VIRTUAL RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT IN THE GLYCOSCIENCES

The development of Internet-based virtual resources is a relatively ne w area of scientific and technical activity that is currently undergoi ng rapid expansion. Major factors fuelling recent growth include the e mergence of multimedia capabilities through the rapid evolution of the World Wide Web, the reduction in cost of high quality personal comput ers and graphics workstations and the provision of mass-marketed provi der services. Prior to 1995 the presence of Internet resources in the glycosciences was virtually non-existent. Existing scientific knowledg e was primarily made available on the Net through the provision of dat abases from gopher and ftp sites. A particular example in the glycosci ences is the Carbbank database of biological carbohydrate sequences. W e will describe here our efforts in 1994-95 in establishing The Glycos cience Network (TGN, http://bellatrix.pcl.ox.ac.uk/TGN/). These activi ties included the establishment of a newsgroup, mailing lists, Web res ources and the running of the First Electronic Glycoscience Conference (EGC-1, http://bellatrix.pcl.ox.ac.uk/TGN/). EGC-1 included many nove l initiatives in the glycosciences including electronic posters and pa pers, a Virtual Conference Centre, a Web-based hyperglossary, Virtual Trade and Employment Centres, refereed electronic publishing, and the creation of a Virtual Reality Gallery. We would like to look towards t he near future and discuss several initiatives in virtual resource cre ation that we believe will have significant scientific impact on the g lycosciences including the development of bioinformatics-based servers , sophisticated interactive databases, and videoconferencing. Furtherm ore, we cherish the belief that these resources will foster internatio nal scientific collaboration and progress of an extent never previousl y possible. Finally, we indulge in speculation and make some suggestio ns on the form and long-term impact of Glycoscience Virtual Resources. We predict that their development may completely reconstruct the scie ntific environment that we work in as scientists and we reflect on the probable benefits and pitfalls to be encountered.