to search metadata fields (as before) and the associated full-text journal/transaction content from 1996 forward. This currently represents over 10% of the IEEE Xplore database. In the coming months, we will be expanding the full-text search capability to more documents in the database.

  The other significant upgrade with Release 1.7 is that reference links are now available for most IEEE periodicals:

  The recent addition of references in more than 20 IEEE Computer Society journal and magazine Abstract Plus records now allows you to link from most IEEE periodicals in IEEE Xplore. Like other content in IEEE Xplore, links will send users to documents within IEEE Xplore, to external publisher sites via CrossRef, or to the Ask*IEEE Document Delivery Service for immediate purchase of non-IEEE content. Reference lists are available for most IEEE periodicals starting from 1995 or 1996.

  Reference sections are not available for the following publications:
  • IEEE conference proceedings and standards
  • IEE journals, magazines, and conference proceedings

• Release 2.0 is in development, with rollout expected to be early 2005. New features expected include a new graphical design, free basic search functionality for non-subscribers, and publication branding.
  
• Beyond Release 2.0, IEEE is considering adding a profiling function, consolidating conference files, and integrating IEEE press book content. Open URL compliance is also being studied.
  
• Consideration is being given to providing individual title usage statistics
  
• We learned that as of February 2004, Google referrals are now just under 12% of IEL queries.
  
• 38% of content of periodicals used in IEL has been published in the last three years

Further up the line, IEEE is thinking of adding more content, such as patents, author profiles, and tutorials, as well as non-traditional content, such as interactive mathematics, multimedia, and visualization tools. The slides from the breakfast presentation should be available on the IEEE web site sometime soon.

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