New Resource Available

a. CrossFire

By Chuck Huber (UC Santa Barbara), Resource Liaison

Starting in February, the UC has had systemwide access to CrossFire, a chemistry database system from MDL, Inc., a division of Reed-Elsevier.  Previously, several UC campuses had subscribed to part or all of the CrossFire databases through the Minerva consortium based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Now, all UC campuses have access through a new academic server based at MDL, Inc.

CrossFire permits quick and powerful searching by text terms, numeric data, and chemical structures of two of the world’s largest databases of chemical information, the Beilstein database and the Gmelin database.

The Beilstein database of organic chemistry includes records from the mid-1800’s to the present, for more than 8.8 million substances, 9 million reactions, and titles and abstracts for about 2 million documents (since 1980) in organic chemistry.

The Gmelin database of inorganic and organometallic chemistry includes 1.6 million compounds and 1.3 million reactions from 1772 to the present, and 900,000 citations, including titles and abstracts from 1995 to the present.

CrossFire is a client-server system. UC users may download the client software and find installation instructions for each campus at: http://software.chem.ucla.edu/crossfire/

Questions about CrossFire should be directed to the campus contacts, listed at: http://software.chem.ucla.edu/crossfire/uccontacts.html