Teaching Chemical Information:
Tips and Techniques

— August 1998 —

Core Resources: Secondary Literature: Structure and Reaction Databases

Teaching Points

• Structures are the language of chemists
• Structures are unambiguous, no need to deal with name variations
• Substructure searching allows questions that cant be asked via a keyword search
• Substructure searching can reinforce chemical principles
  • Bond variations, tautomerism
  • Functional group activity

Reality Check

• Structure/reaction databases are expensive and can be tricky to search
• May need to be creative in introducing students to these resources
  • Demo disks
  • Excerpts from training manuals

Teaching Materials

• Chemical Abstracts Documentation
  • Structure Searching in The CAS Registry File
  • Practice Problems for Basic Structure Searching Workshops
• Descriptions of major structure/reaction databases

Grace Baysinger, Head Librarian and Bibliographer
Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library, Stanford University Libraries
graceb@stanford.edu