Chemistry Division Special Libraries Association

Chemistry Division Poster Session
Monday June 11
12 Noon to 1:15 PM

Sponsored by American Chemical Society Publications

Alice Primack
Marston Science Library
Univ. of Florida

Web-Based Outreach at University of Florida

At the University of Florida we find that approximately twice the number of people use our Libraries' web site from outside the Libraries (elsewhere on campus, or home) as use it in the Libraries! The UF Libraries want to serve these users whereever they are, so we have created what we sometimes call our tenth library in addition to our nine physical locations on campus. This virtual library provides electronic access to many of our resources, instruction in library research skills, and online interactive "chat" reference service as well as e-mail reference.

This poster paper will show examples of our virtual library and instructional web pages and present information about our electronic reference services. Virtual Library and instructional web includes such resources as electronic books and journals, Subject Guide bibliographies of print and Internet resources, tutorials, and web pages for specific academic courses. Drawing on our experience with a pilot project and subsequent implementation and five months experience providing chat reference service with commercial software from e-Share, we will share background information on staff recruitment, staff training, setting hours of operation, and publicity, examples of questions we get, and follow up data about usage and our survey of customer satisfaction.

Tina E. Chrzastowski
University of Illinois at Urbana
chrz@uiuc.edu

Delivering Top Priority Materials to Users Via the Web: Online Class Reserves at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Chemistry Library

Web delivery of class reserve materials, now in its fourth year at the UIUC Chemistry Library, serves a large, demanding user population by providing 24-hour access to class reserve materials including notes, tests, e-books, articles, and even short videos on, for example, molecular modeling. Print class reserves (excluding most monographs), with their high theft and mutilation rate, have been all but banned from this library. Instead, teaching faculty or graduate assistants bring in items to be scanned and placed on online reserves each semester. Emailed or electronic files are also accepted for online reserves. When available, e-books are welcome additions to class required reading (a print book collection remains as part of the Reserves Collection). Copyright restrictions have been addressed with a library-wide copyright policy on electronic reserves. To gauge acceptance of the gradual move to online-only reserves, weekly statistics were kept on one class' use of online reserves and a questionnaire was administered to the class at the end of the semester. This poster session will display screen shots of the online reserves web site, discuss copyright and other logistical operations of the site, and will detail survey results of the students' responses to online reserves.

Jan Kuras
Chemweb.com

ChemWeb.com: The online information resource for the chemical community

ChemWeb.com maintains an innovative 'one-stop site' for chemists to support their daily research activities, whilst creating a worldwide virtual community and exploiting web technology. This poster will highlight some of the services ChemWeb has developed for its Members. The ChemWeb Library and Databases allow Members to search and browse over 170 scientific journals from a range of publishers and access over 30 chemical information databases. The Alchemist is ChemWeb's lively daily online magazine containing news, features, book reviews and worldwide conference coverage. The Chemistry Preprint Server allows chemists to post articles online prior to publication, where fellow chemists can read, review and comment on the articles - it is the first preprint server for chemists. The Shopping Mall offers chemistry-related books and software, plus a Vendor Directory of companies selling chemicals, labware and other products and services for chemists.

Linda Shackle
Noble Science and Engineering Library
Arizona State University
linda.shackle@asu.edu

"The 24/7 Chemistry Librarian or What to do When Cloning is not an Option"

Do your customers and colleagues wish that your expertise was available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and from any location? Do you spend so much time on answering reference questions and assisting customers that you are unable to get your other work done? You could try to get on a waiting list for when human clones are technologically possible -OR- you could do something more immediate and effective --- try a web page! Web pages provide the opportunity for you to make your knowledge and professional expertise available on a 24/7 basis. Customers have the opportunity to have their questions answered from locations that are convenient to them, such as their home or office. Your colleagues will be able to assist customers in your area of expertise even when you're not available. This poster session will show how Arizona State University's Science and Engineering Library makes my 25+ years of experience as a chemistry librarian conveniently available to customers and colleagues alike. Additionally, you will be given ideas on how to use this technique at your own site."

David Flaxbart
University of Texas at Austin
flaxbart@uts.cc.utexas.edu

"VIRTUALIZING" YOUR REFERENCE COLLECTION: USING THE THERMODEX DATABASE TO MINE A PRINT COLLECTION FOR THERMODYNAMIC INFORMATION

What happens when your users are increasingly dependent on remote access, but the best sources of data are still only in print? One idea is to build a virtual bridge between users and the still-useful print collections. ThermoDex is a web-based finding aid developed by the Mallet Chemistry Library at the Univ. of Texas at Austin, that indexes over 220 data collections and handbooks. ThermoDex allows a user anywhere to identify specific printed resources that might contain particular types of data. Consistent indexing is provided for Property names and Compound types. A search interface queries the database and returns a list of handbooks that might contain the data sought. ThermoDex offers a way to rediscover underutilized sources that might otherwise be overlooked or omitted because of their scattered locations or arcane indexing. Users without ready access to the print tools can seek the data with the mediation of a reference librarian. Recent additions to the database include links to selected free Web sites that also provide reliable thermodynamic and physical data.

Marion Peters
Science & Engineering Library
University of California, Los Angeles
mpeters@library.ucla.edu

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Chemical Information

Electronic resources featured on the UCLA Science & Engineering Web site provide students and researchers with access to chemical information at their desktops. UCLA's hosted SciFinder Scholar Website provides unified access to SciFinder Scholar resources for the nine campus University of California system. UCLA's EJournals in the Sciences Web site , a cooperative project between the Biomedical and Science & Engineering libraries publicizes access to over 5000 licensed journals available to UCLA students and faculty.

Dana L. Roth
Caltech Library System
dzrlib@library.caltech.edu

Library Communications: Old and New

Caltech's chemistry library staff have been formally communicating with faculty and graduate students for over 35 years. Two major products were instituted in 1965: a monthly New Books (NB) list and a bi-monthly Recently Published Books (RPB) list. The NB list offered the option of requesting check-out and delivery of recently acquired materials and the RPB list provided a formal mechanism for library purchase requests (which are supplemented by informal requests).

With the advent of electronic mail and the World Wide Web, communication opportunities with faculty and students have greatly increased. In addition to e-mailing a monthly New Book list to faculty members (derived from Caltech's OPAC), which also includes information on the subject content of special journal issues, library staff have also published a monthly newsletter since late 1998. The Caltech Chemistry Library Newsletter announces new electronic products, offers tips on searching various databases and includes items of general interest to chemists.

Subject specialist librarians at Caltech are also responsible for maintaining subject specific web pages, in addition to contributing to the library's general reference web page and an online journal database (OJDB).

Comments to: Susanne J. Redalje
Chemistry Division
(206)543-2070(voice)
(206)543-3863(fax)
curie@u.washington.edu

Copyright©2001 SLA All Rights Reserved

This page updated April 2001