How chemical information is produced, distributed, discovered, managed, shared, and preserved has changed significantly in the past two decades. The number of publications continues to grow exponentially, and most of the core chemistry literature is now available online. Understanding how to navigate this digital landscape is essential for students, educators, and researchers. Similar to calibrating and learning how to use lab instruments, developing information literacy skills enables researchers to use their time more effectively and efficiently. In response to an open call for papers, this issue contains 26 papers that are grouped into three broad subject areas: Information Skills, Prototypes and Best Practices, and Discovery. Papers in this special issue aim to be a resource for ideas and a catalyst for expanding communication and collaboration between chemists and information professionals. Because some areas of chemical information are not included in this issue, topics for future issues of the Journal of Chemical Education are suggested at the end of this editorial. Note: Papers in the Journal of Chemical Education Special Issue: Chemical Information have a designation that they are part of the collection published in this issue.
Even in this era of powerful electronic resources designed for end-user chemists, there is still a need for many types of chemical information instruction. To help meet these needs, the Education Committee of the ACS Division of Chemical Information (CINF) has sponsored workshops on teaching chemical information at ACS National Meetings, regional meetings and at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education. These workshops, developed and taught for the most part by Arleen Somerville (Carlson Library, University of Rochester) and Dr. Adrienne Kozlowski (Department of Chemistry, Central Connecticut State University) have proven very successful. In an effort to reach new audiences, the CINF Education Committee joined forces with the Chemistry Division of the Special Libraries Association to offer the workshop as a Continuing Education course at the 1997 SLA Annual Meeting in Seattle. The authors, Grace Baysinger and Chuck Huber, volunteered to adapt the existing workshop and teach it at Seattle. This paper is not a recapitulation of the contents of the workshop, but rather a description of the process we went through in designing our workshop and how it reflects some of the lessons we thought were valuable in teaching chemical information in general.
Every Fall, approximately 400 students at Stanford University take a sophomore level organic chemistry class that covers the identification of organic compounds. Students use the Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering intensively to help them identify the unknowns they are working with in the laboratory. To help prepare students for the information age, ease crowding in the library, and reduce damage to reference titles from overuse, for the past three years we have mounted experimental efforts to teach students how to find their unknowns using electronic and printed books. Despite some glitches, a student survey indicates strong support for continued use of electronic handbooks. This paper summarizes our experimental efforts, resources used, and the infrastructure needed to support this class.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.