Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:57, 28 June 2009

Revision as of 18:38, 22 October 2009

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In the early 1970s, an evaluation of this system resulted in the decision to implement a new system for use by faculty, staff and students at [[Stanford University]]. SPIRES was renamed the '''Stanford Public Information Retrieval System'''. The new development took place under a National Science Foundation grant headed by Edwin B. Parker, principal investigator. SPIRES joined forces with the BALLOTS project to create a bibliographic citation retrieval system and quickly evolved into a generalized information retrieval and data base management system that could meet the needs of a large and diverse computing community.

SPIRES was rewritten in PL360, a block structured programming language designed explicitly for IBM/360-compatible hardware. The primary authors were: Thomas H. Martin, Dick Guertin and Bill Kiefer.  John Schroeder was the manager of the SPIRES project during this early phase of development.

Eventually, BALLOTS split off from SPIRES and the '''[[Research Libraries Group''']] adopted SPIRES as its data base engine while providing a graphical interface to its clients. ''Socrates'' was a library circulation management system rooted in SPIRES.

SPIRES became the primary database management system for Stanford University business and student services in the 1980s and 90s. It was also adopted by about two dozen other universities, including installations using the Michigan Terminal System (MTS), and VM/CMS. These universities collaborated through annual meetings of the SPIRES Consortium.

In 2004, SPIRES was migrated off the mainframe onto Unix platforms by means of an IBM-mainframe Emulator developed by Dick Guertin. The DBMS now runs on [[Unix]] , [[Linux]] or [[Darwin (operating system)]] and is available under [[Mozilla Public License]] from [http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/support/uspires/index.html Stanford University ITS]

== SPIRES High Energy Physics database (SPIRES-HEP) ==

The SPIRES High Energy Physics database (SPIRES-HEP),<ref>[http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires SPIRES High Energy Physics database]</ref> installed at [[Stanford Linear Accelerator Center]] (SLAC) in the 1970s<ref>[http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires/find/hep/www?r=SLAC-PUB-7110 The Virtual library in action: Collaborative international control of high-energy physics preprints Kreitz, P.A. et al.]</ref>, became the first database accessible through the [[World Wide Web]] in 1991<ref>[http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/earlyweb/history.shtml The Early World Wide Web at SLAC: Early Chronology and Documents<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. It has since expanded into a joint project of SLAC, [[Fermilab]], and [[DESY]], with mirrors hosted at those institutions as well as at the [[Institute for High Energy Physics]] (Russia), the [[University of Durham]] (UK), the [[Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics]] at [[Kyoto University]] (Japan), and

the [[Indonesian Institute of Sciences]] LIPI (Indonesia). This project stores bibliographic information about the literature of the field of [[High Energy Physics]] and is an example of [[academic databases and search engines]]. It is accessible at [http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires SPIRES High Energy Physics database].

== Operating platforms ==

SPIRES currently runs on lunic, [[Linux]] and [[Darwin (operating system)]] platforms. Its primary use today is for the world [[physics]] communities, and &quot;"legacy&quot;" data at Stanford University.

== References ==

{{reflist}}

== External links ==

* [http://www.stanford.edu/dept/its/support/uspires/index.html SPIRES software at Stanford ITS]

* [http://www.slac.stanford.edu/spires SPIRES High Energy Physics database]

[[Category:Stanford University]]