7.2 Chemical Literature and Information Management Skills. Essential student skills include the ability to retrieve information efficiently and effectively by searching the chemical literature, evaluate technical articles critically, and manage many types of chemical information. Students must be instructed in effective methods for performing and assessing the quality of searches using keywords, authors, abstracts, citations, patents, and structures/substructures. The program should provide ready access to technical databases with sufficient depth and breadth of the chemical literature for effective searching. Students' ability to read, analyze, interpret, and cite the chemical literature as applied to answering chemical questions should be assessed throughout the curriculum. Instruction should also be provided in data management and archiving, record keeping (electronic and otherwise), and managing citations and related information. This includes notebooks, data storage, information and bibliographic management and formatting. Undergraduate research and/or individual or group projects provide excellent opportunities for development and assessment of literature searching and information management skills. A stand-alone course can be an effective means of imparting information-retrieval skills, though such a course usual y would not qualify as an in-depth course.
3.3 Professional Staff Sufficiency
II-C. Academic support services are sufficient to meet program and student needs are are evaluated on a regular basis.
Elaboration: Academic support services, which may include library, technology, distance education support, research support, and admission and advising services, foster achievement of program outcomes. A defined process is used for regular review of academic support services, and improvements are made as appropriate.
The NASM standards for library resources are organized as Standards and Recommendations for