Consider this; you are a chemistry major and you are faced with an assignment to write a paper for the EPA outlining the risks to the ocean posed by chlorinated benzene compounds. You college library is woefully inadequate, and free Internet sites don't have the information you need. No, what you need to do is find one of the specialized databases on the Internet; but then your problems really begin because searching the specialized databases can be really expensive, especially if you don't know how to search efficiently.

Dr. Robert Landolt with Texas Wesleyan University sets up the computer for an Internet search of the chemical databases.

Several Central College organic chemistry classes recently received some valuable tips in this area at two work-shops taught by Dr. Robert Landolt with Texas Wesleyan University. From 8:30 to 11:30, Dr. Maggie Outlaw's Organic 1 class, CHEM 2423, learned how to use Boolean searches and STN Easy to search chemical literature over the Internet. From noon to 3 P.M., Dr. Yiyan Bai's Organic II class CHEM 2425, joined Carolyn Judd's Organic I class, CHEM 2423, for a repeat session.

The problem posed was to write a paper for the EPA outlining the risks to the ocean posed by chlorinated benzene compounds. Students entered the Chemical Abstracts extensive database of abstracts of nearly all chemical literature. Searches were made for the 12 possible chlorinated benzenes and their effort on the oceanic life. Groups worked to produce a single document to record the results of their searches and their conclusions.

HCC-Central organic chemistry students seem to be having fun as Dr. Robert Landolt checks out their progress.

STN Easy is a program that costs a fee for each search (e.g. $2.00 per search and $3.50 per title selected or review), but because of the grants that support Dr. Landolt's UCAIR project, there was no cost for this learning day for chemistry students at HCC-Central. What would normally have to be done at night and for the 2-hour or so daytime Internet access during the workshops could have cost $400 or more, but cost only 10 percent of that figure ($40) for Dr. Landolt. The two grants that support UCAIR (Undergraduate Cooperative Access to Information Resources) are the Welch Foundation and the Dreyfus Foundation. This is the first time that UCAIR has been presented to a community college.

*Reproduced, with consent of the Editor, from the November 7, 1997 issue of The Egalitarian, the campus Newspaper of the Central Campus of the Houston (Texas) Community College System. Use of this article and pictures on other web sites should not be made without consulting the Editor of The Egalitarian.