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Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) in Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering

How to Use this Guide

You can use this guide as a "library cheat sheet." It will remind you how to do some of the things that we went over in the workshop. This guide consists of the following sections:

Finding Information – Where to go to find articles, reference books and background information.

Evaluating Information – Some basic guidelines on deciding whether something is worth trusting and citing.

Reading Research Articles – reading journal articles is a skill, this has a few suggestions to maximize your efficiency.

Citing Sources & Copyright – How to evaluate copyright questions and some scenarios common to polymer students.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I get ChemDraw?

You could download it from My Akron too. Software downloads hyperlink is on the Technology Support tab. Follow the directions to download ChemDraw.

How do I find Articles on a Topic?

If you are looking for an article, try these databases first:

How do I Find a Specific Article?

Do you know where the Article is (what journal, conference, volume, pages, etc)? Use the UA Libraries Catalog. opens new window

Need a Specific Article that Can't be Downloaded and is not in our Library? Try

How do I find Books?

If you are searching for a specific book, try the catalogs in this list. If you don't find it from one catalog, try the next catalog in the list.

  1. UA Libraries Catalog
  2. OhioLINK Catalog
  3. SearchOhio Catalog
  4. Interlibrary loan

Sometimes it is convenient to search electronic books directly particularly when looking for quick facts or code syntax. Refer to the electronic book sources in this section or the previous section, Databases to Find Aritcles, Books and More. Use the descriptions to find the databases that contain electronic books that are most closely related to your topic. Keep in mind that not all books will be available for download. It depends on the database and the library's subscriptions.

How can I find Polymers with SciFinder-n?

In this webinar from CAS, you will learn how to:

  • understand how polymers are curated in the CAS Registry to allow them to be effectively described and discovered
  • search for polymers by structure, nomenclature or molecular formula
  • filter search results by important structural characteristics
  • efficiently link to literature describing polymeric applications, properties, and preparation

from CAS website. Captions are in process.

This video is long, but it has helpful information.

If you can't see this video, try the substance searching section of the SciFinder-n Tutorial page. opens new window

How do I get Help?

I am happy to help in any way that I can. Just contact me thru email or by phone M-F from 8:00AM to 4:00PM. You can request an appointment too. I can easily meet using Teams, but I might be able to meet differently. Just let me know your preference.

Also, we have several guides that contain tutorials that we created or vendor tutorials:

Related LibGuides

Subject Guides

Tutorials