How Much!? Estimating the cost of an assignment in an organic chemistry class.

Abstract

Objective: To estimate the library costs of completing an assignment in an organic chemistry class. Methods: Students in Chemistry 254: Organic Chemistry for Majors were required to write a paper on an organic name reaction (a reaction named after the chemist who discovered it). This study attempts to take a holistic account of various costs associated with completing this assignment. Upon submission of their papers, students’ bibliographies were collected. Different price estimates such as cost per use of the particular journals and interlibrary loan cost for the individual articles were used to determine a range of possible costs for each article a student cited. An estimated cost of a librarian’s time in delivering SciFinder training sessions was factored in, as was the cost of each student having access to SciFinder.