SciFinder Scholar Workshop, 2/12

Accessing Chemistry and Beyond with SciFinder Scholar 2007
Feb 12 (Tu), 2pm-3:30pm
Science & Engineering Library Instruction Room
REGISTER HERE, as space is limited. Laptops will not be helpful for this workshop.

The core index to the chemical literature with 27 million journal article and patent references, SciFinder Scholar is an essential research tool for chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, physics, environmental science and more. Through SciFinder Scholar, you can also get the CAS Registry (searchable by name, number, structure/substructure) and CASREACT (14 million reactions).

This workshop will cover:

• Software setup, remote access and other “quirks” to using SciFinder
• Topic, name, CAS-RN and structure searching
• Modifying and refining your search results
• What’s new in the 2007 version

New INSPEC Interface

The INSPEC article database on the Ovid platform will change this weekend to the new OvidSP interface. Changes include:

• Truncate terms with * (asterisk), commonly used in most other databases & search engines.
• Option to search “related terms”
• Additional sorting options for your results
• View abstracts within the results display, without going to another page
• RSS feeds for search alerts (you’ll need to use or set up your personal INSPEC/OVID account)
• Narrow results to view top subjects, authors and journals

Search Options are: Basic, Find Citation, Search Tools, Search Fields, and Advanced (”Classic” Syntax).

• We recommend using Basic Search only if you want a few articles, as the quirks of natural language searching & relevancy ranking with Basic OvidSP make it difficult for physical science & engineering researchers to retrieve all the articles on a specific topic.
• If your aim is a thorough review of the literature for your dissertation, thesis, book or article, Advanced Search allows you to search by Keyword, Author, Title, and, along with Search Fields, allows you to drill through the thousands of articles indexed to get what you need.

Have a questions about INSPEC or Web of Science or any of our research databases? Ask A Librarian - we’re here to help you!