I have found this message to be interesting enough to be posted in the
chlamy newsgroup.
Antonio R. Franco
Bioquimica y Biologia Molecular
Cordoba. Spain
==================
In article <21s3ed$r6e at charm.magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> mliberto at magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Muriel Liberto) writes:
>>Hello fellow bionetters! I need some help finding access to the ATCC
>online catalogues. I understand that searches of these catalogues are
>availble via internet, but I don't know where or how to access.
telnet to 'atcc.nih.gov'
at the 'login:' prompt enter 'search'
then at the 'Password:' prompt enter 'common'.
The ATCC database is displayed using IRX. IRX is the database system
that is used to display the OMIM database amongst others.
To order things from ATCC, either contact:
ATCC
Sales and Marketing Dept.
12301 Parklawn Drive
Rockville, Maryland
20862
USA
or email: help at atcc.nih.gov
Quick Guide to Using New IRX (NIRX)
Using IRX is a simple, three-step procedure -
- Enter a question in plain English.
- Receive a list of documents which is ranked in
order of expected relevance.
- Select documents from the list for reading or printing.
IRX is designed to be a self-prompting system with
menu options displayed at each stage of the retrieval
process. Users are encouraged to learn the system
by using it and relying on the Help information that
is associated with each menu.
What Is IRX?
===========
IRX is an information retrieval system that attempts
to find the set of documents that best matches a
user's question. The matching is done probabilistically
and therefore the set of retrieved documents is not
guaranteed to answer precisely the user's question,
but is likely to contain relevant information. The
retrieved documents are ordered according to their
expected relevance and so a user typically needs to
review only a few documents even when the retrieval
set is large.
Entering A Question
===================
IRX allows a question to be entered in plain English.
The system will ignore common words (and, the, for, etc.)
and attempt to match the remaining words to words
within a document. Although effective results can
be obtained by entering free-text questions, there
are occasions where features of a special search
language might be desirable. Information on the use
of such features as Boolean operators, truncation,
and field restriction is available within the Question
menu. In order to find out if a particular term is in
the database, the V (Vocabulary) command can be used
to display the term and alphabetically-related terms
and their frequencies.
Selecting Documents
===================
If IRX finds documents which match one or more terms
in the question, a list of the matching documents is
presented to the user in order of predicted relevance.
The list consists of the title of the document and
a calculated relevance weight. To choose a document,
an arrow cursor is moved up or down in the left margin
to align with a document title. That title is then
considered the 'current document' and it may be printed
or read online.
Reading Documents
=================
Once a particular document has been selected for reading,
the title and first 10-15 lines are displayed on the
screen. Commands are available for moving forward and
backward in the document, skipping to specific fields,
or going directly to the lines containing the terms
which match terms in the question. Matched terms are
highlighted. At any point during document selection
or reading, the user may return to the question menu
to formulate another request. The cycle of question
- retrieval - document selection continues until a
request to Exit is made and confirmed.
Obtaining Online Help
=====================
The first two lines of the screen always display the
major commands which can be invoked at any given time.
The command '??' allows the user to obtain detailed
information on the commands available in the major parts
of the system such as question entry, document selection,
and document reading. The '??' command invokes a single
summary screen which gives a brief description of
the respective part of IRX and lists all the commands that
may be entered at that point. Specific information on a
particular command can be displayed by typing the command
name. Since specific information for a command can extend
over multiple screens, a paging command allows the text
to be scrolled forward or backward. In order to leave the
Help screens, the ESCAPE key can be pressed to return to
the previous menu.
--
GARY WILLIAMS, Computing Services, Janet: G.Williams at UK.AC.MRC.HGMP
MRC Human Genome Mapping Project, Internet: G.Williams at HGMP.MRC.AC.UK
Watford Rd, HARROW, Middx, HA1 3UJ, UK ** Sequence databases have **
Tel 081-869 3294 Fax 081-423 1275 ** about a 3% error content **
