Response to CSIR and dialog.

[M Dominic Ryan]

I hope I don't come across as wanting to do away with something that we 
might all want.  I certainly don't want to minimize the value of collected 
and indexed information.  I am glad of the clarifications to the roles of 
QCPE vs CSIR, but I am left with a concern born of the rapid advances in 
internet search engines.  Perhaps the point borders on the philosophical, but
do we really need a centralised repository for lists?  I have not yet had
a problem that could not be solved by searching with HOTBOT, AltaVista and 
DejaNews, *and* the people that respond to the CCL.  

It seems that distributed computing (and therefore storage, indexing and 
distribution) are greatly enhanced by these newish search engines.  Can
you expect to be covering the sort of information you are talking about 
*better* than the search engines?  Or will I have to search through CSIR
and then the search engines?

I see an awful lot of sites these days wanting to be THE site for a given
field.  As long as the information is available to the search engines I
think the issue goes away.  Perhaps establishing a ready window into the
data for the search engines to have access to it woud be an alternative,
and much cheaper, strategy?  Is the real problem that listserv archives
are not available for indexing (ignoring for the moment the lack of
archives you point out)?   

If this is a service about to be offered at no cost to anyone, including
funding agencies, then I guess the whole question goes away.  But, Jan
has made clear that money is required to enable such an endeavor and it
seems prudent to raise the questions of making best use of what is already
out there.  But please, I am not trying to shoot this down; I am still
trying to get a clearer picture of how I would benefit from spending time
there and of why funding dollars should go there at the expense of (well
there is *always* something else...).
__
M. Dominic Ryan   (610)-270-6529     SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals 
Internet:  ryanmd at mms.sbphrd.com     King of Prussia, PA  
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