F ocu s
Analytical Chemistry
Analyzing on the
INTERNET Finding analytical chemistry on the Internet is still a challenge, but new resources and search tools are coming on line.
T
he Internet, like the land of Oz, can be wonderful and whimsical or bewildering and frustrating to visit—especially if you're looking for specific information and have limited time. Much of what's posted on the Internet, even in the chemistry listings, is irrelevant to a working analytical chemist (where else can youfindeverything you [n]ever wanted to know about NF5?) and items of interest tend to be scattered. That said, the Internet offers a lot of good resources for chemists in general and analytical chemists in particular: documents, discussion groups, conferences, government information and funding opportunities, business and stock market news, software, databases, and worldwide topic or literature searching applications you can either download or use online for free. But first, you have tofindthem. To help you organize your surfing—er, searching—party, we enlisted the aid of Gary Wiggins at Indiana University and Thomas O'Haver at the University of Maryland, both of whom have compiled
extensive guides to chemistry resources that are offered free at several locations on the Internet (e.g., university and government gopher servers, World Wide Web servers) and updated periodically. Wiggins says he got involved in providing "service to chemists" on the Internet through his work as a chemistry librarian at Indiana University. "I saw all kinds of listservs appearing around the Internet and thought, why not do one for chemistry?" he says. He now runs his own chemistry listserv out of the Indiana University library. He and his students also surf the Internet to locate new sources for specific topics and inquiries. O'Haver, a professor of chemistry, got started "out of curiosity, mostly. I wanted to know if the net would be a practical way of sharing information, especially information that is not ordinarily published in print media. In 19911 began to upload [send out] some software I had developed to various Internetfilearchives and commercial services. In late 1992,1 got the idea of organizing a conference that
would take place entirely electronically. With the help of Don Rosenthal of Clarkson University (Potsdam, NY), this led to CHEMCONF '93, thefirstInternet chemical education conference." Access
What tools do you need to use the Internet? "Most of the 'local client' network tools (e.g., Eudora [for e-mail], Mosaic and Netscape [for the World Wide Web, known as WWW or 'the Web']) need a graphical environment—Macintosh or Microsoft Windows," says O'Haver. If you only have DOS with a limited commercial server, a 386-based PC, or other equipment limitations, there are still plenty of things you can do on the Internet. 'Tou can still run a plain old text terminal program (e.g., ProComm on a DOS machine or ZTerm on an old Macintosh) and access a dial-up account for the traditional text-oriented services that require only vtlOO terminal emulation," O'Haver says. These include such hostbased network client programs as "pine"
Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 67, No. 7, April 1, 1995 255 A
Fo c us
images of exhibits and movies of dissections, protein folding, and other elaborate processes. Resource Gopher site WWW or ftp site One strategy for getting around the Wiggins' resource list gopher-lib-gopher. http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem/ maze of Internet sites is to use searching lib.indiana.edu cheminfo/chemres.html tools offered at many of the gopher and Diane Kovacs' "acadlist" gopher.usask.ca ftp://ksuvxa.kent.edu files Web sites. O'Haver says, "Automated O'Haver's resource list info.umd.edu, follow the ftp://ra.nrl.navy.mil/ search engines (such as Archie, Veronica, path /MacSciTech/chem/ MacSciTech/chem Lycos, and WebCrawler) can be useful InterNIC chemistry is.internic.net, follow the resources path /infoguide/resources/ but are limited to simple Boolean word chemistry matches. There is no requirement that everything on the Internet be labeled with a comprehensive set of keywords." (fore-mail), "gopher", "lynx" (fortextWiggins adds, "Veronica searches can Besides listing lists, gophers often include only access to WWW), "tin" (for network be frustrating because there are a lot of documents, searchable documents and news), "ftp" (for file transfer), and "telnet" databases, bulletin board interfaces, and dirty connections in the gopher system or "rlogin" (for remote login). A compre(i.e., improper bookmarking and tunnel software that can be downloaded directly hensive Internet guide can show you how or byftp.Many of the documents are an- construction between one site and the to make the best use of these tools. next) and a lot of dead ends or misleading nouncements, newsletters, and informaIf you are a private citizen