THE CIS NEWS

AUGUST 2003 

This issue of The CIS News is coming to you from the CIS E-mail address -- cissupport@nisc.com. Comments, questions, concerns, etc., should be directed to that address.
UPDATES
Several existing CIS databases were updated early in August.
TRI (Toxics Release Inventory):
The 2001 data were added to this database (the most recent year so far available). We now have a complete line-up of TRI data from 1987 to 2001. You can search this database by company name, facility location, substance name or CAS RN, or by a variety of other search inputs. You can search the whole range of years at one go, or you can restrict a search to some sub-set of the years available.
AQUIRE:
The number of records in this database increased from around 210,000 to around 220,000. To find only those records added or updated since the last update, enter ">20011030" in the Add/ Alter Date box toward the bottom of the search screen. The latest Add/Alter Date now in the system is from December 20, 2002. [See the notice below for more information on new text-linking facilities added to AQUIRE.]
TSCATS:
This database indexing unpublished health and safety studies submitted to EPA contains more than 64,000 records on more than 8,000 chemical substances. Two noteworthy changes have taken place in the database:

--First, the number of studies available in full-text electronic form inside the database itself has increased substantially. The percentage of coverage is still probably less than 10% of all TSCATS documents -- it's difficult to calculate the precise figure -- but hundreds of electronic documents were added in the latest database update, and several hundred more will be added in the near future. You can always order on microfiche those documents that are not available in electronic form inside the database, but the full-text electronic documents are free to all CIS subscribers.

--Second, TSCATS records now include annotations indicating when the study referenced in the TSCATS record has been abstracted in RTECS (R). RTECS (R), of course, contains data that are not present in the TSCATS record itself. Consequently, whenever a TSCATS document has been used to create an RTECS (R) entry, we thought it would be useful to point out -- in TSCATS records -- that data abstracted from the TSCATS document are available in RTECS (R). Users will see these notations in TSCATS
records from time to time; they include a brief explanation of how to locate the related data in RTECS (R).

RTECS®:
The August update also included the revised RTECS® database produced by MDL on our system. As users are probably aware, editorial responsibility for RTECS® was transferred from NIOSH to MDL Information Systems, Inc., last year. This new version of the database on CIS increased the number of records in the database from approximately 152,000 to approximately 156,000.
HSDB, IRIS MALLIN, RISKLINE:
A small number of new or revised records were added to each of these databases.
NEW DATABASE: 2000 EMERGENCY RESPONSE GUIDEBOOK
The 2000 Emergency Response Guidebook was added to the system recently. The Guidebook was developed by the US Department of Transportation in conjunction with their counterparts from Canada and Mexico. It is a HAZMAT database intended to aid first responders in dealing safely with accidents. It consists of some 3,800 records -- searchable by CAS RN and/or chemical name -- that link to a smaller number of guidance documents. Some of these guidance documents are specific to particular chemicals, but many are generic -- that is, they deal with classes of substances having similar hazardous properties. The 2000 edition of this Guidebook is the latest available; a new version is scheduled to be issued in 2004.

To retrieve a record from this set for review, enter ERG in the Database File box on the search screen. You can then click through to the PDF files in which these records are housed.

EXPANSION OF TEXTUAL LINKS IN AQUIRE AND OTHER DATABASES
The latest update of AQUIRE included a substantial expansion of textual links in the database. We previously had installed in-system PDF files that linked to full-text documents for approximately 10,000 records in AQUIRE. Now, however, users will also see out-of-system links to publications hosted online by Allen Press. These links approximately double the number of textual links now included in AQUIRE on CIS -- to somewhere around 20,000. In some cases the new links are to full-text articles, but in most cases they are to abstracts (plus a click-through mechanism that allows you to buy the full-text article if you want to). We're delighted to be able to offer this additional functionality to users of AQUIRE on CIS.

Furthermore, users will also begin seeing similar links popping up in other databases -- such as DATALOG, BIODEG, and MEDLINE. These, too, are to the publications hosted by Allen Press. The links appear automatically when something linkable online is available. These apply to ALL users of CIS, whether you are a subscriber to the journal in question or not.

Finally, some other CIS databases which don't yet display links to online abstracts/full text will begin to do so in the not-too-distant-future -- and the number of publishers/publications to which we link automatically will also be increasing over the next few months.

[CIS users should bear in mind, however, that the textual links described above are just those automatically available to ALL users of CIS. If your company or library has subscriptions to the electronic versions of other journals, you can vastly expand the textual linking you see in CIS by providing us with information about those subscriptions. Once we've set you up for linking out of CIS databases to the electronic images to which you have subscription rights, the number of links you see in CIS will greatly increase. For more information, see prior issues of this newsletter in the archive at http://www.nisc.com/cis.]

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View March 2003 Newsletter
View October 2002 Newsletter
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View October 2001 Newsletter


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