dd@beta.lanl.gov (Dan Davison) (07/14/89)
Response to my call for letters in support has been good, but not great. Bionet has close to 3000 users. Surely more than 72 people can write a note about the importance of Bionet for their work. (Those 72 notes have come from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, Finland, and Korea.) So far it's about 156,000 bytes of text. If you want a Bionet-like facility consisting of (1) central database access (EMBL, PIR, GenBank, Brookhaven, VectorBank), (2) FASTA-MAIL-like searching capability, and (3) electronic communications, you *MUST* make your wishes known to NIH *IMMEDIATELY*. It is possible, *but far from certain*, that something like Bionet will survive after 30 September. If you haven't already sent me a note with a copy to Dr. Jim Cassatt, the project officer for *GenBank* (note that he's not the Bionet project officer), please do so as soon as possible. If you have written a note to me and would like to do more, please write a letter to your project officer at the NIH or the NSF. It would also be appropriate to send a letter to the NIH Genome office. I will try to track down that address and phone number and if successful I will post it in a note. The Center for Biotechnology Information at the National Library of Medicine would also be an appropriate place to write. That address is below. From what I understand of the money & politics situation, there are organizations within NIH that have some reluctance in funding "life after Bionet". The only way we can overcome the reticence is by public opinion. Send your electronic mail to: czj@NIHCU (Bitnet) czj%nihcu.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu with copies to: davison@UHOU (Bitnet) dd@lanl.gov (Internet). The Center for Biotechnology Information address is: Director, National Center for Biotechnology Information National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health Building 38A, Eighth Floor Bethesda, MD 20894 -- dan davison/theoretical biology/t-10 ms k710/los alamos national laboratory los alamos, nm 87545/dd@lanl.gov (arpa)/dd@lanl.uucp(new)/..cmcl2!lanl!dd
Kristofferson@BIONET-20.BIO.NET (David Kristofferson) (07/18/89)
> Response to my call for letters in support has been good, but not > great. Bionet has close to 3000 users. Surely more than 72 people > can write a note about the importance of Bionet for their work. > (Those 72 notes have come from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, > Finland, and Korea.) So far it's about 156,000 bytes of text. BIONET has about 3000 registered users, but this number is simply the total number of accounts on the system. When a lab opens an account the professor commonly signs up more people as users than actually utilize the system. In reality typically only one or two people in a lab actively use the system. The total number of labs (934 at the end of last month) is a better indicator of our size. The other fact is that our logins are currently running only about half of the normal rate during the vacation season. Many labs typically will use BIONET heavily when they need to analyze sequences (we average over 60 sequence database searches alone per day, not to mention all of the other types of use on the system) and then they may not log back in again for a couple of months after their project is done (since it's "back to the bench" time). If you take into account these factors your response rate might be as high as about 1 in 7 which is pretty decent considering the "silent majority" factor! Dave Kristofferson -------