The University Libraries has a wide range of resources to help students and researchers in Medicinal Chemistry. This guide is intended to introduce you to the tools you will find useful to identify, locate, and acquire information in this field.
Please do not hesitate to contact the Librarians if you need any additional assistance.
The Unviersity Libraries has locations on both Main and Health Science campuses, as well as other storage facilities and electronic access.
Carlson Library is the closest location to Wolfe Hall and has strong collections in biology and chemistry.
Mulford Library, on the Health Science Campus, has stronger collections in applied medicine.
Many items are available electronically and don't require traveling to a library building at all. Books, journals, and audiovisual resources may be available electronically and will be listed in our library catalog.
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Scientific information has a ‘life cycle’ of its own… it is born as an idea, and then matures and becomes more available to the public. First it appears within the so-called ‘invisible college’ of experts in the field, discussed at conferences and symposia or posted as pre-prints for comments and corrections. Then it appears in the published literature (the primary literature), often as a journal article in a peer-reviewed journal.
Researchers can use the indexing and alerting services of the secondary literature to find out what has been published in a field. Depending on how much information is added by the indexer or abstracter, this may take a few months (though electronic publication has sped up this process). Finally, the information may appear in more popular or reference sources, sometimes called the tertiary literature.
The person beginning a literature search may take this process in reverse: using tertiary sources for general background, then going to the secondary literature to survey what has been published, following up by finding the original (primary) sources, and generating their own research Idea.
(Original content by Wade Lee-Smith)
There are many things that you can do now to make your research process easier in the future, such as registering for database accounts, downloading software, etc. This list is useful for students even before their formal literature research and writing begins.
(Hint: You may want to choose a single login and secure password with Upper and lower case letters, numbers, and symbols to use across all of your registrations to make it easier to remember.)
