The Bibliographic CAS Databases

The bibliographic CA database has been compiled since 1967. It includes all the index entries from Chemical Abstracts, complete bibliographic information, and text of all the abstracts published since 1969 as well as the texts of most of the abstracts which appeared between 1967 and 1969. This database known as the CA File is accessible for online searches (Sect. 7.3) and contains over 11 million references and 10 million abstracts. 

The literature before 1967 is included retrospectively in the database CAOLD, which, in the meantime, contains 700,000 references to 1.4 million substances, which were mentioned before 1967, and 152.000 references to patents. For this database Chemical Abstracts Service scans bit by bit the Formula Index of the Sixth (1957-1961) and the Seventh (1962-1966) Collective Period. Therefore only substance references are contained in this database with no text information or even abstracts. However, cross-references to patents are marked with P. Using this database you have to consider that the chemical nomenclature in those days was quite different to the names in use today. Therefore an online search in CAOLD should be proceded by a search in the Registry File (Sect. 7.6) and then continued with the appropriate CAS Registry Number in CAOLD. 

To offer the most recent literature references even more rapidly, the database CApreviews was created. It contains only bibliographic information and a few abstracts before the complete abstract records are published 8 to 10 weeks later in CA. This database includes only the most recent 120,000 entries, older ones are deleted. It is updated daily 2000 literature references are recorded each day, 300 to 400 of them are patents (Sect. 7.5). 

Since the 1970s, the Chemical Abstracts Service has compiled information about developments in management, marketing, and production in the chemical and allied industries. Furthermore, laws and rules applying to this industrial field have been extracted from the appropriate industry and economics journals and recorded in the database of chemical economics literature. From this, the 

The comprehensive CAS information system has been developed from all the databases of the Chemical Abstracts Service (Fig. 3). In the following chapters the contents of the numerous information services of the Chemical Abstracts Service will be discussed in detail and, in particular, their use will be demonstrated with the aid of several examples. The success of a literature search - whether manual or computer-assisted - depends on how exactly and, at the same time, flexibly the searcher can state his problem. This means that he must not only find the precise terminology for the chemical fact or substance being sought, but also determine all possible aspects under which the subject of his search could be mentioned or researched. These two considerations must not necessarily be resolved prior to the search for literature. In fact, they constitute the first step in the search itself and can be carried out with the aid of Chemical Abstracts or, more precisely, with the indexes to Chemical Abstracts. However, this necessitates a thorough knowledge of the particular indexes and the searcher must be aware of which information - even in abbreviated form - is contained in which index. 

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