Having lots of lists of chemistry links is an inefficient use of all the undoubted enthusiasm and experience out there. However, settling on a single centralised site as the 'authoritative list' is not the answer - in an increasingly fragmented scientific community, why should we expect a (say) spectroscopist to be able to categorise (say) organometallic links any better than Yahoo? Today's Chemistry is too big for a single list. The answer is to follow the ethos of the web - decentralise. . We should encourage the growth of specialist lists of links, and have a central index of these lists, ie use the 'WWW Virtual Library' aproach. This way we harness experience but don't stifle enthusiasm. All this needs is a bit of organisation. Any offers? Paul Deards Internet Publisher Society of Chemical Industry http://sci.mond.org/ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
This is a very important topic and one that every discipline and organisation is going to have to get to grips with. Increasingly we demand that conventional information sources should be on Inter- (or Intra-) nets. This is realistic, but there is a higher cost than is often realised. The first point to realise is that high-quality information is expensive. Not only data entry , but also checking, updating, and re-organisation of the material come with very high costs. An up-to-date, validated directory of UK chemists costs money to maintain. Secondly there is a great deal of investment in 'conventional' methods of information gathering and publishing and it takes time to move towards the electronic medium. Our role may well be to help those people whose present job it is to gather and produce information. Thirdly - and my own particular concern - is that *electronic information decays very rapidly*. I heard recently that it had a half-life of 3 years - this seems an overestimate. Over the last three years I have had 3 cases where very large amounts of information I have posted have simply disappeared through circumstances beyond my control. Sometimes I got most of it back, sometimes I haven't. Remember that setting things up can be exhilarating, but fewer people get a high from routine maintenance. A very serious problem is that if we wish to rely on today's information in the future, we shall have to look to institutions rather than individuals to provide it. Many of the Virtual Library sites (and I'm very supportive of the VL concept) are run by individuals. What happens when those individuals disappear for whatever reason? Do they take the namespace with them, does their 'organisation' or community take it over? As an example of an (apparently) no longer maintained VL look at the one for Java: http://acm.org/~ops/java.html which was last updated 9 months ago.. As an example - let's assume that a historian of science wished to analyse the constent of this list in 20 years' time - would they be able to? On Fri, 1 Nov 1996, Paul Deards wrote: [...]
The answer is to follow the ethos of the web - decentralise. . We should encourage the growth of specialist lists of links, and have a central index
I agree strongly that this is the right way in the initial phase of the WWW. I see it as an ecosystem - variety and mutation are critical. Many attempts to 'organise' things on the WWW are simply bypassed by events, unless they are based in large, powerful, real-life organisations. The WWW - as an organism - can tolerate 20 different organisms competing for the same niche - with the likelihood that 2-3 might survive in it.
of these lists, ie use the 'WWW Virtual Library' aproach. This way we harness experience but don't stifle enthusiasm.
All this needs is a bit of organisation. Any offers?
The biological community is much more decentralised that chemistry and manages this very well. All major European countries have an EMBNet node which serves not only as a component of the technical infrastructure but is also a centre to which the community can look for coordination. The physics community is also well organised. Chemistry suffers through not having a similar network. Even then it is difficult to get database work funded in the public domain - if you look at how difficult SwissProt (IMO one of the top examples of collaborative data collection on the Internet) has found it to get continued funding... [...] This leaves a serious problem for archiving and maintenance of public data in the public domain. My own feeling is that the appropriate bodies to curate this for posterity are the learned societies, museums, research institutes and universities, but that in today's climate they will have to recover most of their costs by sale of services and data. P.
Peter Murray-Rust (PeterMR, ) Director, Virtual School of Molecular Sciences Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nottingham University, NG7 2RD, UK; Tel 44-115-9515100 Fax 5110 http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/vsms/; OMF: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/omf/ ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
Peter M-R writes
This is a very important topic and one that every discipline and organisation is going to have to get to grips with. ... The first point to realise is that high-quality information is expensive. Not only data entry , but also checking, updating, and re-organisation of the material come with very high costs. ... ...As an example - let's assume that a historian of science wished to analyse the constent of this list in 20 years' time - would they be able to? ... This leaves a serious problem for archiving and maintenance of public data in the public domain. My own feeling is that the appropriate bodies to curate this for posterity are the learned societies, museums, research institutes and universities, but that in today's climate they will have to recover most of their costs by sale of services and data.
I would like to comment on two aspects. 1. The Computational chemistry list is around 4 years old. Its existence depends almost entirely on its moderator. During this period, several (5?) Gbytes of postings have been made, and in some ways, these encapsulate the evolution of comp chem during this period. About a year ago, it would have disappeared had the moderator not obtained a modest NSF 3 year grant, which stipulated that after this period, it had to become financially self-sustaining. Jan has posted around 22 proposed ways on how this might come about. Even so, he still has to raise substantial money from <<users>> to achieve this. Currently, at least in chemistry, we have NO model of a <<financially sustainable>> and working high-quality chemistry archive of the Internet which seems likely to be around in 20 years time (although we are close with several!) 2. Traditionally, Chemical Abstracts has fulfilled this role. They currently claim they ARE abstracting the chemical Internet, although one would be hard pressed to identify their guidelines for what qualifies. Ironically, their first action is often to PRINT the item. CA have a imprimateur of quality, although the cost of this is high, and this traditional cost often disenfranchises the very people who contributed in the first place! 3. My own feeling is that the way forward is for the emergence of high quality editing, and that as Peter suggests, the sooner that the types of organisation noted above start organising this, the better! As a closing remark, as Peter does, I wonder what the future of this very list might/should be? Its a year old, and in a minor way, charts the development of the chemical Internet during that period. But, does it deserve to be available in whatever form on 20 years time? Like the Bernard Shaw letters, should we enable some historian from that time to write the definitive work on it? Henry Rzepa. +44 171 594 5774 (Office) +44 594 5804 (Fax) ----- chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to listserver@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)
participants (3)
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Paul Deards
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peter murray rust
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Rzepa, Henry