Statement of Need for a National Chemical Database Service

The EPSRC has recently initiated a review of its current 'Mid Range facilities'. The Chemical Database Service (CDS) at Daresbury, which provides free at the point of access for all UK academics to important databases, is one of these facilities.

The CDS is a National service providing on-line access to up-to-date, comprehensive, high quality chemical databases and ancillary facilities. These databases provide the three dimensional structure, spectroscopic data and physical properties of molecules which are crucial to the understanding, enhancement and production of new materials and processes. The communities served by the CDS are very far reaching and include users from not only chemistry disciplines but also material science, physics, engineering and biological sciences, etc.

As part of the overall review process, the EPSRC has asked all relevant communities to prepare and submit a Statement of Need (SoN) drawing from the communities served by Mid Range Facilities rather than the organisations currently providing these services. In response, members of the chemistry community have put in place an electronic 'iPetition'. The purpose of this petition is to provide a mechanism for the UK academic community to register its support for continued access to the kind of database facilities currently provided by the CDS. It can be found at:- http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/ChemicalDatabaseService/

Scifinder Scholar - new web version now available

A new web-based version of SciFinder is now available at Nottingham.

The new version does not require you to download the full SciFinder software, it has a more intuitive and "modern" feel and all the important functionality is available. Only a few features e.g. Journal contents browsing and the Categorize command are not yet available. Structure and reaction searching is run through a Java application but if you do not wish to use the structure drawing package there is no need to install any software.

The familiar client-based version is still available and both versions will continue to be supported. However, since we have no additional "seats", 2 of our 6 allocated accesses have been migrated to this new version and we will monitor usage to assess whether/when to transfer more across.

The usual advice that "if you do not get through try again" applies to both versions. We do receive detailed logs of turn-aways so that we can assess the relative popularity of the two versions.

Individual registration is required to use the web-based service. Please see our 'NEW' help page at http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/library/resources/scifinder.php for the link to 'Register Now' and for details of browser requirements. (NB this is also the address for downloading the Scifinder client-based software)

To use the web-based version connect to http://scifinder.cas.org/ from a computer on the University network.

Feel free to leave your comments on the new service here or contact your subject librarians directly: alison.johnson@nottingham.ac.uk or dinah.northall@nottingham.ac.uk