Frequently Asked Questions about the Computer Science Bibliography Collection
Before you write to me you should consult this list of questions and
their answers.
You should also read the general
introduction to this bibliography collection and other material on the bibliography
collection. If you have questions concerning the search interfaces then you should read the
respective help information on the advanced
and simple
interface.
- I am searching for a paper, can you tell me where I can find it?
- I am searching for papers on XYZ, can you send me a list of references?
- Do you have an online copy of the paper XYZ?
- How do I uncompress a bibliography?
- There is an error in a reference, please correct it!
- I want to install a search interface for a bibliography, can I use your scripts?
- Is there a style guide on how to create BibTeX bibliographies?
- How can I add bibliographies to the bibliography collection? How can I add references to the bibliography collection?
If your question is not answered on this page you can write to me at
liinwwwa@ira.uka.de or fill out
the comments
form.
No, I cannot. Everything I know about free bibliographic services on the
Internet is contained in the bibliography collection. If you do not find
what you are looking for after using a search
interface and other services, then I would
not know about it, either.
Sorry, but I cannot. First, I haven't got the time to do your
work. Second, I am not familiar with most of the very specialized
subjects covered in the bibliography collection.
You will have to use the search interfaces of the bibliography
collection to find material relevant to your topic.
I have received many mails asking how one can obtain the online
version of a paper once one has found an interesting reference by
either browsing or searching this collection.
I do not collect online versions of papers and I do not have any
information beyond what's contained in this bibliography collection.
I should make it clear that this bibliography
collection is not necessarily about online papers but about online
references to papers. The vast majority of papers referenced in this
collection only exists in hardcopy form, to be found in your local
library. However, about 70,000 references in this bibliography
collection (about 7%) contain a URL pointing to an online version of
the paper (see the bibliographic
statistics for more precise numbers). If you find a reference
containing such a URL (e.g. by searching the
collection) then just follow the URL. The advanced search interface offers a convenient
way to restrict searches to papers that are available online.
In general, the chances are very slim that an online version exists
and a visit to a good, old-fashioned library will be the best way to
obtain a hardcopy version of the paper.
Otherwise, there are sometimes ways to find the online paper:
- If the reference is a technical report try the other technical report servers, most of
the more recent technical reports ( > 1990) are available online.
- Try to find a homepage for one of the authors by using HomePageSearch or one of the general WWW search engines such as Google. The
author might provide the paper in his/her home page or you can ask him/her for a copy.
- Try the sections on "Other
bibliographies", some of the services listed there also provide
pointers to online copies of papers.
- Finally, you might want to try commercial document delivery
services such as e.g. Subito or CARL UnCover,
however these services ar not free.
The bibliographies are compressed with gzip, a GNU program which is
available from ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu
and many other sites. It will work on virtually all Unix, DOS, VMS
operating systems. Those of you who are using a Mac should try MacGzip.
WinZip can also decompress gzipped files on Windows (95,98,NT) platforms.
If you would like the decompression to be done transparently by your
browser you might want to have a look at these valuable tips!
Most bibliographies are updated regularly from their original
locations. Any modifications have to be made by the author/maintainer
to his copy of the bibliography. Modifications to local copies in the
bibliography collection would be lost with the next update.
Therefore, please check the bibliography that contains the
reference. If it is not supported any more then I can modify my local
copy, otherwise you have to direct your suggestion to the author of
the bibliography.
That would not be a good idea since my search scripts are tailored to
work with the architecture of the bibliography collection and they are
way too complicated for small bibliographies (<= 10,000
entries). Small bibliographies do not need an indexing program, they
can be searched by a grep-like script. You might want to take a look
at
I know of two such style guides:
- from the Computational Learning Bibliography
- From the Bibliography Network Projet (BibNet)
The latter also deals with the question of how to deal with online
publications.
I have made a short, selected list of
tools that help in the creation of bibliographies.
You can add both whole bibliographies and individual paper referencees
to the bibliography collection using a variety of submission
mechanisms. Please see this
page on how to proceed.