with no insti- tion about the local gopher site's sponsor- finds. One materials database I found turned out to be an assortment of clays for tutional ties and you live in a remote area, ing organization and library or profesceramics." More promising, he says, is you will probably have to pay for a comsional resources. mercial service or Internet service proThe opening level or directory of a Web the WebCrawler and related software. Such "robot" programs go out and index vider such as CompuServe or America site is called a "home page," and it often all the documents on the Web. "They do Online. In addition, some cities are now contains graphics and hypertext links providing "freenet" numbers that allow (these let you click on a highlighted word help," Wiggins says, "but they're never quite up to date." you to access the Internet via a local call, to jump from the main text to a relevant although you may not get through at peak document or feature). Web sites are more use hours. Some state library systems visually and even audibly oriented than Stalking the wily analytical also give free or low-cost accounts to state gophers, and consequently take longer to resource residents (e.g., Maryland's Sailor sysload, but they often present information All this works well for general chemistry, tem), and some universities give out free in a more meaningful form than plain text. but where is analytical chemistry hiding? dial-up accounts to local residents. The home page of the Franklin Institute Even government officers who should in Philadelphia, for example, shows static know the answer sometimes look abashed Resource lists
Gopher hunting and Web slinging
Gopherspace is one of the most varied, access-friendly, and frustrating parts of the net. It allows you to "tunnel" quickly from one site to any other that's already linked to it by clicking a mouse or an ENTER button, but its menu-of-menus structure makes it easy to spend much of your time clicking away at menu options without getting much actual information. Because many gopher servers list similar gopher servers elsewhere, or even just borrow each other's options for their own menus, going around in circles is a perpetual hazard. But this structure does serve a purpose, O'Haver says. "If each analytical chemistry site had pointers to all other analytical sites, then if you found one, you'd have found them all." To get to real information, says Wiggins, hunt around the options at a gopher site to find the locally produced features. 256 A
Government agencies Resource
Gopher site
EPA HHS DOE NIH National Library of Medicine NSF Naval Research Laboratory Ed Voigtman's optical spectroscopy simulation SPECTRUM analytical signal processing tool and tutorial Course material for spectrochemistry NIST NIST Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory/Analytical Chemistry Div.
gopher.epa.gov gopher.os.dhhs.gov vm1 .hqadmin.doe.gov gopher.nih.gov gopher.nlm.nih.gov stis.nsf.gov (gopher or ftp) ra.nrl.navy.mil [NRL gopher, follow the path:]. . ./ MacSciTech/optics/LightStoneDemo . . ./MacSciTech/chem/ SPECTRUMdemo.hqx . . ./chem/Spectrochem.sea.hqx gopher-server.nist.gov .. . Laboratory Programs/Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory/ Analytical Chemistry Division pdb.pdb.bnl.gov gopher.esusda.gov info.er.usgs.gov
Protein Data Bank at Brookhaven National Laboratory USDA Extension Service U.S. Geological Survey
Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 67, No. 7, April 1, 1995
and whisper hoarsely, "We're working on it." Part of the problem, of course, is that analytical chemistry rarely appears under its own name but instead disguises itself as biochemistry, environmental policy, energy, molecular genetics, physical sciences, statistical analysis, technology transfer, engineering, materials science, and a host of other, mostly applicationsbased, listings. However, a few analytically oriented gophers are starting to stick their necks out. One at the University of Texas at Houston actually contains the words "analytical chemistry" in its title and offers consulting, contract services for protein and DNA sequencing or synthesis, and instrument rentals and repair. Brian Tissue of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Blacksburg, VA), has set up a WWW home page with hypertext for analytical chemistry tutorials and resources that spans spectroscopies, microscopic imaging, MS, chromatography, electrophoresis, and electroanalytical chemistry. According to O'Haver, 'You could say that most of the analytical chemistry on the Internet is still under construction. Many of the sites [see boxes] are incomplete, but they're growing all the time." Wiggins says that most of the analytical information currently available on the Internet resides in biochemical and environmental areas; the rest of analytical chemistry is somewhat restricted in terms of free access, which the Internet generally demands. 'There aren't many databases available on gopher and the Web or by ftp for analytical chemistry. No one's going to take all the time and trouble to develop a spectral database and put it out on the net for free," he explains. One exception to this is the government— federal agencies such as NIH and EPA do offer access to databases on the net, many of them structural databases for proteins and genes. The Naval Research Laboratory also offers some database files via ftp. O'Haver adds that some commercial database vendors can deliver access via the Internet. Literature searches
