scitech library question

:: According to information sent to our library from Philip DiVietro, Director, ASME Technical Publishing, the Applied Mechanics Reviews AMR Abstracts database is to cease on July 1, 2004. We have access to it, but when I checked it just now, it wasn't working.

I am assuming until told otherwise that access to the Applied Mechanics Reviews Online will still be available; however, the online coverage is to the book reviews and review articles only, not the abstracts. The AMR Journal Article Abstracts Database is described as "a companion product of Applied Mechanics Reviews. This online database includes abstracts from more than 350 international journals in the engineering sciences and contains over 250,000 records."

I'm not sure why ASME is pulling the plug on the online version. I was never impressed with its search functionality, but other than Ei Compendex, Web of Science, and Mechanical & Transportation Engineering Abstracts from Cambridge, there isn't much out there indexing mechanical engineering. I find it odd that there is no mention of this development on the AMR web pages within the ASME site. However, as mentioned, when I try to enter the AMR Abstracts Database online, I get a "500 Internal Server Error", so perhaps ASME has already pulled the online plug, so to speak.

I hope ASME lets us know what's up. Surely they don't think their users want to return to searching monthly paper copies of AMR.

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