Special resources and facilities

The Radcliffe Collection
The AAO is fortunate to have many books, journals and observatory publications acquired from Pretoria, South Africa and originally from the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, England. Many of these publications date from the early 1800s, and include star atlases and long runs of important reference journals which would be almost impossible to obtain today.

Commercial databases 
Several large commercial databases are available. These include DIALOG (Palo Alto, California), the INSPEC database for astronomy and STN (Germany).

The AAO also has access to the SIMBAD database at the Stellar Data Center in Strasbourg, France. SIMBAD is an object searching database. A complete list of measurements and bibliographic references can be listed for any star/object name or catalogue number provided. The bibliographic records date from 1950 for stars and from 1983 for galaxies and other nonstellar objects. Solar System bodies are not included in SIMBAD. Output information is written to the VAX disk.

Contact the Librarian for assistance in accessing these databases.

ILANET (Information and Libraries Access Network)
The AAO library is a member of the OTC network for libraries. Inter-library loans, orders, claims for journals, telex facilities, electronic mail, document delivery, and research enquiries are just some of the facilities of this network system.

VAX library files (On-line public access catalogues)
The library resources can be accessed on any VAX terminal under AADOCS, sub-directory LIB_BOOKS. The user can peruse the monograph collection, the AAO preprint collection (from October 1988) or the NRAO preprint collection (from 1978). Instructions are given on-line for the use of these files.

A list of on-line and off-line star catalogues is available under AADOCS, in the sub-directory STAR_CATS.

AAO scientific papers
A database of all scientific papers is available, and includes all papers published in journals, preprint form or presented at conferences by current staff, ex-staff and external users of the AAT. The main file is at Epping, but all libraries have an up-to-date printout. A search can be done either on the library computer or under AADOCS. Hard copies of most of these papers are available in the Epping library.

Thesaurus
A thesaurus of astronomical terms is in preparation for the International Astronomical Union Commission 5. As the coordinator of this project, the AAO Librarian can assist in the choice and standardization of the key terms selected for indexing scientific papers.