CSA Unveils New Interface

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) had informed the CDL and the UC campuses that they will be moving to a new interface in January 2005.  The new interface incorporates many improved features requested by CSA Resource Liaisons and CDL staff, including a cleaner interface, searchable help, and more visible features such as alerts and combining searches.

CSA has notified us that the move to the new interface must be completed by January 31 at the latest.  Although the CDL strongly requested that the overlap period between the old and new interfaces be extended, we were advised that this was not possible because of the systems requirements of the new interface.

On their web site, CSA provides the following tools to ease in the transition to its new interface:

• Tutorials suitable for library staff and end-users on quick, advanced and command searching [http://md2.csa.com/help/tutorials.html].
• An online quick reference card is available at [http://md2.csa.com/support/QRC.pdf] that covers the following areas:
  • Getting started
  • Quick, advanced and command searching
  • Search tools (thesaurus, indexes, combine searches, history, alerts)
  • Search results
  • Search tips

There are now links to these tools from the CDL Instructional Materials web page (http://www.cdlib.org/inside/instruct).

CDL licenses the following Tier 1 CSA databases:

• Earthquake Engineering Abstracts
• ERIC
• GeoRef
• PAIS International
• PsycARTICLES
• PsycINFO
• Social Services Abstracts
• Sociological Abstracts

Tier 2 CSA databases (licensed by more than one campus) include:

• ARTbibliographies Modern
• Worldwide Political Science Abstrac

Individual campuses also license additional CSA databases separately.

We regret that it was not possible to have a longer overlap period for the new interface.