[SAO/NASA ADS]   10 Years on the WWW!


As of February, 2004, the ADS Abstract Service has been on the World Wide Web for 10 years! Originally created to run under a distributed X-windows environment in February, 1993, the Abstract Service was made available on the World Wide Web in February, 1994, almost immediately after the public release of Mosaic. The basic user interface has remained unchanged in those 10 years, although many additional features have been added including:

Scans of the literature: Starting in November, 1995, we made available our first scanned images of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Links to the online literature: Almost simultaneously, we began including links to the University of Chicago Press, publisher of The Astrophysical Journal.

Additional milestones: By 1998, we had scanned most of the major journals and were already providing links to the majority of the online literature. By 1999, we had created a citation database of more than 3 million citations, combining citations from the journal publishers and those OCRd from the scanned pages. By 2000, we had written four articles in the A&AS describing the system. And by 2001, we had begun scanning the historical literature from microfilm.

The ADS Today: As of the 10-year mark, the ADS now includes over 3.5 million abstracts, over 2.5 million scanned pages, and over 14 million citations. We have begun indexing the full text of scanned articles, and now have an automated email notification service called myADS. We have received a number of Awards and Recognitions and are proud to be able to continue to offer a high-quality service free of charge to astronomers worldwide.





 

adshelp at cfa.harvard.edu