Chemistry

No more CA Student Edition

2006-06-20T16:00:00.000-04:00

As of this summer, UMass Amherst no longer offers access to the Chemical Abstracts-Student Edition database. However, ALL of the material that was indexed in Chem Abstracts-Student Edition is also available via SciFinder Scholar. SciFinder also offers much more:

indexing, abstracts, and links to full text for ALL of the journals covered by Chemical Abstracts (not just the couple of hundred journals that were indexed in Student Edition)

Indexing and abstracts for hundreds of conference proceedings, reports, and books in chemistry and related fields.

Seamless inclusion & integration of CAS Registry, CASREACT, CHEMLIST, CHEMCATS, and MEDLINE databases

A couple of important things to note about SciFinder Scholar:

SciFinder is only available from computers that are connected directly to the UMass network. This means you must be on campus or dial in to OIT's modem pool in order to access SciFinder. We are looking for way to extend access to users who are off campus.

To use SciFinder, you need to download a piece of client software onto your computer. The client is available for Windows and Mac OS X, and can be downloaded from the library's SciFinder Scholar page. Your computer must be connected to the UMass network (on campus) in order to download the client software.

If you have any questions at all about downloading, installing, or using SciFinder Scholar, please contact us!

For those who prefer print, you can always come in and browse the bound volumes and indexes of Chemical Abstracts from 1907-2003 in ISEL (3rd floor).

New edition of CRC Handbook of Chemistry & Physics available online!

2006-04-20T08:50:00.000-04:00

Did you know that you can access the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics online through the UMass Amherst libraries?

Our online subscription has just been updated to the most recent (86th) edition of the handbook. Changes include:

- Includes seven important new tables and extensive updates and expansion of 20 others

- Incorporates substantial revisions to the Bond Dissociation Energy and Standard Transformed Gibbs Energy of Formation for Important Biochemical Species tables

- Updates the valuable Sources of Physical and Chemical Data appendix

New tables!

1. Vapor Pressure of the Metallic Elements
2. Electrical Conductivity of Aqueous Solutions
3. Proton Affinities
4. Electron Inelastic Mean Free Paths
5. Selected Properties of Semiconductor Solid Solutions
6. Vapor Pressures (Solvent Activities) for Binary Polymer Solutions
7. Density of Sulfuric Acid

To access the online version of the CRC Handbook, just visit the UMass Libraries homepage, click Databases, and navigate to C for CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics.

Enjoy!

Structure and Bonding now online, 1999-present

2006-03-27T14:36:00.000-05:00

The UMass Libraries have just added online access to the journal Structure and Bonding from 1999-present. Enjoy!

Upgrade now to SciFinder Scholar 2006!

2006-03-24T08:52:00.000-05:00

CAS has announced that as of April 1, older versions of SciFinder Scholar will no longer be supported. That means that all you SciFinder users out there need to upgrade (if you haven't yet) to the latest version.

Nota bene! To download the SciFinder Scholar client, you must be connected to the internet with a UMass Amherst IP address. This means either an on-campus connection, or dialing in via OIT. You will not be able to download via a connection through your home ISP or by using a UMass proxy service.

The latest downloads are available from the library's SciFinder Scholar page.

Please contact dbhelp@library.umass.edu if you have any questions about downloading or installing SciFinder Scholar software.

ACS Podcasting

2006-03-24T08:45:00.000-05:00

The American Chemical Society is starting to make podcasts available on its website. So far, interviews with some of the organizers of the Annual Meeting have been posted (subscribe to feed here, view list of available audio files here). There's also an interview with the editorial team of the journal ACS Chemical Biology (no feed yet, but file available here).

According to ACS, we should "look for information about these podcasts coming soon to the ACS Publications homepage."

Open access chemistry journals from Hindawi

2006-02-20T10:17:00.000-05:00

Hindawi Publishing Corporation is providing open access to more of its journal offerings. The following chemistry-related titles are now (or will soon be) freely available from Hindawi:

Bioinorganic Chemistry and Applications
Fulltext v1+ (2003+)
http://www.hindawi.com/GetJournal.aspx?journal=BCA
Print ISSN: 1565-3633 | Online ISSN: 1687-479X

EURASIP Journal on Bioinformatics and Systems Biology
Forthcoming
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bsb/
Print ISSN: 1687-4145 | Online ISSN: 1687-4153

International Journal of Photoenergy
Fulltext v1-7 (1999-2005), (2006+)
http://www.hindawi.com/GetJournal.aspx?journal=IJP
ISSN: 1110-662X

Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology
Fulltext v1-2 (2001-2002), (2003+)
http://www.hindawi.com/GetJournal.aspx?journal=JBB
Print ISSN: 1110-7243 | Online ISSN: 1110-7251

Journal of Nanomaterials
Forthcoming
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnm/
Print ISSN: 1687-4110 | Online ISSN: 1687-4129

PPAR Research
Forthcoming
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ppar/
Print ISSN: 1687-4757 | Online ISSN: 1687-4765

(via George Porter, CHMINF-L)

Best Sellers in Chemistry, 2005

2006-02-12T12:31:00.000-05:00

Which chemistry books were flying off the shelves last year? YBP Library Services has released the following list of chemistry best-sellers for January-November, 2005. Titles owned by UMass libraries have clickable links that will bring you to their library catalog records. Think we should own a title on this list? Let us know! Happy reading.