The "Uncover" journal database (formerly and on some gophers still known as "CARL/Uncover"), which claims to offer
Research/academic Resource
Gopher site
Directory of Chemistry Gophers at Northern Illinois University
hackberry.chem.niu.edu or acsinfo.acs.org, follow the path /Other Chemistry Gophers/
Center for Process Analytical Chemistry (CPAC) Analytical Chemistry Center at University of Texas at Houston
http://www.cpac. washington.edu/ oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu, follow the path /U.T. Houston Health Science Center Information/Support services/Analytical Chemistry Center
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Analytical Chemistry home page Introduction to Spectroscopy and Polarization (University of California, San Diego) Chemical Index (includes some spectroscopy) Catalog of chemistryrelated freeware and shareware (University of Maryland)
Other chemistry-related Internet resources Spreadsheet simulations for analytical chemistry Other spectroscopyrelated sites (University of Kentucky)
WWW or ftp site
http://www.chem.vt.edu/ chem-ed/ac-home.html http://www-wilson.ucsd. edu/education/ spectroscopy/ spectroscopy.html http://www.chemie. fu-berlin.de/chemistry/ index.html inform.umd.edu, follow the path /Educational_ Resources/Faculty Resources and Support/ Chemistry Conference (CHEMCONF)/Background Reading//PDchemistry_91 -92.txt [UMD, follow the path:] . . ./Background Reading /Internet Chemistry.txt . . ./ChemConference/ Software/Spreadsheets/ http://kerouac.ph.arm. uky.edu/GRPcont.html
more than 5 million searchable titles, is accessible from many of the chemistry gopher sites at universities and federal agencies. Searching online is free (or relatively free if you access it through a commercial service), but the service charges a fee for downloading abstracts or receiving full articles. "It's quite practical, within its stated limitations," says O'Haver. "Uncover deals only with the recent literature." Wiggins says, "Uncover is quite an innovation. It was thefirstservice to put tables of contents online within a week of publication. Uncover's latest service, Reveal, lets you subscribe to get the tables of contents for the journals of your choice, which are then sent to you free over the Internet." If you need to search in a limited area, you may be better off with a commercial journal database service in your field. "It's hard to beat CAS tools for searching the
conventional print research literature," O'Haver says. (See sidebar for more information on CAS and other ACS services available on the Internet.) Online conferences
Online conferences have a number of attractive features—among them the reduced cost in time and travel expenses for large numbers of participants. Another advantage is that they can afford to run for up to several weeks instead of just a few days and can be made available to users at several levels of sophistication. Symposia, questions, bulletin boards, poster sessions, and discussion groups can be organized, and some conferences even feature "expo" sections where commercial vendors can display or at least describe their wares. Conferences on chemical education, chemometrics, and computational chemistry already have been held com-
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Fo c u s pletely online, says Wiggins, and "real" conferences are starting to introduce Internet features such as online registration via e-mail, gopher, or the Web (some interfaces provide an interactive registration form for you to fill out). "The conferences are working out pretty well, and participant feedback has been quite positive," says O'Haver. Serve yourself
Surprisingly, one of therichestareas of specific information for analytical chemists, says Wiggins, is also one of the oldest on the net. Both newsgroups and listservs are forums for group communication and discussion on specific topics. A listserv is an automated e-mail distribution list you subscribe to for free, usu-
ACS on the Internet
