Not long ago, I was quite proud of the fact that I have attended every single OnLine meeting from the beginning (in fact, one year I cannot believe that I willingly agreed to be given a name badge festooned with numerous gold stars as a flagrant sign of my advancing years and perseverance!). Even the fact that I still refer to this event as IOLIM rather than the more recently used, and more catchy, 'Online Information xx' serves to date me.
Now, though, I am almost a closet IOLIM attendee desperately trying to avoid the dreaded question '...... and how long is it now that you've been coming to this meeting?'
What is this all leading up to, you might well ask? Well, one advantage this lengthy period of attendance does give me is to observe various changes over the years. One trend that I have noticed in particular is the demise of the impact of chemical information at the meeting (hence the title of this short piece for which I make no apology for plagiarising a previous heading in this Newsletter about the CSA itself!).
I have not made any detailed statistical analysis of this trend, but you do not have to be a genius to notice these things (as I said, it is an observation). It is not my imagination that tells me that once upon a time the 'Chemistry' slot in the conference programme took up most of Tuesday afternoon with some real meaty subject matter. What did we have in 1996? Just one hour and five minutes to be precise!
With regard to the Exhibition, apart from the big boys such as CAS, Beilstein and Derwent, there has been a significant decrease in the number of companies exhibiting that are involved with chemical information in some shape or form.
Am I alone in noticing this? Is it a natural consequence of the way that the meeting is going - mostly business/finance/marketing information and whatever happens to be flavour of the year - electronic publishing, CD-ROM, Multimedia and the Internet?
Should we (as individuals or organisations or the CSA) be doing anything to arrest this trend and demand fair rights for chemical information, or should we just give in gracefully in the knowledge(?) that our turn will come round again, once we have seen off all these bright, trendy, flash-in-the-pan (dare I say 'sexy') newcomers to the information scene? Is there perchance a touch of sour grapes here!
If you feel so inclined, then please contact me to let me know your views, especially if you feel that we, as the CSA through the Executive committee, should be doing something about reversing this trend.
Peter Nichols