NEW ONLINE VERSION OF ASFA INCREASES RETRIEVAL OF MARINE SCIENCE INFORMATION Peter Brueggeman UCSD Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library The BRS Information Technologies databank (1200 Rt 7, Latham, NY 12110, 800-345-4277) recently announced the loading of a life sciences database from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. Dialog databank searchers know that Dialog loads Cambridge's databases as separate files. For example, Dialog offers Aquatic Sciences & Fisheries Abstracts (ASFA) as file 44, Oceanic Abstracts as file 28, Pollution Abstracts as file 41, and Life Sciences Collection as file 76. BRS Information Technologies loaded these four as one superfile entitled Cambridge Scientific Abstracts Life Sciences (CSAL). The appearance of CSAL is worth noting. A search of one superfile will scan more marine science information and will eliminate retrieval of duplicate citations from multiple databases. Comparing BRS' CSAL and Dialog's corresponding databases is interesting. Time span differs. BRS CSAL covers 1981 to present while Dialog offers a longer time span for each of the corresponding databases. ASFA and Life Sciences Collection go back to 1978. Pollution Abstracts goes back to 1970. Oceanic Abstracts goes back to 1964. BRS' CSAL costs about the same as Dialog's corresponding databases. BRS' CSAL connect time is $83 per hour; it costs $4 per hour less than Dialog's ASFA, Oceanic Abstracts, and Life Sciences Collection and $1 per hour less than Dialog's Pollution Abstracts. BRS' CSAL online citations cost the same as Dialog's ASFA and Oceanic Abstracts ($0.50 each), $0.05 more than Dialog's Life Sciences Collection, and $0.10 more than Dialog's Pollution Abstracts. BRS' CSAL offline citations cost $0.45 each which is $0.05 less than Dialog's Pollution Abstracts and $0.10 less than Dialog's ASFA, Life Sciences Collection, Oceanic Abstracts. Like ASFA CDROM, an unqualified word search on BRS CSAL is a global search on all fields of CSAL's records. An unqualified word search on Dialog's corresponding databases is a "basic index" search of ASFA's subject-oriented fields only. For example, a Dialog search of the truncated word "fish" will avoid retrieval of records with the truncated word "fish" appearing in author's names (eg FISHER), author's affiliation (eg Fish Res Inst), and journal name (eg FISH BULL). A subject-oriented search of BRS CSAL should have search terms suffixed with the field tags TI, AB, and DE. A sample BRS CSAL citation appears below (with truncated abstract). BRS CSAL differs from Dialog in the form of name for authors, the subset code for specific Cambridge products, and the existence of field names following field tags. The hyphenated punctuation of author names in BRS CSAL may be an obstacle to users wishing to import records into a database. Also, for those wishing to import BRS CSAL records into a database, the field names following field tags would have to be globally deleted before import; otherwise the field names will be imported as field information. For example, the field name "AUTHOR:" can be inadvertantly imported into the author field of a database. AN ACCESSION NUMBER: 1963237. 8905. AU AUTHOR: Kim-S-W. Onbe-T. Yoon-Y-H. IN INSTITUTION: Grad. Sch. Biosphere Sci., Hiroshima Univ., Saijo, Higashi-Hiroshima 724, Japan. TI TITLE: Feeding habits of marine cladocerans in the Inland Sea of Japan. SO SOURCE: MAR. BIOL., vol. 100, no. 3, pp. 313-318, 1989. YR YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1989. PT PUBLICATION TYPE: Journal Article (J). LG LANGUAGE: ENGLISH (EN). SS SUBSET: Ecology Abstracts (D). DE DESCRIPTORS: diets. Evadne-nordmanni. Evadne-tergestina. Penilia-avirostris. Podon-leuckarti. Podon- polyphemoides. Japan-Inland-Sea. marine-environment. Cladocera. AB ABSTRACT: Natural food items of five species of marine........the gut of cladocerans. On BRS, searchers search CSAL as one database with no duplicate citations. To accomplish the same search on Dialog, four databases are crossfile searched (using Dialog's OneSearch feature) and multiple citations will be retrieved for citations appearing in more than one of Cambridge's database. Of particular note, marine science citations will be retrieved from BRS's CSAL that do not appear in Dialog's ASFA or Oceanic Abstracts. A search of BRS' CSAL will access a broader range of marine science information than will a narrower search of Dialog's ASFA and Oceanic Abstracts. As a rough indication, a CSAL search revealed 2142 citations that contain the word "marine" but do not appear in ASFA or Oceanic Abstracts. Most of these references appear only in the Life Sciences Collection database or in Pollution Abstracts; a few do appear in ASFA or Oceanic Abstracts irregardless of CSAL coding indicating that they do not. Some of the 2142 citations are directly on the marine environment while others are peripheral but relevant to the marine environment. To better illustrate this point, listed below are some titles from the 2142 citations that are directly on the marine environment. These titles were checked and they do not appear in ASFA or Oceanic Abstracts. -Comparative marine chemistries of platinum group metals and their periodic table neighbors. -Grazing, defecation and excretion rates of copepods from inter-island channels of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. -Sex pheromone in a marine polychaete: Determination of the chemical structure. -Lipids in marine diatoms of the genus Thalassiosira: Predominance of 24-methylenecholesterol. -Marine fauna of Co. Wexford - 10. The Crustacea Decapoda of intertidal and brackish water habitats. -Feeding habits of marine cladocerans in the Inland Sea of Japan. -Ovothiols, a family of redox-active mercaptohistidine compounds from marine invertebrate eggs. -Amino acid transport in the gill epithelium of a marine bivalve. -Monitoring the marine environment. -The role of economic benefits analysis in funding marine combined sewer overflow projects--case study of Boston Harbor.