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CHEM 116BL (Laverman, Spring 2024): Other Inorganic Chemistry Resources

Guide to using library resources (e.g. SciFinder, Reaxys) for literature research for CHEM 116BL.

General Reference Works

"Comprehensive" Chemistry Series
Comprehensive Inorganic Chemistry II UCSB Only (available online only at UCSB)
Comprehensive Organometallic Chemistry III   UCSB Only (Ref QD411 .C653 2007)
These sets from Pergamon Press/Elsevier contain excellent review articles on various aspects of their respective subjects, and make good starting points for new research. There are additional sets which we have in print only at this time; we hope to add online access to more of them soon.

Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology  UCSB Only (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/book/10.1002/0471238961/)
(In print at TP 9 .E685)
Commonly referred to as "Kirk-Othmer" after its original editors, this encyclopedia has good overview articles on substances of commercial importance. It does not go into depth on laboratory methods, but there is frequently useful property information, and the articles are very well referenced. Articles are selectively updated on a regular basis.

Encyclopedia of Inorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry  UCSB Only  (available online only at UCSB)
This is a fairly new work, containing a mixture of short "definition" articles with longer review articles by noted authors; the articles have good bibliographies. It covers inorganic, bioinorganic, organometallic and coordination chemistry. The encyclopedia is organized alphabetically, with a thematic list in the foreword, a subject index and list of contributors.

Knovel.com UCSB Only (http://app.knovel.com/)
 Knovel provides electronic versions of an extensive collection of reference works in chemistry, including several for inorganicl chemistry.  Data tables are numerically searchable, and some titles provide interactive tables, graphs and equations.

Physical Properties

CHEMnetBASE
This electronic resource includes the content of three print resources listed below.

  • CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics    (QD 65 .H3 SEL SEL Ref Desk)
    Probably the most familiar source, the CRC handbook is published annually but usually changes little from one year to the next. It contains a variety of useful physical and chemical data, with some references. Some of the data is given in the main table of inorganic compounds, other data appears in separate tables grouped by data type. Not very systematic in choice of data, and indexing can be inconsistent.
  • Dictionary of Inorganic Compounds    (SEL Ref QD 148 .D53 1992)
  • Dictionary of Organometallic Compounds, 2nd ed.    (SEL Ref QD 411 .D53 1995)
    Chapman-Hall publishes a variety of "dictionaries" of compounds, including these two sets. They give structure diagrams, basic physical data (on both the compound and significant derivatives), and references for other information (syntheses, spectra, etc.). Alphabetical arrangement; well-indexed, including CAS Registry Numbers.

Cambridge Structural Database (WebCSD) UCSB Only  Produced by the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre, the Cambridge Structural Database is the world's repository of experimentally determined organic and metal-organic crystal structures, with over 500,000 structures.  The WebCSD interface allow for text and numerical searching, substructure searching, similarity searching, and reduced cell seaching of the database.  It can display structures in a variety of visualization formats.  WebCSD is paid for by the UCSB Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; students in that department may contact departmental IT support for information on downloading additional CSD software.

Spectra: At present, we don't have any good, comprehensive online source for spectra of inorganic and coordination compounds.  Search in SciFinder and Reaxys to find links to research articles which have spectral data on your compounds of interest.

Inorganic Reactions

Inorganic Syntheses    (Ref QD 151 .I5)
This is a less-than-annual publication, similar in format to the more famous Organic Syntheses, giving detailed and tested methods for syntheses, including reaction conditions, yields and safety information. It covers inorganic and organometallic compounds (including boranes, synthetic metals, ceramic superconductors, etc.) The series has no collective volumes, but the indexes cumulate every five volumes, and there is a collective index to volumes 1-30. The online version is keyword searchable across the entire series; while UCSB does not currently have access to the full text online, the online site can conveniently be used as an index to locate articles in the print version.

Other Article Databases

For more information on searching in Web of Science, see: 

CHEM 184/284: Lecture 9, part 1: Web of Science

Copyright

© 2023 Charles F. Huber

Creative Commons License
This work by Charles F. Huber is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at guides.library.ucsb.edu