COMPUTER AIDED SEARCH SYSTEM FOR SEARCHES AT MAJOR INTERNATIONAL HOSTS

Taking into account the steady growth in terms of number of hosts and databases, size of databases and types of databases, the need to establish user aids increases. For a couple of years at the GSF Research Centre for Environment and Health we have been developing an information system for environmental chemicals. Within this research project the construction of automated searches is an important task. For the efficient set‐up of those automated searches the following items are essential: knowledge of chemistry or a related subject; knowledge about the content of databases; knowledge of the different retrieval languages. We have access to ten international hosts. For these hosts we elaborated automated searches using communications software written in‐house which includes a script language for preformulated searches. In our paper we give examples of automated searches by Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) Number and the physical‐chemical parameter boiling point. Preformulated search scripts will be given for DIALOG databases. This approach is a time‐ and cost‐saving alternative to the classical search.