Library keys are available to current Chemistry department faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students. These keys will allow you to access the current and bound journal collections twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. To sign out a library key, please see Judith Currano or Robert Harris in the Chemistry Library on any weekday between 9AM and 4:45PM.
Don't have time (or don't want) to visit the library in person to collect your materials? Up to 5 Penn people can be designated as proxy borrowers for you. You and your administrative assistant or student simply need to fill out and sign the Faculty Proxy Borrower Registration form, and we will set them up as a proxy borrower for you. This means that you can send them up to the library to collect your books, and we'll charge the materials directly to your card so that you can self-renew. Members of the standing faculty can also designate a non-Penn spouse or partner as a proxy borrower, allowing your spouse or partner to make use of Penn's collections and have his or her materials charged to your account.
The Chemistry Library has a number of spaces that can be reserved for meetings, interviews, office hours, or student examinations.
If you want to reserve space, please contact the Chemistry Library staff (215-898-2177; chemlib@pobox.upenn.edu).
Penn Libraries maintain Canvas, Penn's online course management system. For assistance using Canvas in Chemistry courses, please contact either Judith Currano or the Canvas support team.
The Chemistry Library supports student learning in other ways. We are happy to cooperate with you in any of the following areas.
Explore our digital databases, e-journals, e-books, e-reference works, and more. Click here for an overview of electronic sci-tech holdings at Penn, or view a selection of chemistry specific resources.
Training seminars covering a variety of databases and other electronic products are offered regularly by the Chemistry Library so that you can learn to use new products and update your strategies and workflows in familiar tools. These trainings are targeted specifically to Penn's chemical science researchers. If you would like to suggest a topic for a seminar, please contact Judith Currano (215-746-5886; currano@pobox.upenn.edu)
One-on-one personalized research consultations/orientations are available to you in your office or at the library. Contact Judith Currano, Head of the Chemistry Library, at (215) 746-5886 or currano@pobox.upenn.edu to set up an appointment or if you are having any problems searching for or obtaining materials. Judith is also happy to attend your group meeting to speak to your students and post-docs about information retrieval and responsible conduct of research.
Even if the Chemistry Library does not have the information that you need, we can get it for you from another campus location or another university's library.
FacultyEXPRESS delivers requested materials electronically or to your departmental office, for all standing faculty.
Penn Library Delivers items from other campus libraries to the Chemistry Library for your convenient pick-up.
BorrowDirect+ is an "expedited interlibrary loan" service that lets you search a combined catalog and directly request books not currently available at Penn; most books arrive within 3-5 working days. The University of Pennsylvania participates in two borrowing consortia: Borrow Direct searches the catalogs of major research institutions; and EZ-Borrow searches the catalogs of over 60 Pennsylvania and other local libraries.
Interlibrary Loan: If you need a book or journal article that neither Penn nor any of its Borrow Direct partners owns, the Library's Inter-library Loan department will be happy to help you obtain it in a timely fashion, sometimes even the same day!
Purchase Requests: If the Chemistry Library lacks a critical text or reference item in your area of research, we will consider purchasing it for our collection. Contact Judith Currano (215-746-5886, currano@pobox.upenn.edu) with purchase requests.
Penn licenses a service called iThenticate to check research work for plagiarism or self-plagiarism (also called text-recycling or dual publication.) This service is available to any Penn researcher who is an author of a research document, such as a journal article, conference paper, or dissertation. In order to use iThenticate, please follow these steps.
For more information about using iThenticate or if you have any other questions about publication ethics, please contact Judith Currano.
Can't find a preparation for the compound you want? Interested in finding a compound with a similar structure to your target molecule? SciFinder and Reaxys will not let you find what you're looking for? Substructure searching on the STN interface to Chemical Abstracts and other databases is available to current Penn affiliates only after 5PM on most weekdays.
Please make an appointment with Judith Currano at least two days in advance by calling (215) 746-5886 or by e-mailing currano@pobox.upenn.edu
Judith Currano has been the head of Penn's Chemistry Library since 1999. She holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry and English from the University of Rochester, where she did research in the lab of Bob Boeckmann, and a master's degree in library and information science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Judith's research interests include effective teaching techniques in chemical information, techniques of organizing and retrieving structural data, research and publication ethics, and how chemists interact with the primary journal literature. She currently chairs both the Board of Trustees of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre and the ACS Committee on Ethics; she is active in ACS, the Special Libraries Association, and the Penn Women in Chemistry group; and she edits one issue per year of the Chemical Information Bulletin.