Best Sellers in Chemistry, January–November, 2005, as compiled by YBP Library Services

1. CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
Ed. by David R. Lide
CRC Press
2005. ISBN 0849304865. $139.95

2. Chemistry for Today: General, Organic, and Biochemistry
Seager, Spencer L.
Brooks/Cole
2004. ISBN 053439969x. $137.95

3. World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen
Jackson, Joe
Viking
2005. ISBN 0670034347. $27.95

4. Lavoisier in the Year One: The Birth of a New Science in an Age of Revolution
Bell, Madison Smartt
W.W. Norton
2005. ISBN 0393051552. $22.95

5. Crystals: Growth, Morphology, and Perfection
Sunagawa, Ichiro
Cambridge U. Press
2005. ISBN 0521841895. $95.00

6. Master Mind: The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber, the Nobel Laureate Who Launched the Age of Chemical Warfare
Charles, Daniel
Ecco
2005. ISBN 0060562722. $24.95

7. Elegant Solutions: Ten Beautiful Experiments in Chemistry
Ball, Philip
Royal Society Chemistry
2005. ISBN 0854046747. $39.95

8. Modern Raman Spectroscopy: A Practical Approach
Ewen Smith, et al.
John Wiley
2005. ISBN 0471496685. $90.00

9. Vocabulary and Concepts of Organic Chemistry
Milton Orchin, et al.
John Wiley
2005. ISBN 047168028. $132.00

10. Electronic and Optical Properties of Conjugated Polymers
Barford, William
Clarendon/Oxford
2005. ISBN 0198526806. $112.50

11. Photocatalytic Reaction Engineering
De Lasa, Hugo I.
Springer
2005. ISBN 0387234500. $119.00

12. Periodic Table: Into the 21st Century
Ed. by Dennis H. Rouvray
Institute of Physics Publications
2004. ISBN 0863802923. $68.00

13. Optical Spectroscopy in Chemistry and Life Sciences
Schmidt, Werner
Wiley-VCH
2005. ISBN 3527299114. $65.00

14. Data Analysis for Chemistry: An Introductory Guide for Students and Laboratory Scientists
Hibbert, D. B.
Oxford U. Press
2006. ISBN 0195162102. $44.50

15. Valency and Bonding: A Natural Bond Orbital Donor-Acceptor Perspective
Weinhold, Frank
Cambridge U. Press
2005. ISBN 0521831288. $100.00

16. Energy Dissipation in Molecular Systems
Tramer, A.
Springer
2005. ISBN 3540250506. $79.95

17. Artificial Enzymes
Ed. by Ronald Breslow
Wiley-VCH
2005. ISBN 3527311653. $99.95

18. Molecular Orbitals of Transition Metal Complexes
Jean, Yves
Trans. by Colin Marsden
Oxford University Press
2005. ISBN 0198530935. $94.50

19. Chemometrics and Chemoinformatics
Ed. by Barry K. Lavine
American Chemical Society
2005. ISBN 0841238588. $99.50

20. Kinetics of Catalytic Reactions
Vannice, M. Albert.
Springer
2005. ISBN 0387246495. $99.00

New e-journal content @ UMass Libraries

2006-02-05T13:13:00.000-05:00

The full text of the following e-journals is newly available through the UMass library catalog; enjoy!

Carbohydrate polymers (1998-)
Catalysis today (1998-)
Clinica chimica acta (1998-)

Faraday Discussions on Nanotechnology

2006-01-12T12:58:00.000-05:00

The most recent Faraday Discussions from the Royal Society of Chemistry focuses on nanotechnology--more specifically, molecular wires and nanoscale conductors. UMass Amherst users have online access to Faraday Discussions via the library catalog, and RSC has also made several articles from this issue freely available to all.

If you use feedreader software like My Yahoo, Bloglines, or FeedDemon, you can subscribe to RSS feeds for RSC journals, including Faraday Discussions--more info.

(via Dana Roth, PAMNet)

The language of chemistry?

2006-01-11T16:26:00.000-05:00

A little dead-of-winter fun....

Dr. Mark Nandor, a math teacher at the Wellington School in Columbus, OH, has come up with what he describes as "an exhaustive list of 'chemical symbol words.'" These are words that can be spelled entirely using chemical symbols.

The longest such word Dr. Nandor came up with is NoNRePReSeNTaTiONaLiSmS.

(via Slashdot)

Chmoogle and ChemDB: free chemical information

2005-11-22T12:02:00.000-05:00

This week saw the announcement of a new free chemistry information database: Chmoogle, by eMolecules Inc.

