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About the AMS AMS Membership Governance Giving to the AMS Prizes & Awards Contact Us 201 Charles Street Providence, RI 02904 USA Phone: 401-455-4000 or 800-321-4AMS Or email us at ams@ams.org Open Positions	News Release *Over 500,000 Reviews Added to the Mathematical Reviews* Electronic Database** Contact at AMS: Annette Emerson (401) 455-4083, FAX (401) 331-3842, awe@ams.org May 1, 1999 Providence, RI -- The American Mathematical Society has completed its two-year project of adding full-text reviews from the early archives of Mathematical Reviews (MR) to the MathSci database. During that project, all reviews from 1940-1979 were keyboarded-over 80,000 pages of MR. The number of searchable reviews from 1940 to the present now on MathSciNet (MR on the Web) totals nearly 1,400,000. The entire collection contains, for the first time online, searchable reviews of a major part of mathematics from the past 60 years. The addition of the review texts back to 1940 means, among other things, that researchers can see more fully the development of mathematical ideas by using a combination of sophisticated tools within the MathSciNet-notably the Author Identification resource, and the extensive network of links throughout the database. The Author Identification function-unique to MathSciNet-assists in identifying authors and variations of authors' names as they appear in MR. Author Identification results can then be combined with other search criteria to further narrow a search. From the search results, users can mark records to display or download in multiple formats. Then within those records, researchers can follow via links the progression of an author's published works, reviews of those works, and how the works influenced other mathematicians' research. Access to the full-text reviews and cross-references online enables users to better understand the history, development, and applications of mathematical concepts. AMS Executive Director John Ewing notes that the addition of the full-text reviews is an important step towards achieving the potential of electronic publishing: "The full-text reviews combined with the network of links to original articles in 59 electronic journals enhance MathSciNet's value to the mathematical and scientific community and begins to establish the web of electronic literature for which we all aim." More information and a MathSciNet demo are available at www.ams.org/mathscinet/.