If you will be attending the Spring National ACS Meeting in San Francisco (April 13-17, 1997), we hope you will seek out the Journal banner amidst the sea of activity at the Exposition. Just look for Booth 626, where you can expect to find friendly Journal staff members. We will have sample publications for you to peruse—software, books, CD-ROMs, recent print Journal issues—as well as complimentary copies of our new, combined catalog of publications in all media, called JCE Publications/Software.

Ed Walsh, Book Review Editor, and Hal Harris, Chemical Education Resource Shelf Editor, will also spend some time at the booth–when they are not off talking with publishers in an effort to get the most recent information for their columns.

If you will not be at the ACS meeting to talk with us in person, then you can still contact us: the third page of each table of contents (page 364 of this issue) lists all the ways that you can reach the editorial office.

Interested in Books? Media?

If you are interested in books or publications in other media and if you would be willing to be a reviewer, contact Ed Walsh (address on page 379). Ed is committed to providing useful, timely, quality reviews of a broad range of publications of interest to those who teach chemistry. However, he can't do all of this by himself—among other things he teaches classes! One step has been to bring on board two associate editors, Jeffrey D. Kovac and C. Michael McCallum (see page 379, where they are introduced). But he needs more of you to volunteer to review materials promptly and pointedly. Contact him to do so.

Cover Suggestions

We are always looking for interesting graphic material to put on the cover of the print Journal. Sometimes we get very lucky, as with Mary Virginia Orna's glorious photo of blue pigment that is featured this month. But suggestions are always welcome. If you have something that you would like us to consider, be sure to tell us about it or send it along when you submit your manuscript. If you have a manuscript already in press, unless it is at the proof stage it is not too late to send a suggestion. We are always on the lookout for meaningful and eye-catching illustrations that have a connection to the content of the issue.

Although we do not usually have color graphics in the editorial section because of the cost of doing so, you will find that we have put the color graphics for two manuscripts that are in this issue up front where we do have color. The results of the variation on the Blue Bottle experiment are shown in In This Issue, and the quartz cells from the article "Chemistry 'en Miniature'" are shown in the table of contents.

Anniversaries

If you look at the volume number of this Journal issue, you will note the number 74—yes, we have been around for 74 years, since 1924. This means that very soon now we will be in our 75th year, certainly cause for celebration! Plans are underway for a symposium/poster session/reception at the Fall 1998 ACS Meeting in Boston (August 23­28, 1998) as well as special features and issues.

Right now, though, we hope readers will think about what it means to be a journal and to have been around for 75 years, growing and adapting while retaining the basic goal of communicating ideas. We would like your suggestions about how we might celebrate in our 75th year, and we would like them very soon, while there is still time to incorporate them. You can expect to find updates in this column before and during this special year of celebration.

Ten years compared with 75 years may not seem like much, but if it is 10 years in the world of software, it is a lot. 1997 is the 10th year of JCE Software—our first issue, for the Apple II computer, was released at the 10th BCCE in the summer of 1988. The next issue, for IBM PC compatibles, appeared shortly thereafter and is still around in modified versions. Of course we have continually added to our repertoire—first videodiscs, then software for Macintosh and Windows, videotapes, CD-ROMs, and of course our World Wide Web site. What next? Stay tuned: whatever our software arm does, we will announce it here in the print Journal.

Web Sites Win Award

JCE Online ( http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/) and the Chemical Education Resource Shelf ( http://www.umsl.edu/~chemist/books/index.html) have recently received InterNIC awards from The Scout Report, a weekly collection of useful Internet sites, published by NetScout Services. Their basic criteria include depth of content, author, information maintenance, and presentation.