End-User Training for Sci-Tech Databases

Ellis Mount

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781000758047
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book, first published in 1990, analyses how to train end-users to search with both natural language and controlled vocabularies in the sciences, describes a planning assessment for implementing end-user searching in a sci-tech organization, examines how the scientists at a major industrial research organization have begun to do more online searching with the encouragement of the information center, and explores the proactive role that medical libraries have taken in training health care professionals to search MEDLINE.

A Chemical Abstracts Training Seminar for Science Librarians

Bruce Slutsky

SUMMARY. Science librarians at the New York Public Library without a strong educational background in chemistry often had difficulty in searching the printed Chemical Abstracts. A one-hour seminar was held to teach the fundamentals of Chemical Abstracts with an emphasis on finding references to well known chemical substances. Uses of the Index Guide, Author Index, General Subject Index, Chemical Substance Index, Chemical Formula Index, Patent Index, and Index of Ring Systems were shown. A brief discussion of online searching of Chemical Abstracts followed. Participants were given a set of exercises and a reading list of guides to the chemical literature.

The Science and Technology Research Center of the New York Public Library provides reference service in a wide range of disciplines in the physical sciences and applied technologies. A significant number of patrons request information about chemical products. The reference librarians, except for the author, do not have strong educational backgrounds in science. On several occasions they had difficulty answering chemistry reference questions. The aim of this seminar was to teach the fundamentals of searching the printed Chemical Abstracts to science librarians. Emphasis was placed on searching for known chemical products. Other sources such as the Merck Index, Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology, the Applied Science and Technology Index, Science Citation Index, and the Dictionary of Organic Compounds were discussed briefly. A secondary goal was to show how these sources can be used in conjunction with the printed Chemical Abstracts. A short discussion of online searching of the DIALOG Chemical Substance Files and the Chemical Abstracts bibliographic files followed.

Bruce Slutsky is Coordinator of Online Services for the New York Public Library, Science and Technology Research Center, 5th Ave. at 42nd St., New York, NY 10018. He received the BS (Chemistry) at City College of New York, MS (Chemistry) at University of Rhode Island, and MS (Information Science) at Pratt Institute. He previously worked as a chemist in the pharmaceutical and flavor and fragrances industries.

The training session was organized as follows:

I. Coverage and Organization of Chemical Abstracts

II. Use of Indexes

A. Author Index

B. General Subject Index

C. Chemical Substance Index

D. Chemical Formula Index

E. Patent Index

F. Index of Ring Systems

III. Online Searching of Chemical Abstracts

A. DIALOG Chemical Substance Files

B. Chemical Abstracts files on DIALOG

Exercises were provided to give the trainees experience in using the indexes as they were introduced. A set of exercises at the end of the session was given to test the trainees’ ability to use a variety of chemical literature sources. Many of these exercises were questions that were posed to reference librarians. A reading list of sources in the Science and Technology Research Center was provided.

I. COVERAGE AND ORGANIZATION OF CHEMICAL ABSTRACTS

Document Types Covered

1. Journal articles – including review articles.

2. Congresses and symposia proceedings.

3. Technical reports.

4. Deposited documents.

5. Dissertations.

6. New books and audio-visual materials.

7. Patents.

Nature of the Abstracts

They are not to be evaluative or critical. Their goal is to give the researcher quick access to the chemical content of the document sufficient to determine if the original document should be consulted. The abstracts include:

1. The purpose and scope of the reported work.

2. New reactions, substances, techniques, procedures, apparatus, and properties.

3. New applications.

4. Results of the investigations with the author’s interpretations and conclusions.

Chemical Abstracts is published weekly. The odd numbered issues contain:

20 Biochemistry sections

14 Organic Chemistry sections

The even numbered issues contain:

12 Macromolecular Chemistry sections (Polymer Science)

18 Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering sections

16 Physical, Inorganic, and Analytical Chemistry sections

80 sections in total.

Each issue includes a Keyword index, Patent index, and Author index for current awareness searching.

When is Chemical Abstracts not the appropriate source?

1. Business and company information.

2. Statistics.

3. For articles in general science magazines.

4. Clinical medicine – Some animal and in vitro studies are covered in the biochemistry sections.

5. Basic information that can be found in a textbook.

6. Physical Constants of common compounds (boiling point, melting point, density, solubility, etc.).

EXERCISE 1

Take 10 or 15 minutes to browse through 2 consecutive issues of Chemical Abstracts to see the vastness of the discipline of chemistry. Observe how it overlaps and interacts with the other physical and life sciences.

II. USE OF INDEXES

A. Author Index

B. General Subject Index

C. Chemical Substance Index

D. Chemical Formula Index

E. Patent Index

F. Index of Ring Systems

A. Author Index

1. Only the first author of a paper is directly searchable. See references are given for coauthors.

2. A corporate author will be given only for patents. A “P” in front of an abstract number indicates the document is a patent. Thus in CA you can search for chemical patents of a given company. If you are looking for journal papers published by scientists from a particular company or university you must search the Source Index of Science Citation Index. Such information may be found online by using the prefixed field CS = (Corporate Source).

EXERCISE 3

There is one paper in CA written by Bruce Slutsky. Find it.

EXERCISES 3

Find a patent by Hoffmann-LaRoche on dehydroxypantolactone 1985 or later.

B. General Subject Index

As you can see in Table 1, the General Subject Index (GSI) was not a separate entity until the 9th Collective Index. Before that time chemical substances and subjects were combined into the Subject Index. The following subjects are covered (examples are taken from the index for Volume 105):

1. Classes of chemical substances – Alcohols

2. Subject terms – Boilers

3. Physical...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Teaching Controlled Vocabulary and Natural Language to End-Users of Scientific Online and CD-ROM Databases
• End-User Searching in the Corporate Research Setting: A Planning Assessment at Sandia National Laboratories
• Promoting and Supporting End-User Online Searching in an Industrial Research Environment: A Survey of Experiences at Exxon Research and Engineering Company
• The Role of Medical Libraries in End-User Searching: Teaching the MEDLINE Database to Health Care Professionals
• A Chemical Abstracts Training Seminar for Science Librarians
• Special Paper
• Sci-Tech Collections
• Sci-Tech in Review
• Sci-Tech Online
• New Reference Works in Science and Technology