There are three parts to this page:

1. Where to locate resources, such as books, eBooks, journal articles, and databases
2. How to locate resources
3. How to save resources, tracking resources you want, or might want, to use. This relates to being able to go back and find it again easily, by title, author or other means. You will want to save a copy of that information, save a link to it, or even save a copy of the document if possible.

You will use a variety of resources when looking for chemistry info. It all depends on your need. Books and journal articles are two types of resources you will use. More and more, online resources are becoming the dominant format desired, but there is fantastic information available in print also. In general, you will use the library discovery tool (WestSearch) to locate books (or eBooks) and you will use one of the many library databases,especially SciFinder or Reaxys, to locate articles. For a more detailed discussion of books use Find Books and for journals use Finding Articles. You might also find it handy to use websites such as ChemSpider or the NIST WebBook to find chemical properties data. 

Here are two examples.

Book: Practical synthetic organic chemistry : reactions, principles, and techniques / edited by Stéphane Caron (QD262 .P688 2011) 

Article: Influence of ligands on the electronic and magnetic properties of Fe porphyrin in gas phase and on Cu(001) This article was located in the database Academic Search Premier, from the Journal of Applied Physics. 

Create a search strategy. Use your research topic, question, or statement to identify conceptual areas and create search terms. Then use these terms, in the catalog or databases, to locate relevant books or articles.

Once you locate articles or other resources, it is a good idea to save the information so that you will be able to retrieve it in an easy manner. This might involve keeping the bibliographic record (things like author, title, name of journal, volume and number), saving a URL, or saving the article itself. There are various ways to do this.

Below are examples of some of the data you want to save for future use

Books: author, title, publisher, year published, ISBN, and catalog number.

Articles: author, article title, journal title, year published, volume, number, and pages.

Websites: URL and page title.

Methods of saving information

1. Use a citation management resource. Examples are Zotero, Mendeley, Refworks, and Endnote.
2. Write it down by hand or copy/paste into a Word document
3. Some journals and databases allow you to create an account and save info in a file, or send the information to yourself via email
4. Bookmark websites 
5. Print or copy the actual material