TEACHING INFORMATION RETRIEVAL IN THE CHEMISTRY CURRICULUM

Abstract

There is no science without communication. The enormous amount and the quick growth of scientific literature means it can be treated, organized, stored and retrieved only in digital form. Learning to master the use of new information and communication technology (ICT), and getting to know how to collect and select appropriate scientific information is imperative during university education. The essential requirements, both information sources and technical equipment, have been established for the Hungarian academic community within the framework of a national government project EISZ (Ministry of Education, 2001). In the Department of Chemistry at the University of Szeged the old course “Chemical Literature” has been re-formed into “Chemical Information Retrieval”. A short survey of the literature related to the subject, a brief description of the project EISZ and the course content, methods and assignments are presented here. [Chem. Educ. Res. Pract.: 2003, 4, 373-385]