It's All Done With Mirrors: Improving Information Access

Session 6 - An Integrated Web Resource.
Display session, Monday, January 13
Metropolitan Ballroom,

[6.01] It's All Done With Mirrors: Improving Information Access

G. Eichhorn, A. Accomazzi, C. S. Grant, M. J. Kurtz, S. S. Murray (SAO), D. Egret, F. Genova, S. Lesteven, M. Wenger (CDS)

The ADS at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA, USA and the SIMBAD database at the Centre de Donnees in Strasbourg, France are working closely together to improve access to two of the most widely used databases in astronomy. Since the beginning of 1997, the ADS abstract service database is mirrored at the CDS and the SIMBAD database is mirrored at SAO. This greatly improves access times for European users to the ADS and for US users to the SIMBAD data. It also improves object searches in the ADS and abstract searches in SIMBAD since both can now be done concurrently on each site and do not require access to the other data center during such queries. This is an important step towards creating a tightly integrated digital astronomical library on the WWW with cross-links between different data types. We acknowledge funding for this project from US space agency NASA and the French space agency, CNES (Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales).

Program listing for Monday