Searching a scientific reference: then and now
There is a marvelous editorial in the journal Current Science dated April 10th 2010. The editorialist describes how in the good old days he used to come to the library of the Indian Institute of Science and go from shelf to shelf looking for a reference and he describes the sense of “feeling” newly arrived journals which had a distinctive smell and touch. There is sea change today as all journals have gone electronic and can be accessed on the net as soon as they are published and with the “e pub ahead of print” revolution, even before the formal print publication. It set off a train of memories for me as well. I remember the days of our thesis writing. The IPGMER , where I did my PG had a fairly decent library and the past journal issues were bound and well catalogued. The only problem was that it only went back to 1957 when it was founded. If we needed to consult anything before that, we had to go to one of the other libraries in the city. One of them was the Calcutta Medical Club...