CISTI Source Discontinued as of April 1 (but Don't Panic)

The federal government is discontinuing CISTI Source as of this August. The Library's contract ends March 31 (the end of today), and we will not be renewing it.

Don't Panic: you can still request articles that you normally would have requested through CISTI Source using our Interlibrary Loan Request Form available at: http://library.ucalgary.ca/services/interlibrary-loan


After tomorrow, if you try to access CISTI Source, you'll see:
"The Federal Government is discontinuing CISTI Source as of August 2009.

Because of better interlibrary loan coverage and tools such as SFX, use of CISTI Source at the University of Calgary has declined dramatically since 2003. The Library decided not to renew our contract after March 31, 2009 for the last few months of CISTI Source’s existence. Please use the interlibrary loan form to request the scientific, medical and technical articles that you used to request with CISTI Source :
http://library1.ucalgary.ca/dds.php

If you have any questions about why CISTI Source is being discontinued or questions about alternatives to CISTI Source please contact Rob Tiessen the Head of Access Services for the University of Calgary Library or the liaison librarian for your subject area. "

SciFinder: Problem with Certain R-group Substructure Queries

From CAS (Chemical Abstracts Services) regarding SciFinder (Web and Client versions) substructure searching:

CAS confirms that there is a functional problem with some substructure queries with R-groups containing one or more of the chalcogens (e.g. oxygen, sulfur, selenium, tellurium) or nitrogen in conjunction with shortcut symbols that represent chemical entities that cannot be substituted further (e.g. Me, Et). The query must also contain a chalcogen, or nitrogen somewhere else in the structure with a very specific positional relationship to the R-group. See the following link
for a visual representation:
http://www.cas.org/support/scifi/rgroup.html

SciFinder functionality is being immediately modified to correct this situation. We suggest that you refrain from R-group searches of this type until we confirm we have addressed this, so that our correction can be implemented and fully tested.

Please note that this functional problem is restricted to SciFinder substructure searches (client and web) and does not affect SciFinder reaction searches or any STN searches.

We regret any inconvenience to you and are appreciative that this was brought to our attention.

Jim Corning
jcorning@cas.org
614-447-3600 ext 2082

SciFinder Scholar Web Now Available

The library now has a license for the Web version of SciFinder Scholar (simply called "SciFinder".)
This means that you can now search from home!

To use it, you'll need to sign up for a (free) account. You can access it and sign up for an account at:
http://ezproxy.lib.ucalgary.ca/loggedin/scifinder.html

The desktop and Web version are nearly identical in function, except for a few things:
- desktop version is slightly easier to use for structure searching
- Web version does not have: Substance Analyze by ring skeletons, stereo, variable group composition, and R-group composition, nor property range searching
- Web version's graphics are a bit smaller
- Scrolling through many results is a bit easier in the desktop version (the Web version requires to click to go from page to page.)