Hi, --On 15 January 2004 07:58 +0000 "Rzepa, Henry" <h.rzepa@imperial.ac.uk> wrote:
The "10th" birthday of the "web" passed mostly without comment in 1999; I mention this since arguably 2004 (perhaps Jan, perhaps May) would represent such for "chemistry". So it might be useful to ask people on this list for any comments, eg along the lines of what have been the significant changes in the way we "do" chemistry as a result of the last ten years!
The most significant change for me is that I no longer go to the library. Ever! I think the last time I went to the chemistry library for a reference was 2 years ago. Nowadays I can just sit at my desk and in 5 seconds have my hands on an article about any research topic I want.
Indeed Acrobat (sometimes copy protected, rarely accompanied by the "source document") seems increasingly ubiquitous on the Web; virtually all electronic journals now offer it, e-books using it are starting to appear (I posted on this earlier), and increasingly at the very operating system level, "print to PDF" is offered as an option. Acrobat is an asynchronous medium; it is far easier to produce such, than to use (re-use) it (Acrobat parsers do exist however, but how effective they are I do not know). Thus this frenzy to populate the Internet with chemistry wrapped in Acrobat is very much a one-way (non reusable) mechanism for the digital information it represents.
yes, I agree. I don't like Acrobat at all, but it seems to have been adopted as the web standard for everything.
So will we come to see the first 10 years of the chemical Web really just as digital paper, or something much more fundamental?
Opinions welcome!
Maybe it is just digital paper at the moment, especially with the prevalance of pdf files everywhere. But I think it's still early days for the web. It may be 10 years since the chemical web started, but I thinks it's only really be about 5 years since people have been taking the web seriously, and Chemistry Depts have starting seeing the web as the *main* information source for recruiting students, doing research etc. Before that it was considered to be just a curiosity but of no real importance. The next 5 years might be interesting, though.
Henry Rzepa. Imperial College, Chemistry Dept. +44 0778 626 8220 +44 020 7594 5804 (Fax)
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