Every subject has unique and specialist types of information that add rigour and interest to research. Usually, you’ll need to look beyond Library Search for these information types; some are accessed via specialist databases, while others are available online via websites, social media or streaming platforms.
We’ve picked out some key resources for your subject here but you might like to explore our Resource Guides for more resources on different information types.
- American Chemical Society (ACS)A large scientific society with members in industry, academia, and government.
- British Society of Scientific Glassblowers (BSSG)The British Society of Scientific Glassblowers was founded in 1960 for the benefit of those engaged in scientific glassblowing and its associated professions, and to uphold and further the status of scientific glassblowers. Newcastle University has its own Glassblowing Workshop, with a dedicated team who can customise and repair glassware for your experiments.
- Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE)The UK’s leading independent advocate for science and engineering with a mission focus on skills, funding and policies.
- Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)Learned society and professional body advancing excellence in the chemical sciences since 1841.
- Antibiotic GuardianA campaign led by Public Health England urging people to take action in helping to slow antibiotic resistance.
- CellRepoCreated by an international team led by researchers at Newcastle University, this species and strain database uses cell barcodes to monitor and track engineered organisms. This version control in cell engineering supports open and reproducible science.
- Chemical Database Service (CDS)Databases containing crystal structure data on organic, organo-metallic and inorganic compounds, and metals and alloys.
- ChemSpiderChemspider is a free chemical structure database from the RSC providing access to freely available chemical data
- ChemWebInformation platform offering access to abstracts, papers, journals, books, conferences, news and 'the Alchemist' newsletter.
- NIST Chemistry WebBookThe NIST Chemistry WebBook provides access to chemical and physical property data for chemical species.
- PubMedProvides access to biomedical and genomic information from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
- Thermtest Thermal ResourcesCompilers of the world's largest thermal conductivity academic paper database.
SciFinder-n indexes journal articles, substances and reactions in chemistry and related sciences.
When accessing SciFinder-n for the first time, you will be asked to enter your Newcastle University email address and to confirm this via a verification code. Once you have confirmed the verification code, you will be given access to SciFinder-n and you won't need to confirm your identity the next time you access it.
CAS SciFinder-n help is available including step-by-step visuals of all the search functionality.
Reaxys allows chemical structure and formula searches as well as topic searches for journal articles.
To use Reaxys you must set up a personal account with Elsevier. Follow the instructions in the Library Search record for the database to do this.
Elsevier help using Reaxys is available including training modules, videos and webinars.
Both of these databases are integrated with ChemDraw to facilitate populating the structure editor for searching.
Freely available chemical structure and database websites:
- ChemSpiderChemspider is a free chemical structure database from the RSC providing access to freely available chemical data.
- OpenPhactsPublicly available pharmacological data
- Physical Sciences Data-science ServiceNational Research Facility which brings together tools and resources for UK researchers in physical sciences.
Resource Guides
Explore the different types of information available at the Library.
Support and services
Explore further tools, guides and support from the Library.
