American Chemical Society
Teaching Chemical Information:
Tips and Techniques
— March 1998 —
Drexel University: Chemistry 767: Chemical Information Retrieval
Course Information:
| Time and Place: | Wednesdays, 5:30–7:30 P.M., Korman Center 249 |
|---|---|
| Instructor: | A.L. Smith, xt 1861, Stratton 414, email: asmith@coasmail.drexel.edu. This course is open to undergraduates with the permission of the instructor (no auditors, please). |
| Text: | Chemical Information Sources, by Gary Wiggins, McGraw-Hill, 1991. |
| Grading: | In-class quizzes, 20%; in-class final exam, 20%; homework assignments, 60% |
The purpose of this two-credit graduate course is to give the student the command of the chemical literature needed to solve chemical information proglems, emphasizing on-line information retrieval services but also using print media. All students must have signed the Hagerty Library agreement for use of DIALOG’s databases through the Classroom Instruction Program.
Syllabus:
Introductory questionnaire; your chemical information needs and experience.
The Chemical Literature: what it is, and where it comes from. Primary, secondary, tertiary literature; historical development, as mirrored through Chemical Abstracts Statistical Summary, 1907–1993.
Using the print Chemical Abstracts; importance of indexes.
Electronic mail, Dragnet (Drexel’s on-line catalog), campus network (MSDS’s on-line) and the Internet (Netscape).
Using Handbooks: CRC, Merck, Sigma-Aldrich catalog, Chapman-Hall Dictionary of Organic Compounds; more specialized handbooks. Importance of indexes: the Limonene problem.
Making your own bibliographic database with a flat-file database program: records, fields, reports. Demonstration of EndNote, a professional bibliographic database.
General techniques and benefits of computer-based searching: database vendors, search strategies. Basic command syntax, Boolean and proximity operators, importance of indexes.
Searching Chemical Abstracts on DIALOG: CA SEARCH. Assn. 3 from Cooke.
Retrieving current DIALOG Bluesheets from the Knight-Ridder World-wide Web site.
Information Sources for Chemical Compounds: the Registry File, DIALOG’s CHEMSEARCH. Cooke’s assn. 6.
Citation Searching: DIALOG’s SCISEARCH for forward searching. Example: Wolfgang Kratschmer, the discoverer of a way to make C60 fullerene. The Gasteiger problem.
Organic structure searching by using name and ring fragment in CHEMNAME. Limonene reprise. Cooke’s assn. 16.
Searching which involves chemical and physical properties of substances: the Beilstein database. DIALOG’s BEILSTEIN. Limonene again.
Computer representation of molecular structure (3-d coordinate tables, connection tables, ROSDAL strings…). Demonstration of Molecular Editor. Structure and substructure searching in Beilstein. Exercises in ROSDAL strings. Substructures of Limonene.