Scientific Literature Search

Vienna, Austria

... may nowadays easily be confused with Vienna, Virginia, or even Venice, Italy. But if you turn the clock back a century, you find a vibrant city that is one of the world's centers of culture, arts, and science. Vienna is as unlikely to return to its former glory as Austria is to regain its now-defunct empire, but the history of the city still abounds.

Testimony to the city's former scientific prowess can be found in its many libraries. And although libraries, in Vienna and elsewhere, are working to digitalize their collections using custom-made, automated book scanners, the dearth of funds will prevent these efforts from being concluded any time soon.

Academicians residing in English-speaking countries, therefore, will often find it hard to get their hands on certain old German-language publications they've seen referenced somewhere. And here's where I come in: I will scour Vienna's libraries for those old gems, scan and subsequently summarize or translate them.

In the catacombs of the library of the University of Vienna

Summaries

Decades ago, the practice of providing abstracts was far from universal. Many lengthy German treatises came with no summary whatsoever, other articles had a German-only summary, while some few provided summaries in German, English, and French.

I readily translate the summary of Biology-related articles or compose a summary myself. Often enough, it is only certain bits of information that are of interest, and a 'focused' summary or the translation of certain paragraphs may be sufficient.