Chemical Abstract から電子ジャーナルへ

Preelectronic Age. After starting on Biochemistry in graduate school (1968), the only idea in my mind for finding references was looking into bibliographies. Then, searching the Chemical Abstract for key word (s) in Medical Library was found to be ordinary and rational. Request for a reprint to the author was noticed in the most traditional and more economical but time wasting way, and it gave also a delight by finding the author's autograph on the reprints. Soon after majoring in Anesthesiology in 1972, the Index Medicus came to be one of my retrieval materials. In those days, specially ordered cards in B-6 size has played a definite role for the arrangement of the literature.Dawn of Electronic Age. In the middle of 1990s, e-mail and the Internet provided me with a new tool for searching literature. Download of literature from the Medline saved me from retyping on cards of my personal computer. Around millennium, the PubMed Central came to serve in a public. Then full text electronic journal became available in our university and saved me from finding room to keep too many papers. Finally card type program in my computer has taken over the cards in B-6 size. Will full text electronic journal be something? Without full elctronization of old literatures or books, it might be merely a strong tool for technological research workers but not for academic scientists since science should be founded on the science of the past.