Iowa State University Library Collection Development Policy Chemistry I. General Purpose The chemistry collection is developed and maintained to support the needs of the academic and research community at Iowa State University and researchers at the affiliated research facilities. The following centers and services are also affiliated with the department or would rely on the chemistry collection. Chemical Instrumentation Facility Ames Laboratory of USDoE Center for Biorenewable Chemicals Center for Industrial Research and Services II. III. History In January 1869, Assistant Professor Albert E. Foote was hired to teach chemistry classes and develop a Chemistry Department. In 1871, the department was formally established and Professor Foote was named as the first Department Head. All courses dealing with Chemistry were taught in the Chemistry Department until 1891 when an Agricultural Chemistry Department was established. The Agricultural Chemistry Department was short lived, however, and was transferred back to the Chemistry Department in 1903. All Chemistry courses have been taught through the Chemistry Department since that time. Iowa State University Program Undergraduate programs There are two degrees available for undergraduates. As well as two undergraduate/graduate programs. The Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree follows the American Chemical Society approved chemistry curriculum. Many of these students do research during their undergraduate experience. These students tend to either go directly into a chemistry career or to graduate school in the field. Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) This degree offers a bit more flexibility to take courses outside of chemistry. These students tend to proceed into high school teaching or further professional training in medical fields. In addition to these two undergraduate degrees there are also two Bachelors/Masters programs. These programs reduce the average time by 1-2 years. There is a BS/MS in Chemistry and a BA/BS in Chemistry with an MBA.
Graduate Programs The department offers a PhD program with majors in analytical/bioanalytical, inorganic/materials, organic/bioorganic and physical/theoretical chemistry plus a customizable interdisciplinary "chemistry" major. Additionally, Ph.D. students may specialize in one of five areas: Materials Chemistry, Industrial Chemistry, Biomolecular Sciences, Chemical Instrumentation, and Forensic Chemistry. Interdepartmental Programs & Collaborations Chemistry participates in the Graduate certificate program in Forensic Sciences. IV. Subject Boundaries Chemistry according to Webster s Dictionary is a science that deals with composition, structure, and properties of substances and the transformations that they undergo. Thus chemistry is a part of many subjects. The boundaries of chemistry are blurry at best. There are other collections within the library that focus on chemistry of biology, large scale production of chemicals and materials. Decisions of what to include in the collection should be made not only the chemistry department in mind but also the larger university community. Large ticket purchases should be made in collaboration with the liaison librarian for the other impacted departments. V. General Collection Guidelines Linguistics The language collected is primarily English, although no languages are excluded. Geographical Areas Not applicable Types of Materials Collected Materials selected include serials; monographs; conference proceedings; government publications; society, institute and organizational publications; dissertations; and reference sources (handbooks, encyclopedias, indexes). Some textbooks are procured selectively. Format of Materials Collected Materials are acquired primarily in print or electronic formats. Electronic forms that provide W3C accessible compliant formats and/or downloadable screen reader friendly full-text are prioritized though no format is excluded if the material is relevant to the collection. VI. Specific Collection Guidelines Level of Resources Within the subject field, content is selected according to needs and across all levels of content with a focus on general academic up to professional level resources. General academic refers to works of scholarship accessible to non-specialists or applying to broad subject areas such as survey works on a topic.
Advanced academic level applies to works of scholarship treating narrowly defined topics, but generally accessible to undergraduates, graduates and professionals reading in a specialty outside that of his/her own. Professional level applies to works of extreme technical difficulty or treating such esoteric subjects as to interest only well-trained specialists in the field. Specific types of resources Textbooks, undergraduate and graduate, are collected only selectively. Conference proceedings and conference monographs are only acquired for conferences held within the preceding 24 months. One of the major focuses is maintaining a first class journals collection. In recent years, the library has converted much of the currently received journals into electronically accessible versions. Key Resources Databases SciFinder Web Spring Materials Knovel E-book collections ACS Symposium Series RSC E-book collection e-eros Science of Synthesis Notes on the Collection Physical Science Reading Room (PSRR) There was a collection of books and journals that were housed between Gilman and the Physics building. The reading room was closed in December 2009. The collection contained many of the high use chemistry, physics, and material science print resources. There were some duplicates between the Parks collection and the PSRR collection. When there were duplicates, the resource that was in the best condition was kept. Therefore the circulation stats for some of these resources are very low as the piece with the lowest circs was kept and the one with the most was removed from the collection. Another impact of the reading room is the location of some of the print journals. High use items from the PSRR were kept within Parks rather than put in storage. Beilstein and Gmelin/Crossfire/Reaxys The subscription to Crossfire (desktop search of Beilstein and Gmelin) was cancelled in 2008. The print of Beilstein and Gmelin was kept. The cost of the replacement product (Reaxys, an Elsevier product) is too expensive at this point in time.
Journals in Print There are a number of Elsevier journals that were kept despite having full-text online perpetual access. This decision to keep the print was made based on the poor quality of the scanned images. If considering removal of print journals double check that scanned images are clear and match the ones in the print journals. VII. Detailed Subject Areas The Chemistry department lists its research in these main categories: Catalysis & Mechanism Chemical Analysis Chemical Biology Chemical Education Environmental Chemistry Materials & Solid State Photochemistry, Photobiology, and Photophysics Synthesis and Molecular Design Theoretical and Computational Chemistry VIII. Other Resources Available Free Online Databases ChemSpider PubChem Interlibrary Loan Service available for obtaining materials either not available (either in print or electronically) through the Iowa State University Library Document Delivery Scans of print materials owned by the Iowa State University Library. 30 scans/year for free then a small fee. IX. Other Collection Policies of Interest Biochemistry, Biophysics and Molecular Biology Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering Materials Science and Engineering Physics and Astronomy
X. LC Classes QD 1-145 QD 450-999 XI. XII. Creation Date Created September 2000 by Bill Lee Revision History Revised April 2006 by Richard Llewellyn Revised November 2011 by Heather Lewin Revised December 2016 by Heather Lewin XIII. Bibliographer name Heather Lewin Last Updated 2016/12/20