CHEM 184/284 (Chemical Literature) - Huber - Winter 2026: Home

Chemistry 184/284 is a two-credit course in the techniques and tools for effectively searching the literature of chemistry, biochemistry, chemical engineering and related fields. Students will be introduced to how information is organized in the chemical sciences, including data collections such as Reaxys and indexes to the literature such as SciFinder, as well as the different types of primary literature and other resources useful to the chemical researcher.

Undergraduates should register in CHEM 184; graduate students in CHEM 284.  The course is taught each Winter Quarter, and meets twice weekly from 2:00-3:15pm on Tuesdays nd Thursdays. 

Barring further changes, the course will be taught in-person in Room 1312 Library.

© 2025 Charles F. Huber

This work by Charles F. Huber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at guides.library.ucsb.edu

This is the definitive syllabus for the quarter, and may be updated or changed as necessity requires. Lecture quizzes are to be completed and turned in by the following lecture. Quizzes should be answered in GauchoSpace; 

Monday, January 5, 2026 -Winter Quarter begins

Tuesday, January 6 - Lecture 1: Overview of the Organization of Information

Thursday, January 8 - Lecture 2: Techniques of the Efficient Information Searcher

Friday, January 9 - Last day to drop courses without a fee.  Last day to add courses without an approval code.

Tuesday, January 13 - Lecture 3: Part I: Library Catalogs vs. Article Databases vs. Search Engines; Part II: Finding Books in the Library: Call Numbers, and the UC Library Search.

Thursday, January 15 - Lecture 4: Data Collections, Part I 

Friday, January 16 - Last day to add courses or change grading options without a fee.

Monday, January 19 - Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday

Tuesday, January 20 - Lecture 5: Data Collections, Part II: Beilstein + Gmelin = Reaxys

Mid-Term 1 Given Out Today.  Due: Tuesday, February 2!

Thursday, January 22 - Lecture 6: Primary Literature, Part I: Journals, Copyright, Open Access, Repositories, Preprints

Monday, January 26 - Last day to add classes.

Tuesday, January 27 - Lecture 7: Primary Literature, Part II: Conference Papers, Patents, Technical Reports, Dissertations nd Databases for Science and Engineering

Brief description of term project topics due by Thursday,February 5!

Thursday, January 29 - Lecture 8: Indexes and Databases for Science and Engineering

Monday, February 2 - Last day for undergraduates in Letters & Science or Engineering to drop classes.

Tuesday, February 3 - Lecture 9: Citations Part I- Searching Them, Web of Science, Part II - Creating and Managing Them, EndNote Web, Part III - Evaluating2with Citations, Impact Factors and Journal Citation Reports

Mid-term Exam 1: DUE TODAY!!

Thursday, February 5 - Lecture 10: Chemical Abstracts Service and the Legacy of Print

          Brief term project descriptions due TODAY!

Tuesday, February 10 - Lecture 11: SciFinder Part 1 - Introduction and Exploring References by  SmartSense

Thursday, February 12 - Lecture 12: SciFinder Part 2 - Exploring References byAdvanced Search

Monday, February 16 - Presidents' Day. holiday

Tuesday, February 17 - Lecture 13: SciFinder, Part 3 - Exploring Substances: Substance Displays, Name Searching, Molecular Formula Searching and Property Searching, Biosequence Searching 

Mid-term Exam 2 given out today; due Tuesday, March 3

Thursday, February 19 - Lecture 14: SciFinder, Part 4 - Exploring Substances by Structure Searching

Tuesday, February 24 - Lecture 15: SciFinder Part 5 - Exploring Organic Reactions; Retrosynthetic Plans; CAS Analytical Methods; CAS Formulus

Thursday,, February 26 - Lecture 16: The New Web and Mobile Science 

Friday, February 27 - Last day for undergraduates in LAS or Engineering to change grading options.

Tuesday, March 3 - Lecture 17: Altmetrics;  More on AI in Information Searching

          Mid-term Exam 2 DUE TODAY!!

Course Evaluation as ESCI. Ends Friday, Mar. 8

Thursday, March 5 - Lecture 18 - Open Science

Tuesday, March 10 - IN-CLASS PRESENTATION of FINAL PROJECTS

Thursday - March 12 - IN-CLASS PRESENTATION of FINAL PROJECTS

Friday, March 13 - Last day for graduate students and students in CCS to drop courses or change grading options.

 Tuesday, March 17, 2026 - WRITTEN FINAL PROJECTS must be turned in NO LATER than 11:59 pm!!

Friday, March 29, 2026 - Start date for submissions for the Library Award for Undergraduate Research Deadline is April 30.

© 2025 Charles F. Huber

This work by Charles F. Huber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at guides.library.ucsb.edu