9. Library Puzzle

This assignment is an exercise to get you more familiar with the resources in the library, particularly with the computer indexes available on MELVYL and with the hardcopy indices of most value to computer people. The puzzle was devised by Kevin Karplus, in imitation of puzzles created by Alan Ritch, a librarian at UCSC, who writes and edits the Mind of Melvyl newsletter (affectionately known as MOM), which sometimes contains such puzzles.

The puzzle will stretch your MELVYL search skills far beyond the level of competence attained by most students or faculty. We hope that the assignment will make it easier for you to do any necessary library research for your final paper, and the library search skills exercised should also be applicable to other courses and research projects.

Some of the questions below are simple, straightforward exercises of the obvious MELVYL commands, others are puzzle questions requiring ingenuity and perseverance to find the requested information. These library puzzles often appeal to crossword puzzle fanatics.

Remember this is a writing class! For each question below, give one or two sentences as an answer--not just the one word or number the question asked for. Show the search command that found the answer you got, and, perhaps, some commands that you thought should work and didn't. When you get a negative result, show partial solutions (e.g., UCSC doesn't have it, but someone else does, and we have something else by the same author).

All the questions can be answered without visiting the library, since MELVYL is accessible from any terminal on campus. However, you might want to visit McHenry library or the science library to see some of the books and journals that you find.

9.1 Catalog database (CAT and TEN)

 

1.

Does UCSC have the latest edition of The Joy of TEX?

Here is a sample answer:

No, UCSC does not have the latest edition, based on the exact-title search f xt joy of tex. UCLA, UCD, UCSD, and UCB have the most recent edition:

UCLA Engr/Math Z 253.4 T47 S673 1990

but the UCSC library has only the 1986 edition:

UCSC McHenry Z253.4.T47 S673 1986

2.

What package does The Joy of TEX describe?

3.

Give the UCSC call number of a book on ``computer gamesmanship''.

4.

Find books or conferences from the last ten years about random graphs. Use the MAIL command to mail the results to yourself. Give the search strategy and the total number you found.

5.

How many computer files are catalogued by the UCSC branch of the library? How many of them are more than ten years old? (Note: computer file is a type of format that can be searched for in the FORM index--you may have to use HELP FORM to get the correct abbreviation for the format name.

6.

Try to find more than 100 books (or things cataloged as books), all published in the last ten years and all in the UCSC library, that are relevant to CMP 215. Remember that you can find course names and catalog copy on the InfoSlug gopher server. Hint: use TEN and f SU. The tricky part is finding a relevant subject--start with a book or conference that you believe is relevant, display subjects for it, then look for other books with the same subject. A few iterations should converge. You can try keywords from the catalog description, but that may take a little longer to converge.

I don't want the long list of books, but the search strategy and the number of books you found.

9.2 Magazine database (MAGS)

What percentage of the Ph.D.'s granted in computer science in 1989-90 were to women? Find articles that attempt to explain why there are so few women, and articles explaining what is being done to improve the situation. [Note: this question can be answered entirely from MELVYL, using the stored abstracts.

9.3 World-wide web

The following questions are intended to improve your web-searching skills. Personally, I find the Alta Vista Advanced Query page (http://www.altavista.digital.com) the most useful of the web search engines.

1.

Using Lycos (http://www.lycos.com), Alta Vista ( http://www.altavista.digital.com), or other Web search engine find the 1994 version of the surveys that the data about women with PhDs in computer science is based on. Note: this question will be much easier if you can get the real name of the survey from the previous question.

2.

Find a copy of the most up-to-date documentation for the Latex2HTML translator. Who is the author? Make sure you find the primary site, and not a copy that someone else has made.

3.

Find a report from the National Academy of Sciences on responsible conduct in research.

4.

Find the home page for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Is there a Santa Cruz chapter? Do they have a home page? Who do you contact about creating or joining a Santa Cruz chapter?

5.

Find a data sheet for part CY7C1031-7JC. Who makes it? what is it? How fast is it? Hint: the last part of a part number is often a speed or packaging qualification, and the datasheet may only have the first part of the number.

6.

Find a chip directory that contains list of manufacturers and part numbers for FIFOs. Find a 32k by 9 FIFO.

9.4 Computer article database (COMP)

1.

Find an article on fast matrix multiplication.

2.

How many articles can you find on FPGAs? You should get a list of at least 300.

9.5 You figure out what indices to use

The following questions may require hardcopy indices in addition to the computer indices. Please outline your search strategy, and tell us what false leads you followed, as well as how you finally found the solution.

1.

How many searches were made from UCSC in the last month for which statistics were available, counting both dedicated terminals and internet access? Note: can get the data from MELVYL, but getting totals of local usage may require some processing of the data. Explaining how to get the numbers will suffice, with extra credit for actually producing them.

2.

Find the best article you can on asymptotically fast matrix multiplication. Give the reference and the asymptotic running time.

3.

In an early 1980s conference, Ramachandran wrote a paper on driving long lines in a VLSI layout. Find the conference paper and the journal paper that updated it.

4.

Find out how many books on C or C++ the Stanford Bookstore carries. This search can be done without leaving your workstation. For extra credit, separate the C books from the C++ ones (I believe that this cannot be done using only the library search programs, but should be fairly easy if you know how to use your computer effectively).

5.

C. V. Papadopoulos was a graduate student at the Computer Science Department of the University of Piraeus in Greece. In recent years, Papadopoulos published several papers in respectable journals covering a huge range of fields, giving him the appearance of a ``superstar''. In spring of 1995, if became known that he had systematically plagiarized every paper he had published, often by making only minor changes to the title and abstract of already published work.

Find as many of C.V. Papadopoulos's papers as you can. For at least two of these papers, find the original that he plagiarized from.