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Re: Summary of IT Online WG discussions thus far




Dear Syd,
I apologise for the delay to respond, which was due to a holiday, then
a  conference, undergraduate exams (I am Chief Examiner), and not
least a busy time as EinC as we prepare for Florence.


I found the summary of all inputs very interesting, naturally.
I would like to say that I was especially impressed with the thoroughness of the notes
assembled by Syd, and not least the very great effort Syd has made, and
Nicola at Chester. There is one 'but', and this is not a criticism, but
just the nature of these things;-
I also log that the number of questionnaire responses is
obviously very small to form any assessment of likely community views. More
should be done here to get community reaction; this will take time and
probably need to have the first products available to really see the
shape of what is wanted/needed.

I was pleased to see someone else champion Java applets, although
I was adding an emphasis of there being a big opportunity for teaching, as
well as research, education of the future generation being a growing major
challenge/concern for us all.


I was disappointed to see Howard's news that f' and f" perhaps cannot be
made available.


I was startled by one sentence from Appendix F:-
"IT online should offer all the information of the printed volume."
This sent me scurrying back to Attachment D to revisit details of the EC's
wishes on the business plan. My assumption had been that there will
continue to
be much in print, ie sales would continue of print volumes, but the IT
online would complement and extend IT print. Of course new editions of
ITprint are likely to get slimmer. Am I being old fashioned? So far with
Journals we have a mixed economy of print + e as well as e-only. Will this
continue for the foreseeable future or become e only? It seems to me that
there is another round of IT Working Group Discussion needed (at least!)
where we could prioritise likely content of IT print in future and likely
immediate content of IT online. This would of course be input
to the IUCr Commission on IT. Specifically I suppose I am interested to
see the business plan(s) details on these aspects. [At the IUCr FC I have
seen some details but not in depth I think on these key points of
the strategy.]


Best wishes to all,
John

John R. Helliwell
Professor of Structural Chemistry, University of Manchester;
Editor-in-Chief Acta Crystallographica;

Address:-
Department of Chemistry
University of Manchester
M13 9PL
UK.

email:-     [email protected]
tel:-       44 (0)161 275 4970
fax:-       44 (0)161 275 4598
http://www.ch.man.ac.uk/people/academic/jrh.html
http://journals.iucr.org/

On Wed, 20 Apr 2005, Sydney Hall wrote:

> I am conscious of the rapidly approaching congress and
> likelihood that there will be diminishing time to spend on
> working group recommendations as we get into the northern
> hemisphere summer. To gather my own thoughts on this task
> I have reviewed what has been said thus far and drafted a
> summary of the main points made. This is not a complete
> record of our communications but I think that it captures
> the major issues and suggestions. If you think any
> important points are missing please let me know.
>
> I hope the attached summary document will stimulate some
> additional ideas and suggestions on ways to present IT data
> online. If it does not I will have to assume that we done
> our collective best on this issue, and I will work with
> Nicola to formulate some recommendations for circulation
> and your approval.
>
> I would appreciate a response to the attached summary,
> with your preferred recommendations, by May 1st.
>
> Many thanks
> Syd
> ------
> Professor Sydney R. Hall
> School Biomedical & Chemical Sciences
> University of Western Australia
> Crawley, 6009  AUSTRALIA.
> Ph: +61 (8) 6488 2725
> Fx: +61 (8) 6488 1118
> "Data data everywhere but not a thought to think!" - Theodore Roszak
>
>