HCI Bibliography : Frequently Asked Questions

How can I get a copy of an article, book, or other item?

There are several options available to obtain full articles/books. The HCI Bibliography does not provide or find articles/books.

Links to Full Text: There are thousands of links from records to online full text. Many are in HTML, but most require a plugin-viewer like Adobe Acrobat to read PDF files. Many articles are free, but most required subscription/authorization; usually, failed authorizations lead to subscription information.
Library Access: Many technical libraries have major publications in their collections, or can obtain them for you through interlibrary loan.
Publishers: Most records in the HCI Bibliography include a copyright statement that indicates the publisher. Contact information for most publishers of materials in the HCI Bibliography is listed in the file publish.html. Some records for books and proceedings contain links to the publisher Web pages from which you can make a purchase.
Bookstores: Books and proceedings can often be obtained from bookstores, including online ones such as amazon.com.

Many of the links to online articles require an account/password! How can I get free copies?

Here are some approaches:

The cost for accounts is often very reasonable, especially for students.
For recent works, I sometimes have success entering the whole title for an article into a major search engine. The results include a link to an online version of the work (e.g.. preprint) at the author's site.

How can I get some items added to the database? How are articles chosen for inclusion?

Thank you for volunteering to do data entry for the project! The technical specifications for the data are available, but please contact the project before investing a lot of work.

Materials are added to the database based on broad relevance to HCI, availability of metadata, copyright permissions, and availability of resources to incorporate the materials. Generally, larger units of materials (e.g., journal volumes, conference proceedings) are included in their entirety, as well as individual books.

Individual Articles

The HCI Bibliography can include individual articles or book chapters by adding them to an annual file (e.g., 1999, 2003).

Larger Units: Conferences, Journals, etc.

Adding a new area of coverage requires some general information about the conference (organization web site, first year, etc) or journal (publisher/journal web site, first year, editors, issn). In many cases, the web sites will have links to archives, and those can be processed to gather data. Here are the fields we try to fill. If you want to supply some records, see the raw format of similar files, and get some feedback before putting in a lot of work.

Conference Proceedings

%T: Proceedings title
%C: City of meeting
%D: Dates of meeting
%G: ISBN, ISSN, etc.
%E: Editors (repeatable)
%P: Pages (total in proceedings)
%W: web link to conference home page
%W: web link to proceedings

Conference Papers

%S: session name
%T: paper title
%A: author, last name last (repeatable)
%P: pages, or at least first page
%X: abstract
%K: keywords
%W: web link to full text or citation page

Some fields are added to all records with a script: %D (date), %B (book/proceedings title), %V (volume, if applicable)

Journals Papers

%S: section name (if applicable)
%T: paper title
%A: author, last name last (repeatable)
%P: pages, or at least first page
%X: abstract
%K: keywords
%W: web link to full text or citation page
%V: volume
%N: issue number

Some fields are added to all records with a script: %D (date), %J (journal title)

How are suggested links added to the HCI Webliography?

Suggested links are evaluated for their relation to HCI. If they have little or no HCI content, they will not be included. Any mention of "web site optimization" is an almost sure way of not being included.
Data on suggested sites will be edited for appropriateness. Promotional material will be removed, suggested categories may be modified, and even the suggested title will be modified. For example, if a company called WonderCHI submits a title like "The best user interfaces in the world" the edited title might be "WonderCHI User Interfaces"; and a description like "Our world-class user interface designers will build a website that will double your sales overnight!" might be changed to "Website user interface design focusing on increasing sales".
Location information and non-English languages are commonly edited to be consistent with other entries.
Offers of link exchange (e.g., you link to us and we link to you) are ignored.
Pages can be in languages other than English, but they will still be reviewed for content (using automated translation). Non-English pages should indicate the page language in the HTML (on the <html> tag).

Are advertising links accepted?

No, but if you have a web site that is relevant, you can suggest it with a Suggest-a-Link form.

How can I hire someone with HCI-related skills?

Job Boards: Many organizations have job boards where employers can post (sometimes for a fee). ACM SIGCHI has one called CHI-JOBS, which is free and has over 2000 subscribers. Check the CHI-JOBS archives for formats. Other organizations can be found on the HCI Webliography Organizations page, but some to check out include:

Conferences: A lot of hiring is done at conferences, so employers can attend conferences in their area of interest and use the job board, host an event, etc. To find conferences of interest:

Search the HCI Bibliography for some terms of interest (e.g., ubiquitous computing)
Note the Sources (e.g., CHI, IUI, HCII, UIST conferences)
Limit to individual conferences to see what papers were presented and which are most interesting (e.g., IUI conference papers)
Look into attending the conference - the last record for a conference usually has links to the conference home page, usually with links to all conferences

Some upcoming conferences are listed on Hans de Graaff's Conferences and Workshops page.

HCI Bibliography : Frequently Asked Questions

List of Questions

Answers to Questions

Individual Articles

Larger Units: Conferences, Journals, etc.