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(Issue 1; posted February 1, 1997; archived February 20)
A couple of weeks ago, I moderated a focus group of a dozen New York-area biologists -- scientists from Columbia, Rockefeller, NYU, and Cold Spring Harbor, among other labs large and small, academic and industrial. Some participants were fairly senior with enviable reputations; others were graduate students just starting out. Over deli sandwiches and Diet Cokes, I asked them about what they read, how much time they spent on the Internet -- questions about the scientific literature and especially about their information-gathering habits. At one point I asked them, "Who has been to the library in the last week?" A neurologist, sitting in the back, raised his hand timidly. "In the last two weeks?" Another hand went up. "Last month?" A couple of hands. "In the last year?" Three or four.
I've been running similar groups for years -- panels of scientists, physicians, nurses, engineers -- in an effort to learn the habits of highly professional people when they're looking for things that matter to them in their working lives. What's really amazing, despite differences of age, gender, and discipline, whether bearded or ponytailed, jacketed or jeaned -- is how often responses are alike. It turns out that the experiences and desires of the highly skilled have much in common. The range of differences is quite narrow. Not so had I asked the same group about what they like to eat for breakfast. The cell biologist from Columbia may be happy with a hot cup of black coffee; the physiologist from Merck might not get through the day without sausage and eggs.
I've asked the question about library visits to professional groups for a number of years. In the late eighties, I remember that more than half would have acknowledged a trip to the library in the last month or two. By the mid-nineties, the response of the New York biologists was hardly different from most. If you're an active scientist or engineer, under forty, chances are quite good that you haven't pushed the turnstile of a library entrance in months, maybe years.
Professionals tell us that they read less, scan more. Scientists stay away from the library because most have learned that the library has come to them. Most have personal subscriptions to the three or four journals that they consider invaluable -- Nature, Science, Cell plus one or two others that are central to their discipline, say in neurobiology or gene therapy. The departmental library down the hall subscribes to maybe twenty-five others that they can browse from time to time. But the key that has entirely transformed their habits is the introduction of bibliographic, structural, and genetic databases right on the desktop. With Medline, Biosis, genome data, and dozens of other extraordinarily rich online services available on the Internet in proprietary systems such as Dialog and SilverPlatter, and with BioMedNet and other Web servers such as Ovid, MD Consult, and Science Direct now adding full-text periodicals to online availability, the desktop has become as rich as the best library.
But it hasn't been long since the computer-accessed databases, while saving a few steps to the library, have come to represent another uncontrollable torrent of information. You can no longer fill your cup with data from the water cooler; you need a bucket brigade because now it gushes from an Internet fire hose. The scientific enterprise is not going under because researchers don't go to the library; the danger is that it's sinking in a flood of results.
Review periodicals Trends, Current Opinions, and Bioessays help by sending skilled scouts down the rapids to alert the rest of the community about the best way to navigate the literature. Even now, information agent "knowbots" fan out search parties through Web sites, full-text journals, and databases. Turning on your PC in the morning finds your research newspaper at your desktop, with a message waiting. "Hello, I'm your knowbot. I've discovered six items of interest to you in your work that were published yesterday. Simply click on the items that you'd like to see. Have a nice day."
The biologists who sat around the focus-group table know more than most about how the Web has changed their lives. In my next column, you'll learn what they think about Web sites, bookmarking, games, remote searching, and graphics.
Robert Ubell is President of BioMedNet USA. He has held positions in the field of professional and scientific publishing for over 25 years, including President and American Publisher of Nature, and creater and founding publisher of Nature Biotechnology.