INTERNET SOURCES FOR CHEMISTRY MAJOR STUDENTS

Meskó Eszter, dr. <mesko@chem.u-szeged.hu>

SZTE Szerves Kémiai Tanszék

Pálinkó István, dr. <palinko@chem.u-szeged.hu>

SZTE Szerves Kémiai Tanszék

"The essence of science is communication" (F.H.C. Crick, Nobel Prize laureate in Physiology or Medicine 1962, for his work concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material)

A student who intends to become a practising chemist, or to do research in allied fields of science and medicine should be able to find chemical information efficiently. Nowadays, at the Department of Chemistry of University of Szeged library skills are imparted in two ways. The use of Chemical Abstract is taught formally by the librarian of the Department. The other way is through integration into other chemistry courses (e.g., laboratory practice, research courses) monitored by faculty members.

This lecture will present the outline and the exercises of the Chemical Information Retrieval course, which is a new, non-compulsory, one-semester course in the chemistry curriculum. The aim of this course is to show how to handle the rapidly growing amount of chemical information.

Course details

Introductory principles:

characteristics of information, especially of electronic information; types of information resources.

The use of the basic tools of electronic information technology:

to create and process electronic files of different format; Internet, www, e-mail, attaching file.

Searching the web:

search engines, catalogues, portal sites; evaluating website content.

Chemistry on the web:

OPAC - library catalogues

electronic journals

NPA - database of periodicals in Hungarian libraries

MSDS - chemical and other safety information

ChemWeb.com - information for the chemical research and the chemical industry

EISZ - the national information project of the Ministry of Education for the higher education and academic research

SCI-Expanded - Science Citation Index Expanded

PubMed - the database of biomedical literature

USPTO - patent database of the United States.

Review of databases:

coverage, type, searching methods, displaying and processing search results, special services.

Search of databases

search fields, Boolean operators, wildcards, main steps of database searching.