Effective teaching requires comprehensive reaction databases

CINF 33

Valentina Eigner Pitto, valentina.eigner-pitto@infochem.de, Josef Eiblmaier, Hans Kraut, Heinz Saller, and Peter Loew. InfoChem GmbH, Landsberger Straße 408, D-81241 München, Germany
SPRESIweb is a Web application that enables access to the SPRESI data: a collection of 5 million molecules, 3.7 million reactions and 28 million factual data items abstracted from the most representative journals in the field of organic chemistry. In this lecture the experiences and opinions of teachers who are using SPRESIweb in undergraduate institutions in Europe and the US will be presented. Focusing on structure, reaction and reference searches in chemistry we will show the features of the Web application that are used most and, in particular, those aspects that help faculty in teaching students scientific information literacy skills. Examples given are the advanced options for defining specific query features (such as lists/not lists or R-groups) and the results of an optimized query submission on the hit list retrieved. Another significant feature is a new tool, Name Reactions that provides implicit definitions of complex reaction substructure queries, and assists teaching and retrieval of examples for reaction mechanisms.