The Index Chemicus Registry System (ICRS), launched in 1968 with the support of a dozen industrial and government organizations, is now a current operational monthly service. Subscribers receive magnetic tapes and printouts, in which the weekly issues of Index Chemicus (IC) have been encoded in Wiswesser Line Notations (WLN). Over 13,000 compounds per month are provided in machine language. The canonical WLN is also provided in alphabetized printouts. Encoding of over 400,000 new chemical compounds from IC has already been completed, including all those reported in 1967, 1968, and 1969. Since the tapes also include title and other bibliographic information, this paper describes the use of supporting software provided for SOI search systems employing "word" and other searching terms, in addition to the WLN fragments. Use of the monthly and annual printouts are illustrated for those searches which do not require computer manipulation.
The Index Chemicus, an abstracting and indexing service devoted to reporting new chemical compounds and their synthesis (a registry of all new chemical compounds), evolved to its present form through a series of incremental mechanization steps. These procedures produce effects on indexing, editing, printing, format, and timing of the publication. The paper recounts the chronologically arranged mechanization plan, its theoretic and systematic basis, indicating the specific benefits, problems, by-products, and future plans.
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