Chemistry databases

Chemistry can be viewed from three perspectives: scientific, technical and economic. The interfaces between the different sciences are blurred, as reflected in the disciplines of biochemistry, biotechnology, physical chemistry, surface engineering and materials science. The detailed cover of Chemical Abstracts reflects this. As a technique, chemistry is involved in processes of all kinds, whatever the economic sector considered. This is reflected in the fact that chemistry is scattered throughout multi-disciplinary information systems such as Pascal and Cedocar. The omnipresence of chemistry complicates documentary operations, which call on dispersed and inhomogeneous sources, with their inherent problems (redundancy, multiplicity of languages and documentary and computer formats, etc.).

With the explosive growth of the Internet, new phenomena have emerged:

• access to new sources of information in large numbers, more or less structured, more or less reliable, which adds its share of problems, even confusion;

• direct end-user access to information sources, with search tools claiming to work in natural language. The relevance of the data collected often masks the limitations and shortcomings of this approach;

• instant access to information, almost as soon as it is produced, both in terms of original publication and documentary processing. This is undoubtedly the main advantage of using the Internet, and not the least in terms of innovation and patentability;

• the development of specialized chemistry websites (portals) by scientific societies and professional associations, universities and public research centers.

Current information needs in chemistry are not limited to scientific and technical fields; they also include economic data and information on the industrial environment (industrial property, standards and regulations, industrial health and safety, etc.).

The addresses of the websites mentioned in the article are given in the documentation (Pour en savoir plus [Doc. K 40]).