How to Find Chemical Information, Part I

I've been reading through Robert Maizell's How to Find Chemical Information to further my chemistry librarianness.  The book is nine years old at this point and therefore dated in many respects, but most of the concepts and history are valuable.  I'm still learning a lot about chemistry research myself, my own background being more astronomy, physics, computer science, and mathematics.  I figured I'd share some of the interesting tidbits I pick up as I proceed, for my edification and yours.

Translations (Ch. 5.7).  People in all sciences sometimes need foreign language articles.  Sometimes they optimistically think that we can always get an English copy of what's needed.  Having to break their spirit by explaining this isn't the case makes me wish this was true.  When you can't find a translation, there are still solutions to the problem, though, even if you're not friends with a bilingual colleague:

1. Read the abstract only.  Often this is in English, especially if indexed by CAS or another service.  Maybe this is enough to go on.  Or at least enough to know how much time you should devote to finding this article. 
2. Find equivalent journal articles, reviews, or books.  Try patents, too, especially if you're looking for a foreign patent.  Often an English version will appear later.
3. Scan tables, graphs, equations, and figures to pick out some of the relevant portions.  If nothing else, maybe that will help determine where to work with a foreign language dictionary on translation.
4. Purchase a custom translation.  There are services which do this for you for a fee, and it probably ensures more accuracy than doing it yourself with a dictionary.  [Maizell doesn't mention a similar suggestion I usually give people: hit up the foreign language department at your university.  Maybe you can get a student to translate it for you cheaply, or get it for free by having their instructor make them do it!]

Posted at 01:58PM Feb 28, 2007 by WILSON, JOSHUA in Maizell  |