1. Beilstein CrossFire plus Reactions Stephen Briggs Beilstein Information Systems Helen Schofield UMIST and MIDAS Paul Meehan MIDAS

2. Beilstein’s Handbuch der organischen Chemie

3. Beilstein’s Handbuch der organischen Chemie • Commenced publication in 1881 • Definitive source for organic chemistry information • Properties of compounds • Methods of preparing compounds • 1st edition covered about 15,000 compounds

4. Gmelin Handbuch der anorganischen Chemie • Commenced publication in 1819 • Covers inorganic and organometallic compounds • Each volume covers a different element

5. Printed Beilstein and Gmelin The printed works fell out of use for the following reasons: • Cost • German language • Other sources became easier to use • e.g. Chemical Abstracts • Information out of date

6. Beilstein CrossFire • First demonstrated in 1993, e.g. at the Chemical Information Users Conference in Manchester • Major pharmaceutical companies and consortia of universities in the USA began to subscribe

7. MIDAS Manchester Information, Datasets and Associated Services • Located at Manchester Computing, University of Manchester • Beilstein Service is being provided by a consortium of Manchester Computing, Manchester University and UMIST

8. Beilstein CrossFire - coverage • Organic compounds - names, structures etc. • Properties, e.g. physical data, spectroscopy • Methods of making organic compounds • Reactions of organic compounds • Physiological information

9. Gmelin through CrossFire - coverage • Inorganic and organometallic compounds • Preparations • Properties • Geological, mineralogical and metallurgical information • e.g. occurrence, extraction from ores

10. CrossFire - coverage Beilstein • Contains >7.5 million structures • Nearly 5 million searchable reactions, and about 10 million reaction records • > 400 000 abstracts Gmelin • Contains nearly 1 million compounds

11. Time period covered Much further back than most databases: • Beilstein - back to 1771 • Gmelin - back to 1772 Chemical Abstracts Online: 1967

12. How to search • By structure or sub-structure • By numerical values of properties • By text, e.g. bibliographic information • By browsing indexes

13. Sub-structure searching

14. How to register • Connect to the MIDAS CrossFire web page at http://midas.ac.uk/crossfire/ • Complete the web self-registration • you will need an Access username and password • choose your own password, the system will give you a username