All activities of the documentation group are devoted to the handling of scientific information, how electronic information can be retrieved or to present scientific information.

Nowadays it is practically impossible to survey comprehensively the scientific literature, even for special fields. In chemistry for example more than 92 million substances are known 60 million of them are biosequences. Every day about 10,000 new substances are registered from more than 9,000 journals and the patent literature (26 industrial states and two international patent organisations). More than half of these compounds appear in the patent literature (with increasing tendency), and about two third of the patents will not be published elsewhere! Therefore and due to decreasing budgets of the libraries it is so important to apply the features of electronic retrievals, which supplement the classic access to the printed literature. Some of the electronic options (such as structure and substructure searches) are classically not available. Thus the group Chemical Information Systems teaches students how to use electronic information in online and inhouse databases as well as in the INTERNET. Moreover the group offers postgraduate education and continuation training courses in these fields. Last but not least the group performs patent retrievals for the scientific groups of the Ulm University.

The group Chemical Information Systems compiles the scientific literature worldwide that deals with spectroscopy and structure determination in the gas phase. After excerpting and critically evaluating this information we supply it to other scientists all around the world by various means. The main focus in our work is in the areas of microwave spectroscopy, molecular radioastronomy, high-resolution infrared spectroscopy and gas electron diffraction.