Warm welcome to ProQuest Dialog's new release
Jinfo Blog

By Penny Crossland

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Well, it has finally happened – ProQuest Dialog’s much heralded new search service (see our posting on the subject in July at http://www.vivavip.com/go/e29767) was launched last week and, so far, has received very positive reviews.

What ProQuest Dialog called the “long-standing dream of professional searchers for simplified access and a unified Dialog and Datastar” (http://digbig.com/5bcghq) is now well on the way towards being fulfilled. The first release of the product, which is the result of 18 months of development and testing, brings together Dialog and Datastar’s 14 biomedical and pharmaceutical databases:

• Medline
• Embase
• Biosis Previews
• SciSearch.
• CAB Abstracts
• Current Content Search
• Derwent Drug File
• International Pharmaceutical Abstracts
• PASCAL
• Gale Group PROMT
• Adis Reactions Database
• IMS R&D Focus
• PharmaProjects
• Pharmaceutical Health Industry Newsletters

Further STM content will be added by in the second release at the end of this year, with the rest of the content to follow in 2011. The long awaited release is intended to appeal to both end-users and professional searchers. An easy to use search screen (for those who are used to simple search engine interfaces), with advanced search options combines the best of both worlds.

The new platform has been warmly welcomed by the info pro sector. Paula Hane of Information Today (http://digbig.com/5bcghr) was given a chance to preview the service and commented on its ease of use, fast response times and interesting new features.

Searching has become much more intuitive and includes features like some very useful looking autofunctions: British/American spelling, “suggested terms”, stemming, pluralisation and “did you mean?” At the same time as unifying Dialog and Datastar, ProQuest is rolling out its new platform to existing customers, albeit in a phased approach. All these new developments have been a “huge technical challenge” according to ProQuest’s CIO Bipin Patel, but are bound to be appreciated by existing customers and will no doubt attract a new generation of searchers.

Information on the content available with the first release, search as features and tips, reference cards and FAQs are all available on the Dialog web site at http://www.dialog.com/proquestdialog/

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