[chemweb] The Chemical Internet at "10" ?

[Paul May]

Hi,

--On 15 January 2004 07:58 +0000 "Rzepa, Henry" <h.rzepa at 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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> List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)



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Dr Paul May, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol, BRISTOL BS8 1TS, UK
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