From their mission statement:

Chmoogle® is the leading open-access chemistry search engine. Chmoogle's mission is to discover, curate and index all of the public chemical information in the world, and make it available to the public for free. Chmoogle distinguishes itself by extremely fast searches, an appealing presentation of results, high-quality chemical drawings, and powerful advanced search capabilities like persistent hitlists and hitlist logic operations.

My librarian warning light went off a little at this item from their FAQ:

What are Chmoogle's sources?

Chmoogle discovers sources of chemical data by searching the internet, and receives submissions from data providers such as chemical suppliers and academic researchers.

A little more specificity would be nice ("the internet" is a tad bit broad).

In comparison, ChemDB, a new public database of small molecules based at UC Irvine, provides the following about their sources:

Chemical Vendors: All of the vendors who have supplied their chemical information catalogs that comprise the core data beneath ChemDB. The source information table includes a complete listing.

You can read more about the creation of ChemDB in this article, which has been accepted for publication in Bioinformatics.

Both of these new tools are certainly interesting in light of the recent discussions about open access to chemical data (cf. ACS, PubChem, etc.). I'd be interested to hear any chemists' reviews of Chmoogle and/or ChemDB...feel free to leave a comment below.

RSS Feeds to ACS Publications

2005-11-02T09:49:00.000-05:00

You can now get tables of contents from several ACS journals delivered via RSS. Here are links to the feeds for participating journals:

Analytical Chemistry A
Environmental Science & Technology A Page Magazine
Environmental Science & Technology Online News
Journal of Proteome Research
Chemical & Engineering News Online

But wait--what am I seeing when I click on these links? Confused? These aren't links to actual content from the journal--rather, they are links you can use to subscribe to journal updates using your RSS reader of choice. You need to copy and paste these links into your RSS reader to subscribe. Popular RSS feed readers include Bloglines and MyYahoo.

Still confused? Let me know--in addition to being a science reference librarian, I'm increasingly becoming an RSS evangelist, and would be happy to help you get set up with an account.

via ACS Livewire

Acta Crystallographica A-F online

2005-10-26T11:04:00.000-04:00

The following Acta Crystallographica content is now available online through the UMass Amherst libraries:

Acta crystallographica A: 2000-
Acta crystallographica B: 2000-
Acta crystallographica C: 2000-
Acta crystallographica D: 2000-
Acta crystallographica E: 2001-
Acta crystallographica F: 2005-

2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

2005-10-05T09:38:00.000-04:00

Nobelprize.org has details on the 2005 Chemistry award, presented to Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs, and Richard R. Schrock "for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis."

Some new reference books @ ISEL

2005-09-17T15:41:00.000-04:00

We've received a couple of important new chemistry reference titles at ISEL:

Comprehensive Organic Functional Group Transformations II (Science Ref QD 262 .C534 2005, 7 vols.)
From the publisher description:

Comprehensive Organic Functional Group Transformations II (COFGT-II) will provide the first point of entry to the literature for all scientists interested in chemical transformations. Presenting the vast subject of organic synthesis in terms of the introduction and interconversion of all known functional groups, COFGT-II will provide a unique information source documenting all methods of efficiently performing a particular transformation.

Encyclopedia of Biological Chemistry (Science Ref QD 415.A25 E53 2004, 4 vols.)
A four-volume work including over 500 articles covering "virtually every aspect of biology for which we have 'mechanistic' information." Articles contain references to further reading. Intended for generalists with some background in chemistry and biology.

RSC journals offering RSS feeds

2005-09-12T14:19:00.000-04:00

The Royal Society of Chemistry is now offering RSS feeds for its journals.

From the RSC announcement:

RSS feeds are available for journal Advance Articles. Advance Articles are the first web publication of each article, giving you access to new research as soon as published. Most RSC journals publish new Advance Articles daily and the feed contains the graphical abstract and text from the journals contents pages.

View a list of RSS feeds for RSC journals.

SciFinder Scholar 2006 now available

2005-08-29T08:39:00.000-04:00

CAS has announced the launch of SciFinder Scholar 2006 for Windows.

Announcement from CAS (includes description of new features)

Download SciFinder Scholar 2006 for Windows (UMass users only)

Good news for Mac users: CAS is planning to release an OS X compatible version of SciFinder before the end of 2005. Watch this space!

New open-access chemistry journal

2005-08-28T08:36:00.000-04:00

The Beilstein-Institut and BioMed Central have announced the launch of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry, a new open-access chemistry journal.

From the BioMed Central homepage: "The launch of this open access journal marks two important developments for BioMed Central: close publishing collaboration with an important scientific institution, and the broadening of our publishing activity to include chemistry."

Like most BioMed Central journals, this one offers an RSS feed which provides abstracts of new articles.

Wired News: Drier Laundry Through Chemistry

2005-08-26T13:26:00.000-04:00

Yet another instantiation of "better living through chemistry":

Wired News: Drier Laundry Through Chemistry: "A 'chemical wringer' developed by researchers in Florida leaves clothes 20 percent drier than a normal wash, and could save consumers millions in electricity bills.

A novel mix of common detergent ingredients that lowers the surface tension in liquids could force extra water from clothes during the final spin cycle, the researchers found."