Web Wednesday

There seems to be a mushrooming of websites or pages that are focused on various specific subject areas. 

I guess the idea is that with so much literature out there, we need someone to compile and organize it for us.

Today's Web Wednesday points out just one of these with an RNAi focus, Nature's RNAi Gateway. The site provides topic-based views of papers that have appeared in Nature, Nature Genetics or other journals under the Nature Publishing umbrella. 

In terms of Drosophila RNAi-related reports, they're likely to show up in the Arthropods section in terms of groupings by organism. One can also browse by subject area, and subjects include RNAi screens and technologies. And at the bottom of the home page you can opt to subscribe to an RSS feed.

Something in all this is reminding me of a conversation I had with a professor while I was in graduate school. I saw him in the library, holding open a copy of a journal. "Are you going to Xerox that?" I asked. "No," he said. "I'm going to neurox it.  You know, actually read it."

I've kept that conversation in my head a lot of years now. Because many times I've needed the reminder: all the copying and organizing in the world does not substitute for taking in the information itself.