The American Chemical Society is probably the largest nongovernmental chemistry resource on the Internet and has expanded its online services in the past year. Its gopher, acsinfo.acs. org, provides extensive information on ACS publications, member information, and contact phone numbers; a copy of Gary Wiggins' Some Chemistry Resources on the Internet; and a tunnel to other chemistry gophers. The ACS WWW home page, http:// www.acs.org, went up on the Internet this year with several new features, as did the ACS Publications home page, http://pubs.acs.org, which contains information on electronic editions (CDROM, etc.) of ACS journals, a software list, and a Product Information Network (PIN) for interactive electronic advertising. Director of Advanced Technology Operations Lorrin Garson says that one of the most important expansions in ACS services has been in online access to journals. The Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) is accessible through a telnet connection to an STN account and has its own information home page, http://www.cas.org/, that also connects users to the STN computer. SciFinder, a tutorial search tool for CAS, is being introduced this year to
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ally by sending the message "Subscribe [Firstname] [Lastname]" to listserv® [the listserv address, see box] through a standard e-mail account. Network newsgroups require a "newsreader" program, either host-based or a local client. Many of these newsreaders have been added to the gopher system and can be browsed through by outsiders. O'Haver notes, "More people probably have access to e-mail than to newsreaders. Beginners typically learn to use e-mail first and often never progress beyond that. For some reason, listserv discussion groups tend to be more academic and 'serious' than newsgroups. On the other hand, newsreaders organize discussion threads more cleanly by topic, whereas listserv messages are simply viewed chro-
help inexperienced users search structural and literature databases. CJACS (Chemical Journals of the ACS) has provided full-text searching of ACS journals for several years. CJACSPlus, available since June of last year through STN Express, adds downloadable or taxable full-page images for all ACS journal technical pages from 1992 to the present. Garson says one goal for the next year is to be able to include images of Analytical Chemistry's, A-pages as well. Readers interested infindingout more about a product they see in ACS publications will be able to use PIN to see product descriptions with graphics and can make online requests to receive further information, catalogs, or other company offerings. The first "electronic ads" in PIN will come from advertisers in Chemical & Engineering News and Today's Chemist at Work and will run ~ 90 days each. Searching functions may be added to PIN by the end of 1995. Print advertisements in the journals and magazines will also feature listserv-like e-mail addresses for product information requests, which will be fulfilled with one-time e-mail responses. The supporting information files from JACS, which for the past two years were made available to anyone
Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 67, No. 7, April 1, 1995
nologically and tend to get interleaved with other messages." "There are fewer drawbacks to using listservs than there are for newsgroups," Wiggins notes. "Newsgroups are more widely accessible, so you tend to get a really mixed bag of people. There's also relatively little 'flaming' [hotly worded criticisms of other participants] in listservs." Wiggins', O'Haver's, and many other Internet guides to chemistry servers include lists of newsgroup and listserv addresses along with short descriptions of the topics for each. The gaping hole in the contents page at this point appears to be chromatography of any kind, despite the real-world popularity of HPLC and GC. Is anybody out there? "No, not yet (that I know of, anyway)," says O'Haver.
through the ACS gopher, are now also available on the WWW home page and are being expanded to include materials from additional journals— Chemical Reviews has already been added—but downloading privileges have been restricted to subscribers. Source code and executable programs discussed in the journal manuscripts may be added later this year. In addition, JACS, Inorganic Chemistry, Organometallics, and Chemistry of Materials will collect crystallographic data in CIF format, which is more amenable to verification and analysis by reviewers or other users than image files would be. Thesefileswill be added to the server as the associated articles are published, and all of them will be available to subscribers to any one of the four journals. Garson says crystallographic data verification software for reviewers should also be available this year. He adds that ACS is exploring new ways to make this kind of specialized information available to chemists in formats that are more useful than plain text or images. He asks analytical chemists one pertinent question: "Is there anything else that would be useful to analytical chemists if we put it up on the Internet—something that might not lend itself to print?"
