Online searching

Before adding online databases to the printed sources of information, searchers should be well aware that they cannot be used as simply as a book is chosen. Online beginners will have to familiarize themselves with the following items  

Furthermore, for those who wish to use their own online work station, neutral and independent advice is largely available from private information brokers. They are part of a specialized group of consultants and they can do more than just help in the field of technical preliminaries and contracts, being information professionals, they are also able to assist with the first search queries. Professional advice may also lead to a well-based decision to whether or not money and time spent on such a newly established complete work station is justifiable, or whether to hand over online information retrieval to information professionals (see Sect. 10). 

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National Standards Association, Inc. 5161 River Road Bethesda, Md. 20816 Maintains a standards and specifications database for online searching of government and industry standards, specifications, and related documents (see Databases). 

Size of the database industry can be measured in terms of the number of database records, databases, database entries in CRDB, database producers, database vendors, or online searches. Growth in number of database entries, databases, producers, and vendors is plotted in Figure 1. The slowest growth is at the vendor level, the fastest growth is in database files. 

Provides access to EPA information for United States and international requests, and has a range of information sen>-ices consisting of environmental and related subjects of interest to EPA staff, including online searching of commercial databases. The focus of the IRC collection is on environmental regulations, policy, planning, and administration. Hours 8 a.m. - 5p.m., Monday - Friday ESP... 

For abstracts printed since 1967 (the eighth collective period and later), CA can be searched by computer online. For a discussion of online searching see pages. 1616, 1631. 

Until recently searching the chemical literature meant looking only at printed materials (some of which might be on microfilm or microfiche). Now, however, much of the literature can be searched online, including some of the most important. Whether the search is online or uses only the printed material, there are two basic types of search, (1) searches for information about one or more specific compounds or classes of compounds, and (2) other types of searches. First, we will discuss searches using only printed materials, and then online searching. ... 

As so far described, online searching is faster then searching the printed CA, but gives us essentially the same information. The scope of the online method is much greater than that, for it allows us to combine words, in a number of ways. One such way is by the use of the terms AND, NOT, and OR. If we search AMBIDENT AND NUCLEOPHILE, we will get something like this... 

For a monograph that covers both online searching and searching using printed materials, see Wiggins, G. Chemical Information Sources McGraw-Hill NY, 1991. 

Note References are randomly selected by online search. 

Note Literature selected randomly by online search. 

The website http //www.annualreviews.org/ offers online searching capability to the entire Annual Reviews series. The Annual Reviews of Biochemistry and Annual Reviews of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure are of most pertinence to... 

The Chemical Incidents Report Center (CIRC) is an incident database initiated by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. An online search of this database (www.chemsafety.gov/circ), as well as a more general web search, may be a good starting point for a literature survey. 

Also, essays may be assessed by using anti-plagiarism programs and online searches. 

The website http //www.annualreviews.org/ offers online searching capability to the entire Annual Reviews series. Annual Reviews publishes authoritative, analytic reviews in 32 focused disciplines within the Biomedical, Physical, and Social Sciences. The Annual Reviews of Biochemistry and Annual Reviews of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure are of most pertinence to bioinorganic chemists. This nonprofit, by-subscription, scientific publisher provides free searching of the site and no-cost abstract retrieval. 

Lambert N (1991) Online searching of polymer patents precision and recall. J Chem Inf Comput Sci 31 443-446... 

Online searching means using a computer terminal to search a database. Although databases in chemistry are available from several organizations, by far the most important such or-... 

Instead of painstakingly reading the employment section of your newspaper, which is time-consuming and typically lists only jobs in your geographic area, free services like The Monster Board allow you to use keyword searches to find the job opportunities for which you re most suited. The best thing about performing these online searches is that it doesn t take hours—it takes seconds. 

D. Ridley, Online Searching A Scientist s Perspective—A Guide for the Chemical and Life Sciences (1996), John Wiley Sons (New York). A review of database availability... 

Standard and chemical Office software. Databases for the storage and retrieval of information generated in the laboratory, with search software. Document management LIMS. Online searching of external databases, catalogues and other information. Electronic Notebooks. Knowledge Management. 

D. Rehm, F. P. Monforts, and M. Ockenfeld, Online Search in the Chemical Abstracts Service Data Base. An Introduction to the SDC/Orbit System, Verlag Chemie, Weinheim, 1982. 

Software and Online Sources of Chemical Properties. Larson et al.28 and Andren et al.16 provide a thorough listing of electronic databases and online search engines for environmental fate properties. Very useful online databases for these parameters include Syracuse Research Corporation s (SRC s) (Syracuse, NY) Environmental Fate Database (EFDB) and the Hazardous Substances DataBank available at http //toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/. The SRC Web site... 

The most important factor that determines the possibility of using a format for online searching is the existence of a canonical form of the format. Without canonical encoding, there are simply too many possibilities of search input (even just the most probable ones) that would have to be tried. 

Lastly, we should take into account the probability that the user will use our particular format for searching. This fact depends not only on how well established the format is, in which SMILES would probably win and InChIKey would be an outsider, but also on the user s perception of which format is suitable for this task. Because InChl, and InChIKey even more, were marketed from the beginning as suitable for online searches, it is very likely that the user will use one of these formats for searching, rather than SMILES, which does not have such an association. Of course, we could solve this problem by simply publishing our data in all three formats. The decision should be made based on our resources, but it is in general very easy to convert between the formats automatically. 

A convenient source of information about the commercial availability of some 200,000 chemicals is M. Desing (ed.), Chem Sources—USA, published annually by Chemical Sources International, Clemson, SC 29633 in book format and as a CD-ROM. There is also a Chem Sources—Online search engine see www.chemsources.com. Many suppliers of chemicals maintain online catalogues that can be accessed on the Web. 

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