Lowering barriers to teaching programmatic chemical information searching: A use-case demonstrating the NCBI Entrez Direct (EDirect) unix tool

A key component of sharing machine-readable chemical data is understanding what kind of data is currently available and how the data can be searched and/or acquired through programmatic methods. As such, it is becoming increasingly important for libraries and informational professionals to engage in teaching chemists how to access chemical information programmatically. This presentation will discuss my experiences as a chemistry librarian using the NCBI Entrez Direct (EDirect) Unix tool and how EDirect can be used as an excellent introductory tool for teaching chemists how to engage with PubMed, PubChem, and other NCBI databases programmatically.