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C 400 Pop Quiz 1
Communication in Chemistry
A = True B= False
  1. If Netscape or Internet Explorer is loaded with Rasmol or Chime, you will be able to view files that depict molecules in the Protein Data Bank format (pdb).

    2. True. These free programs can be configured to work with the most popular Internet browsers.

  2. Assume that we sent you an important message on CICOURSE that you inadvertently deleted before reading. Should you:
    3.  

    We accepted any of these answers. All are valid paths for communication in the course.

  3. A program that will help you find the IUPAC name of a compound is AUTONOM.

    4. True. AUTONOM is configured as part of the Beilstein CrossFire system, and in most cases, it will accurately present you with a formal name for an organic compound when you draw the structure.

  4. Personal bibliography manager software lets you easily import data from an online search into your own personal database. Once in a program such as ProCite or EndNote, you can print out a bibliography for an article without having to type the entries individually.

    5. True. Most software of this type now allows you to import bibliographic data without re-keying it. Once in the database, you can insert markers for the appropriate bibliography items at points in a wordprocessing file.

  5. Chemists usually put the title of a journal in a standard abbreviated form when compiling a bibliography for a primary journal article or a review article.

    6. True. Although a few scientific disciplines require authors to put full forms of the journal titles in their bibliographic citations, chemistry is not one of them.

  6. Secondary literature sources are always less current than the primary literature.

    7. True. Although some current awareness sources have advance notification of an article that will soon appear, the actual information in a primary journal article or other primary source (patents, conference proceedings, dissertations, technical reports) will take anywhere from a few days to several years to be integrated into the various secondary sources (indexing and abstracting services, reviews, encyclopedias, monographs, treatises, etc.).

  7. It is possible that a primary article that appeared in a chemistry journal this month may not be abstracted in the weekly Chemical Abstracts before January 1998.

    8. True. This month being October 1997, it is not that unusual for it to take several months for the record to appear in the Chemical Abstracts Service database. However, the average time for it to make it into CA is now considerably less than that.

  8. CASSI is a tool that helps you determine the full form of a journal title when you have only the abbreviation.

    9. True. It is CASSI, Chemical Abstracts Service Source Index, which tells you the correct abbreviated form for the journal title, or conversely, which translates the abbreviated title into its full form so that it can be searched in a library OPAC.

  9. The Library of Congress classification numbers (call numbers) tend to group together books on similar topics in a library collection.

    10. True. Your trips through the circulating book and reference sections of the Chemistry Library should have convinced you of that. However, keep in mind that a book may cover several topics, and a cataloger must select one and only one call number to place the book on the shelf. Therefore, a subject search in a library OPAC is likely to turn up books on similar topics that have different main classification numbers in the LC system.

  10. A treatise is a multivolume secondary work that, like an encyclopedia, is designed for easy retrieval of information by someone who does not know much about a topic.

    11. False. Treatises are not meant for consultation by novices. The very arrangement of the material in a treatise presumes that the reader understands where is the most logical place in the set to seek the desired information.