The ADS Abstract Service: A Free Search System for Literature in Astronomy, Planetary Sciences, Physics, Geophysics, and Instrumentation.

The Astrophysics Data System (ADS) provides access to the astronomical literature through the World Wide Web. It is a NASA funded project and access to all the ADS services is free to everybody world-wide. The ADS Abstract Service allows searching of four databases with abstracts in Astronomy, Instrumentation, Physics/Geophysics, and the astro-ph Preprints with a total of almost 2.5 million references in the databases. The system also provides access to reference and citation information, links to on-line data and other on-line information, and to on-line electronic journals. In addition the ADS has 1.9 million scanned article pages from about 250,000 articles, dating back as far as 1829. The ADS Article Service contains the full articles for most of the astronomical literature back to volume 1. It contains the scanned pages of all the major journals in Astronomy (Astrophysical Journal, Astronomical Journal, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and Solar Physics), as well as most smaller journals back to volume 1 for each of these journals. One important aspect of the ADS is the system of links to other data systems. We have currently more than 6 million links to other on-line resources, including on-line data and on-line journal articles. There are currently more than 10,000 regular users (more than 10 queries/month). The total number of users is greater than 50,000 per month. They issue almost 1 million queries per month and receive more than 30 million records and 1.2 million scanned article pages per month. The ADS is accessed from almost 100 countries. Approximately 1/3 of the use is from the USA, 1/3 from Europe, and 1/3 from the rest of the world. Usage depends primarily on the number of astronomers in each country, but also on the Gross Domestic Product of that country. In order to improve access from different parts of the world, we maintain 9 mirror sites of the ADS in Brazil, Chile, China, England, France, Germany, India, Japan, and Russia. The ADS can be accessed at: http://ads.harvard.edu The ADS is funded by NASA Grant NCC5-189