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Inorganic Chemistry: STN - 2. Searching CA - Simple

File: CAS

  • Entering the Chemical Abstracts database

    When the "=>" prompt comes up enter as follows:

    file ca

  • Search commands

    Enter search commands in the form as follows (See special instructions for searching authors).  Search using the Boolean operators: AND, OR, and NOT.

    s cobalt and oxalato  

    As you search the system will return results by Line numbers: L1, L2, etc.
    You can combined these line numbers as follows:

    s L1 and L2

    You can limit your results as follows

    s L1 and journal/dt        (limit results to journals as a document type)

    s 20427-59-2/rn           (search for this registry number - ex. is Cupric hydroxide)

    s 20427-59-2/prep       (search for preparations of Cuprice hydroxide)

    s L1 and ENG/LA           (limit results to documents in the English language)

  • Wild Cards

    Wild cards in STN are as follows:

    ? -- will search for 0 or more characters at the end of a term
           example: "grow?" finds grow, grows, grown, growth, growing, etc.

    # -- will search 0 or 1 character only at the end of a term   
           example: "grow#" finds grow, grows, grown
                    
    ! -- will search exactly 1 wild card character at the end of or within a term
          example: "t!!th" finds teeth or tooth
                           "amin!" finds amine or amino

  • Display commands 

    Once you have a manageable amount of hits display them as follows:

    d L3 1-10 bib

    In this example the system will display first ten results for search L3 in the bib format.
    The bib format displays the Accession number, Title, Authors, Corporate Source, Source, Document Type, and Language

    d L3 1-10 bib, ab

    This above expression will include the abstract along with the bibliographic information.

 

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