This is an old revision of the document!

SEL Chemical Reference Titles Designated as Five College Copy of Record

In 2014, The Five College science librarians agreed to deduplicate large print reference collections within the Five College Consortia when we have the online version.

As part of this effort, the UMass Library agreed to be the “Copy of Record” (one library’s title is maintained and kept in perpetuity) for several important and large print chemical titles because our holdings are complete or near to complete. These titles are:

Sadtler Standard Spectra files (Sadtler files)

Chemical Abstracts

Gmelin Handbook of Inorganic Chemistry (Gmelin)

Beilstein Handbook of Organic Chemistry (Beilstein)

All of these titles will remain in the Science and Engineering Library (SEL) permanently and not sent to the Depository. It is easier for scholars to use the whole collection when the print volumes are shelved together. Adjacent shelving is not possible at the Five College Library Depository where volumes are scattered in various book trays. Also, there are members of the UMass science community who still use the paper version because some data appears in the print version but not in the online (Note: Chemical Abstracts, in particular, is trying to identify and correct this disparity).

Final Note on the Shelving Arrangement at SEL

The Five College Copy of Record Reference sets mentioned above (Chemical Abstracts, Beilstein, Gmelin, Sadtler files), along with our own Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports (STAR Index) are shelved in a special area on 3rd Floor SEL. Over the years this area was informally known as the “Reference Annex.” With the potential of Five College users as well as our own scientists using these titles, is was necessary to identify the collection and its physical location more clearly in ALEPH. A new ALEPH collection code was created and the location “UM/Science Library Floor 3” was assigned to each title.

Chemical Abstracts, Beilstein, Gmelin, and the Sadtler files are difficult to shelve, for various reasons. In the past only the science librarians would reshelve them. To aid student assistants who do all the shelving now, a shelving order number (1,2,3, …) has been added on the book spines for each title, in addition to the call number.

The Library’s printed Beilstein near to complete copy among the Five Colleges. Smith College has 2 volumes of the 1881 edition that will complete our set. These will eventually be transferred to UMass when they are no longer needed at Smith.

Additional Information about the STAR Index

The Library has a very good collection of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) technical reports and other documents, issued from 1971 through 1995/1996, in microfiche format. (NASA reports are available online from 1995 to the present). NASA fiche are filed by NASA accession number, which is found in the STAR Index. The NASA fiche is now located on 3rd floor in SEL, so it is convenient to have STAR nearby in the Science Reference Floor 3 location.

Created by: Cindy Spell for the SEL staff, 02/15/16