- Email: [email protected]
From CA to CAS online databases in chemistry
Pergamon
0097~8485(95)00026-7
Computers Chem. Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 283-284, 1996 Copyright 0 1996 Elwier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0097-8485/96 $15.00 + 0.00
BOOK REVIEW
From CA to CAS Online Databases in Chemistry by
GOPHER
Hedda Schulz and Ursula Georgy. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2nd, completely revised and enlarged edition (1994). ISBN 3-540-57483-2, XV + 311 pp. Hardback 98.00.
will bring up a menu of gopher selections. If you select: NISS
DM
for the National Information on Software and Services, then a new menu will allow you to choose from a number of services. Typing:
‘Having knowledge is very fine; knowing where to find it is even better!’ This statement is very heartening to undergraduates, but becomes much more difficult to put into practice in later life. One of the current problems is information overload; how do we find, let alone interpret, information that may be relevant to our own sphere of work? This book, written by Hedda Schulz and Ursula Georgy, is a revised and enlarged 2nd edition of a former (1988) book on databases in chemistry, and is certainly an aid to information retrieval in the chemical sciences. The current volume includes much information on on-line searches. The book is divided into two sections. The first, of 123 pp., covers the history and organisation of printed chemical abstracts, and illustrates how to obtain abbreviated items of information. The second, of 166 pp., covers databases and gives example searches to illustrate the difference between printed and on-line services. There is a short bibliography, and 10 pp. of glossary of terms. The first section, on printed abstracts, is well written and generously illustrated with examples, including “What was published about the plasticizer DOS in Vol. 118?“, “Are there any recent publications on the therapy of cardiac arrest?“, “Does CA Vol. 118 contain references to the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis?“, “What are the contents of the patents US $158,840 and CH 609,340?“, and “Carry out a comprehensive search for literature concerning the substance piceol?“. Example searches are also given for molecular formulae. The second section illustrates one of the problems of any book which describes work involving computers-it very quickly becomes out of date. While the procedures given to access the on-line databases are comprehensive and clearly elucidated, a number of current computational tools are not mentioned. These include gophers, and the World Wide Web. I therefore tried to access CAS using a gopher, and using www, and found that in both cases the procedures were very straightforward. If you have a program such as Telnet for access to e-mail via JANET or another network, then typing:
T will produce a menu of bibliographic which you can select:
services, from
C the STN Scientific and Technical Information Network, which contains many databases produced by the Chemical Abstracts Service, and which are described in Chapter 7 of the book. Alternatively, if you use Netscape, Mosaic, Cello. or a similar program to access the World Wide Web. then location: http://www.chem.ucla.edu/chempointers.html provides many useful pointers to chemistry departments worldwide as well as the chemical literature including Chemical Abstracts. Location: http://info.cas.org/welcome.html is the ‘Home Page’ for Chemical Abstracts Services; http://info.cas.org/about.html provides general information
about CAS;
http://info.cas.org/prod.html provides information
on CAS products and services;
http://info.cas.org/supp.html provides information ing;
on customer support and train-
http://info.cas.org/new.html provides information
on what’s new from CAS; and
http://info.cas.org/ONLINE/CATALOG/ descripthtml gives a complete description of the STN database catalogue. Having accessed the databases you require, recourse to this book gives many useful examples of 283
284
Book
on-line searches, with figures showing graphical output from the databases. A good example is provided by searches to the CASREACT database, which can provide information on numbers of reaction steps in a given multi-step reaction sequence. This book is a very helpful introduction to both printed and on-line databases in chemistry, and
Review should be a valuable addition to every chemistry library. It should also be useful to students and researchers in academia and industry who routinely use computers for information retrieval. James Crabbe Editor
0097~8485(95)00026-7
Computers Chem. Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 283-284, 1996 Copyright 0 1996 Elwier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0097-8485/96 $15.00 + 0.00
BOOK REVIEW
From CA to CAS Online Databases in Chemistry by
GOPHER
Hedda Schulz and Ursula Georgy. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2nd, completely revised and enlarged edition (1994). ISBN 3-540-57483-2, XV + 311 pp. Hardback 98.00.
will bring up a menu of gopher selections. If you select: NISS
DM
for the National Information on Software and Services, then a new menu will allow you to choose from a number of services. Typing:
‘Having knowledge is very fine; knowing where to find it is even better!’ This statement is very heartening to undergraduates, but becomes much more difficult to put into practice in later life. One of the current problems is information overload; how do we find, let alone interpret, information that may be relevant to our own sphere of work? This book, written by Hedda Schulz and Ursula Georgy, is a revised and enlarged 2nd edition of a former (1988) book on databases in chemistry, and is certainly an aid to information retrieval in the chemical sciences. The current volume includes much information on on-line searches. The book is divided into two sections. The first, of 123 pp., covers the history and organisation of printed chemical abstracts, and illustrates how to obtain abbreviated items of information. The second, of 166 pp., covers databases and gives example searches to illustrate the difference between printed and on-line services. There is a short bibliography, and 10 pp. of glossary of terms. The first section, on printed abstracts, is well written and generously illustrated with examples, including “What was published about the plasticizer DOS in Vol. 118?“, “Are there any recent publications on the therapy of cardiac arrest?“, “Does CA Vol. 118 contain references to the Fischer-Tropsch synthesis?“, “What are the contents of the patents US $158,840 and CH 609,340?“, and “Carry out a comprehensive search for literature concerning the substance piceol?“. Example searches are also given for molecular formulae. The second section illustrates one of the problems of any book which describes work involving computers-it very quickly becomes out of date. While the procedures given to access the on-line databases are comprehensive and clearly elucidated, a number of current computational tools are not mentioned. These include gophers, and the World Wide Web. I therefore tried to access CAS using a gopher, and using www, and found that in both cases the procedures were very straightforward. If you have a program such as Telnet for access to e-mail via JANET or another network, then typing:
T will produce a menu of bibliographic which you can select:
services, from
C the STN Scientific and Technical Information Network, which contains many databases produced by the Chemical Abstracts Service, and which are described in Chapter 7 of the book. Alternatively, if you use Netscape, Mosaic, Cello. or a similar program to access the World Wide Web. then location: http://www.chem.ucla.edu/chempointers.html provides many useful pointers to chemistry departments worldwide as well as the chemical literature including Chemical Abstracts. Location: http://info.cas.org/welcome.html is the ‘Home Page’ for Chemical Abstracts Services; http://info.cas.org/about.html provides general information
about CAS;
http://info.cas.org/prod.html provides information
on CAS products and services;
http://info.cas.org/supp.html provides information ing;
on customer support and train-
http://info.cas.org/new.html provides information
on what’s new from CAS; and
http://info.cas.org/ONLINE/CATALOG/ descripthtml gives a complete description of the STN database catalogue. Having accessed the databases you require, recourse to this book gives many useful examples of 283
284
Book
on-line searches, with figures showing graphical output from the databases. A good example is provided by searches to the CASREACT database, which can provide information on numbers of reaction steps in a given multi-step reaction sequence. This book is a very helpful introduction to both printed and on-line databases in chemistry, and
Review should be a valuable addition to every chemistry library. It should also be useful to students and researchers in academia and industry who routinely use computers for information retrieval. James Crabbe Editor