Starting around 1982, chemistry material started appearing "on-line", and there
followed a decade where chemistry departments had to develop an associated
information technology infra-structure of networking and computer systems
before they could take advantage of this mode of delivery. Indexing and
searching is now far more efficient, and complex information can be transferred
without the risk of typographical errors being introduced. The plethora of new
on-line information sources brings new problems however. Whereas the printed
page offers a single "user interface", few on-line search programs adopted any
consistent or standard interface, and often each had to be learnt anew. Few
were (are) "intuitive". In 1995, a new consistent metaphor based on the World-Wide Web
started emerging. Its use is illustrated here with with examples of number of different
information sources, both general and specific to chemistry. The objective of the experiment
is to determine how useful each information source is, and how "data" about the subject
can be mined and transformed into "information" with the eventual objective of
acquiring "knowledge" about the subject. You will do this by using an "Information Booth",
which is available on-line as:
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/organic/3.html