None of these participation vehicles is Professional organizations particularly confidential, however, and O'Haver advises, "Never say anything you Gopher site WWW or ftp site Resource wouldn't say in public. If you want confihttp://www.acs.org acsinfo.acs.org American Chemical dential communication, use person-toSociety person e-mail rather than listservs or http://pubs.acs.org ACS Publications home newsgroups." page http://www.cas.org stnc.cas.org Chemical Abstracts Wiggins adds, "As a listserv moderaService tor, I have had people ask me to post quesgopher.ericse.ohio - state.eduι ERIC Clearinghouse for tions on the Internet for them, usually in Science, Math, and cases where they want to hide their comhttp://esther.la.asu.edu/sas Environmental Subjects pany's identity. If I think the question is Society for Applied Spectroscopy valid and of interest to the other subscribers, I may post it for them, but if I suspect it's just a ploy for free market reFood, clothing, books, and financial serserver is currently just a telnet site (i.e., it search, I turn them down." vices are available at the Internet Mall, provides no pictures, just text). The de which lists vendors by e-mail, gopher, or velopment of standards for secure lowShopping the Internet WWW address. No comprehensive equiva- overhead digital cash transactions will One of the operating rules of "netiquette," lent has yet been set up for laboratory help." Wiggins notes that Spindex and and one that draws the most hostility supplies and instrumentation, reagents, or Fisher also have online catalogs and that a from other users if violated, is that comcontract analytical services. chemistry "supermarket" for all these mercial activity is allowed only in desigvendor sites is in the process of being set "It's easier to buy flowers or choconated areas. Solicitation for any product or lates on the Internet than spectrophotome- up as a WWW site. service is banned from most sites around ters," says O'Haver. However, he adds, the net. Chminf-1 does permit product an- the picture is changing as more compaCybernalysis nouncements, says Wiggins; it's one of the nies go online. "Bruker, Fisons InstruWhat's ahead for analytical chemists on few chemistry listservs that do. Although ments North America, and National Inthe net? Enhanced visualization tools, says solicitations can be a nuisance, analytical struments have Web pages. BioTechNet Wiggins. "Once chemists discover the chemists might well benefit from access sells electrophoresis, chromatography, graphics capabilities of the Web, it should to commercial information on the net. and molecular biology supplies, but that become more popular" for XRD and other topics in analytical chemistry that aren't easily conveyed through text or equations alone. Newsgroups/discussion groups Even with better tools and more analyt Subject Address ical sites, Wiggins cautions, "The real question, however, is will there be an over News servers on gopher USENET for chemistry and analytical gopher.msu.edu arching organizational scheme for the In methods .. ./sci.chem ternet? It's really difficult tofindthings out .. ./sci.techniques there now." One solution might be to in Biosci/Bionet biology newsgroups server net.bio.net stitute the use of keywords or other orga on gopher (biochemistry, biotechnology, nizational markers for every server or techniques) site on the Internet. E-mail listservs Increased variety is another hope for Biotechnology
[email protected] the future. "We analytical chemists tend to Capillary electrophoresis
[email protected] stick with the familiar and proven me Chemical information (Wiggins' listserv)
[email protected];dna.edu dia," says O'Haver. "On the other hand, Confocal microscopy
[email protected] you don't have to 'surf the net' very long Electrochemistry
[email protected] Forensic analysis
[email protected] before it becomes obvious that other Interfacing instruments with computers
[email protected]; groups, in particular computer scientists, subscribe message to physicists, meteorologists, and informa
[email protected] International Chemometrics Society tion scientists, have made much more ag
[email protected] High-resolution IR spectroscopy
[email protected] gressive use of the possibilities of elec Môssbauer spectroscopy mossba@usachvm1 .bitnet tronic media. If there is little analytical Process analysis
[email protected]; subscribe chemistry on the Internet, it is because we message to maiser @fs4.in.umist.ac.uk Radiochemistry and nuclear analytical analytical chemists did not take the time radch-l@frcpn11 .bitnet chemistry to put it there. No one else is going to do it Spectroscopy of actinides and rare earths share-l@frmop11 .cnusc for us." Deborah Noble Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 67, No. 7, April 1, 1995 259 A
