SPADA at AOAC Annual Meeting 2023

AOAC NEWS

Analytical Chemistry Reprint Literature Collection to Be Donated M ilan Ihnat, a longtime AOAC member (1971–2021), has amassed a literature collection from scien- tific and technical publications spanning 41 years n Elemental composition of foods and agricultural commodities n Trace element nutrition

relevant to his research with the Canada Department of Agriculture (retired) A Computerized and Hard Copy Literature Storage/Retrieval System Including Information on an Extensive Collection of Articles in the Fields of Trace Element Analytical Chemistry and Reference Materials —a convenient and valuable source of literature references for a multitude of research for the department, as well as for AOAC-related activities undertaken by Ihnat—is being donated to an interested party The collection consists of original reprints and/or copies of 16,400 articles from scientific journals, monographs and serial volumes, book chapters, institution reports, and inter- nal/unpublished reports—a total of about 3000 different sources—as well as electronic Excel files and a Citation Style Master Card File Articles in the collection range in dates from 1802 to 2012, spanning three centuries Several classical publications from the 1800s deal with topics such as the Dumas combus- tion and Kjeldahl digestion methods for the determination of nitrogen and emission spectroscopy Topics cover primarily the general disciplines of inor- ganic trace analytical chemistry, reference materials, and, specifically, analytical methods focused on atomic spectrom- etry (absorption, emission, and mass) Examples include: n Trace elements n Flame atomic absorption spectrometry (FAAS) n Inductively-coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrom- etry (ICP-AES) n Inductively-coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) n Neutron activation analysis [instrumental (INAA) and radio-chemical separation (RNAA)] n X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF) n Official and reference methods of analysis (principally elements in biological matrices) n Collaborative and interlaboratory studies n Reference and control materials (biological, others) n Waste materials, soils, and amendments (soils, biosolids, manures, fertilizers) n Standard solutions n Sample treatment and decomposition n Sampling n Data quality assurance n Good laboratory practices n Trace element biogeochemistry n Statistical data treatment n Calibration functions in AAS, ICP-AES, ICP-MS, and XRF

Each article is assigned a code number, citation code, and keywords Each keyword is a unique, descriptive term indicating method, analyte, material analyzed, other topics, and geographical location Physical hard copies are filed in sequence by code from 1 to 16,363 Three electronic Excel spreadsheet files, containing articles sorted by code number and alphabetically by citation code and a list of sources, are used in tandem with the physical copies to locate articles of interest based on code, source, or keywords A Citation Style Master Card File is the basis for coding of sources The first article, assigned Code 0001, is “Problems of Standard Qualities and Standards in Environmental Analysis” by H Malissa [ Fresenius’ Z. Anal. Chem. 282 , 407–416(1976)] The final article entered into the collection, with Code 16363, is “Determination of Nitro Nitrogen by the Kjeldahl Method” by R B Bradstreet [ Anal. Chem. 26 , 235–238(1954)] For a detailed description of the collection and enquiries regarding acquisition, contact Jennifer Diatz, AOAC director of Publications, at jdiatz@aoac org n ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author appreciates discussions with and assistance from J. Christopher Young, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), who maintained and managed an extensive literature collection for his own research. A number of individuals provided assistance with the collection, principally with acquisition of print copies: Marcel Charette and Michael Graham of the K.W. Neatby library and staff at the main library of AAFC; Peggy Watson, Lynne Boyd, and Brian Stretch at PARC-Summerland; Dorothy Drew at the Southern Crop Protection and Food Research Centre, London; Ralph Sturgeon, NRCC and D. Conrad Gregoire, GSC for provision of copies of articles from journals not available at AAFC; W.R. Wolf for supplying copies of USDA citation databases; M. Stoeppler, F.J. Johnson, and other colleagues for supplying bibliographic and publications lists, as well as copies of some of their publications; Mark D. Ihnat for copying at UBC; Natasha D. Ihnat for data entry into dBase III Plus in the early years of collection development; and many others in North America and Europe for assistance in various ways. — Milan Ihnat Contributing Writer Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (Retired)

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