From Handbooks to Databases on the Net: New Solutions and Old Problems in Information Retrieval for Chemists

Sources for chemical information are becoming ever more powerful and varied:  besides the still important printed sources, there are public databases, large in-house systems, and databases on PCs/CD-ROMs. The price to pay for this information cornucopia, however, is increased complexity for users. Improved front-ends and the change from terminal-mainframe to client-server systems ease the burden of searching, but such means are not yet sufficient to make chemical information retrieval a reliable routine operation of every chemist. We need even more improved database quality, better goal-oriented marketing and training by producers and hosts, and problem-oriented education for chemical information retrieval as an obligatory part of chemistry syllabi.