There Has to Be a Better Way to...

Entering into the next millennium, we begin to think about what new advances the future may bring. For JCE subscribers the new millennium brings global access to all of JCE Online, which ushers in several advances in the use of the Journal. I would like to present here some of the "better ways" that JCE Online offers.

Find Journal Articles

Last month (J. Chem. Educ. 1999, 76, 1599) we presented a step-by-step recipe for finding articles that have been published in the Journal. I think you will agree that searching online for an article is better than looking through multiple volumes of past indices. If the articles you find are available online, then only a mouse click or two is needed to retrieve each one.

Store Your Journals: Let JCE Online and JCE CD Do It

Is your office getting short of shelf space? You may want to consider moving your collection of the Journal to another location and replace it with a copy of our annual CD or use JCE Online. With easy access from your desktop computer for all articles published in the Journal since September 1996, including all supplementary materials, both JCE Online and JCE CD can replace those more recent volumes and free up some shelf space. One advantage of JCE CD is that, unlike JCE Online, it is still there and accessible even if you let your subscription lapse.

Share Dynamic Media

Chemistry is very visual. Only relatively recently has technology allowed us to visually present our models for explaining chemical phenomena. Now, with molecular modeling and symbolic algebra tools, we are able to use 3-D graphics and animation to adequately present our models in a very stimulating and revealing manner. We can write thousands of words and produce many stunning figures, but when it comes right down to it, the print medium cannot do an adequate job of publishing articles about many chemical models.

Figure Caption: For a better depiction of the 2p to 1s transition than can be shown here, please see Figure 7 of http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEWWW/Articles/DynaPub/DynaPub.html

By publishing these articles via JCE Internet, we can do a much better job. The JCE Internet article we call DynaPub illustrates this well. In a valiant effort to depict in print a model for absorption or emission of a photon, Henderson (J. Chem Educ. 1979, 56, 631-635) used two 25-panel figures to show cross sections of electric charge density changing during an electronic transition. In the "digital reprint" of this article (JCE Internet, http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEWWW/Articles/DynaPub/DynaPub.html), enhanced with interactive spreadsheets and animation, DynaPub does a much better job depicting the creation of a photon than did the original article. Using JCE Internet as a publishing vehicle to share such dynamic content is a vast improvement over the print medium. Other examples of the use of animation to visualize dynamic phenomena are also available at http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu/JCEWWW/Articles/index.html.

Log-In: Get IP-Number Authentication

PIN numbers, email accounts, local network accounts... I don't know about you, but my head is starting to spin with the seemingly endless array of user accounts and passwords that are required to access the information I need. Now along come online subscription accounts (where is that mail carrier sheet?). There must be a better way. There is, but there is a catch, of course.

JCE offers an alternate form of authentication for access to JCE Online called IP-number access. This form of access uses a number assigned to your computer (an IP number) when you use the Internet. JCE Online can use this number to determine if your computer is authorized to access the restricted resources at JCE Online. The great thing about IP-number access is that you are no longer asked for name and password. The catch is that we can only offer this type of access through library and institutional subscriptions. So, if you think that IP-number access would be attractive to you, get in touch with your librarian, or the appropriate person in your department or at your institution and tell them about the convenience of IP-number access to JCE Online. Additional information can be found at JCE Online by clicking the Subscription/Orders button near the top of the page.

Keep Those Comments and Suggestions Coming

You may know of other ways to improve JCE. If you have a comment or suggestion for JCE Online, we would like to hear it. At the bottom of every page at JCE Online is a link to our email address. Do not hesitate to use it to tell us what you think about the Journal and JCE Online. I would like to thank those who have emailed their comments and suggestions. It is with your input that we can continue to improve JCE to better meet your needs.

http://JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu