Conference Room Automation Projecct at Chemical Abstracts Service

Abstract

During the fall quarter of 1988 I did my Senior Individualized Project at Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) ln Columbus, Ohio. CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, produces Information services which help scientists, engineers, managers, consultants, librarians, and students find relevant portions of the world~s chemical literature. They accomplish this task in a variety of ways. Perhaps their most well-known service is In the form of a publication called Chemical Abstracts (CA). This abstract, published continuously since 1907, now routinely runs over 9,000 abstracts per week of new chemical information published worldwide. CAS also maintains the world's largest single discipline data base in the world. Searching the many data bases produces answers about patents, published papers, similar compounds and much more. While working at CAS my task was to automate the entire conference room reservation process. The present manual system was constantly plagued with double booking and unscheduled reservations. It was the goal of the Conference Room Automation Project to correct these problems, remove the heavy load on the current reservation staff and provide a direct means for every employee to make his or her own reservations from their own system.

Administrator only at the request of Chemical Abstracts Service (see ACS letter).