Zusammen

Chemistry databases take a wide variety of forms and serve a variety of purposes. A case in point is ChemWiki, today's stop on our continuing tour of free chemistry databases and Web services. ChemWiki is an attempt to create a free chemistry textbook using a model similar to Wikipedia. From the about page:

The ChemWiki project is a new approach toward chemistry education where an Open Access textbook environment is constantly being written and re-written partly by students and partly by faculty members resulting in a free Chemistry textbook to supplement or supplant conventional paper-based books. Anyone can view, although a freely available account is required to edit the site modules. The UCD ChemWiki was created and is currently directed by Prof. Delmar Larsen in the Chemistry department at UC Davis.

ChemWiki actually consists of two related efforts: The Core (the textbook itself) and WikiTexts (course-related materials). This review will only cover The Core.

The ChemWiki Core is comprised of a collection of pages organized around a chemistry sub topic: Analytical; Inorganic; Physical; Computational; Organic; and Biological.

Within each subcategory can be found a number of pages relating to special topics. For example, under organic chemistry is a chirality module. Under the three headings Introduction, Optical Activity, Circular Dichroism, and References can be found basic information relating to the subject.

After signing up for a free account, anyone can edit the contents of the ChemWiki page. After making several changes, it's possible to find them all again using the "Contributions" item under the "Tools" menu. Each user's contributions can be monitored by subscribing to their public RSS feed. In this way multiple authors collaborating on the same document can continuously monitor changes to it.

Before writing off ChemWiki as something that can't possibly work in practice, consider how Wikipedia was viewed when initially launched. Creating a textbook in a technical subject such as chemistry and creating a general-purpose encyclopedia may not both be equally suited to the Wikipedia model - only time will tell. One thing is clear: the economic model on which the current system of textbook publication is based may not remain viable for much longer. ChemWiki offers an intriguing alternative.

Kudos

• Collaborative effort to address a significant educational problem.
• RSS updates at the level of user and page.
• In-page editing using with rich text editor - not Wiki markup.

Ideas for Improvement

• Clearly-stated guidelines for style including text and graphics.
• Implement a user reputation system.
• Focus on getting one topic page into a form suitable for classroom use, then offer it as a model for the rest of the book.