Background information and Reports on the Daresbury based Service

The UK Chemical Database Service has a long history of operation from Daresbury Laboratory.

The Chemical Database Service was set up, managed and operated by the CDS group based at the STFC Daresbury Laboratory until the end of 2012. The Service had been funded over the years by a number of EPSRC Grants. For instance grant GR/S70623/01 spanned the the period 01/04/04 to 31/03/08. More recently the EPSRC has moved to a tender based process.

The EPSRC funded National Chemical Database Service (NCDS) is curently operated by the Royal Society of Chemical

History of CDS provision from Daresbury

The history of the Service extends back to the late 1970s. A comprehensive review article gives an overview of the grant based Service until the end of 2004. Some details of the old Daresbury Service are still available from the CDS/DL webpages. Links to the remaining useful information are included in the pulldown menu at the top of the web site homepage. However, much of this material has been removed to avoid confusion with the current RSC service. What remains mostly relates to the CrystalWorks component. CrystalWorks is also available to UK academic users via the RSC portal.

For a period from 2008 onwards chemical database provision was funded through a new contract arrangements with the EPSRC. Contract R5-E3-34 was awarded to the CDS group at Daresbury following a competitive European Open Tender exercise.

From the beginning of 2013 the Royal Society of Chemistry has operated the main national UK Chemical Database Service on behalf of the EPSRC. However, Daresbury continues to develop and provide access to the CrystalWorks component, which enables searching of some of the main crystallographic databases.

Reports to the EPSRC and User Newsletters

Annual Reports on the Service were provided to the EPSRC. Links to these are included below. A number of user Research Highlights were provided with each Annual Report, and an Archive of these is still available online. The Service also provided regular Newsletters for the user community.