SIMBAD is kept up-to-date on a daily basis, as the result of the collaboration of the CDS team, in Strasbourg, with bibliographers in Observatoire de Paris (DASGAL), Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and Observatoire de Bordeaux (Laloë et al. [1993]; Laloë [1995]) who systematically scan the articles published in some 100 astronomy journals.
The references are updated very soon after reception of the journal issues, and in some cases directly from the journal table of contents, through agreements with the Editors. New data concerning the objects (identifiers, basic data), and new acronyms for catalogs or tables are being entered when appropriate.
The inclusion of a large catalogue in the database is often a long-term task which may span over several months or years; the collaboration of specialists in the different fields is systematically sought.
The improvement of the SIMBAD astronomical contents
relies on a network of collaborations: a list of the
main current contributors is given in Table 3.
More generally, help of other contributing institutes
and authors, too numerous to be cited here,
is gratefully acknowledged.
| Bibliography | Observatoire de Paris, |
| Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, | |
| and Observatoire de Bordeaux | |
| Astron. contents | GRAAL, Montpellier |
| Galaxies | Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées and |
| NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database | |
| Photometry | Observatoire de Genève and Institut d'Astronomie de Lausanne |
| Astrometry | Astronomisches Rechen Institut, |
| Heidelberg | |
| Binary stars | Observatoire de Besançon |
| High-energy | Observatoire de Strasbourg |
The data contained in SIMBAD are also permanently updated, as a result of errata, remarks from the bibliographers (during the scanning of the literature), integration of lists and catalogues, quality controls, or special efforts initiated by the CDS team to better cover some specific domains (e.g., multi-wavelength emitters and complex objects).
Requests for corrections, errata, or suggestions are regularly received from SIMBAD users through a dedicated hot line, at e-mail address question@simbad.u-strasbg.fr. A few dozens of messages are usually received every week, and processed on a daily basis by the member of the team who is on duty for that week, or transmitted to the key person in case of specialized questions. Remarks received from the users by this way are especially welcome, as they help the CDS team to improve the database contents through the scrutiny of specialists' eyes.
Developing new tools for quality control of the database is a major challenge for the future, and CDS is exploring possible solutions. Multivariate analysis applied to bibliographic information retrieval has been proven a possible tool for developing quality control in a database such as SIMBAD (Lesteven [1995]).
The advent of electronic publishing brings new perspectives for improvement and automation of the updating procedures.
In a first place, tables of contents of the major journals are now received electronically through the network, thanks to journal Editors and Publishers, thus reducing the risk of errors. Regularly, a number of electronic lists of objects are also folded into SIMBAD through semi-automatic procedures. The next step will be the automatic flagging of object names in the text of the articles: this has now become a very interesting medium-term goal.
Two ways of achieving this flagging are currently being considered:
\object{ } command within the TEX or
LATEX source, which will be eventually used to build
an anchor pointing towards SIMBAD, or another
database, in the on-line version made available
on the network. This approach has been adopted
by the Editors of Astronomy & Astrophysics;
The first approach seems safer, provided the authors understand what exactly they are being required, and accept this (minor) additional work load. The latter implies a lot of fine tuning from the system developers. The current experience with the handling of publications (Lesteven et al. [1998]) suggests that both approaches may be needed, and that a careful quality control, including final check by an expert, will probably remain necessary to avoid errors or misinterpretations, and to ensure appropriate completeness.
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