Other Encyclopedias and General Resources

SciFinder Access

SciFinder has a graphical interface for searching the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) databases, available in web and client software versions. SciFinder is only available for current Cornell faculty, students, postdoctoral fellows, visiting scholars, and staff. Only a small number of people can use SciFinder at one time, so be sure to log off when finished searching. Sessions are ended automatically after 15 minutes of inactivity.

Cornell Site Administrator: Leah Solla (lrm1@cornell.edu, 5-1361)

SciFinder web version

Getting the Full Text through Cornell Libraries

Cornell subscribes to thousands of journals and magazines and the full text of most of the titles are available to you online. If you are using a database look for links to full text or GetIt! Cornell.

To find out if Cornell subscribes to a particular publication, go to the Cornell library catalog.

Type the title of the journal or magazine (not the article title), and choose Journal Title from the pull down menu.

If Cornell has a subscription to the journal or magazine, you will be taken to a page with a link or links to the content. Follow the links to the volumes and issues for the publication. 

Pay attention to the date ranges that are displayed. You may not be able to get online access to older journal issues. These might be stored in one of the libraries or in the Library Annex.

Requests for a scan of the article can be made through the ScanIt service or by using the Request scan of article/chapter button on the catalog page.

Passkey

If you are doing research off campus, you can access the full-text of many books and articles by going through the Cornell library catalog or through databases. You will be asked to authenticate with your NetID and password.

If you choose to do research by searching the Internet or using Google Scholar, you will not automatically be taken to the full text of articles. Sometimes, you go to the publisher's page and are informed that you can access the article if you pay a fee (this is known as a paywall).

To make it easier to get full text access off campus, it is recommended that you install Passkey into your browser. Then when you hit a paywall, you just click on the Passkey icon and it changes the URL of the article so that you are recognized as a Cornell affiliate and allows you to access the content for free. However, this only works if Cornell subscribes to the journal! Not everything is available with Passkey.

Consult the library guide on Passkey for more information about installation.