LibGuides: Welch Summer Scholars Program: Finding Chemical Data

The Source Matters!

There’s more to the scientific literature than just journals and books. Often you’ll need a very specific piece of information: a boiling point, a solubility, a spectrum, safety data, a reaction yield, and so forth. Finding these can be a challenge but it’s much easier if you’re familiar with the handbooks and databases that contain such data. Choosing authoritative sources is very important. There’s lots of inaccurate and unattributed data on the Web, and in the lab accuracy and reliability really matter. When in doubt, always verify a piece of data in more than one published source.

Examples of authoritative sources:

CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics This link opens in a new window
First-stop resource that's authoritative, easy to use, and well known by generations of scientists.
A first-stop reference source containing a wealth of basic chemical and physical data for compounds, as well as many other useful tables, constants and formulas, and definitions in the physical sciences.
Combined Chemical Dictionary This link opens in a new window
Not actually a "dictionary," but a large database of chemical names, structures and properties.
Updated semi-annually. Database of over 500,000 organic, inorganic, and organometallic compounds and natural products, with structures, chemical, spectral, and physical data, and selected literature references.
NIST Chemistry WebBook This link opens in a new window
A database of reliable physical and thermochemical data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Updated regularly. Provides users with easy access to reliable chemical and physical property data (thermochemical, thermophysical, and ion energetics) for chemical species. The data provided in the site are from collections maintained by the NIST Standard Reference Data Program and outside contributors. Data in the WebBook system are organized by chemical species.

On the other hand, there are also sources that you'll need to cross-check before trusting:

Wikipedia This link opens in a new window
Be suspicious of any data that lack a specific source literature reference.
Updated continually. A multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly editable model. The name "Wikipedia" is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning "quick") and encyclopedia. Wikipedia's articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information.

Safety Data Sheets
SDS's are provided by chemical manufacturers and suppliers, and can be notoriously inaccurate.

Other Guides

Physical & Thermodynamic Properties
by David Flaxbart Last Updated Apr 23, 2024 614 views this year

Spectra and Spectral Data
by David Flaxbart Last Updated Apr 18, 2024 7281 views this year