ACS Hurricane Relief Letter

I got this email this morning (posted in its entirety- I will clean up the links when I can) -ELMO:

(UPDATE- I tried to put the links in as best I could (typos in the original URLs). You may need to hit the refresh button after you click the link once) ELMO.


Dear Colleagues,

I want to extend my thanks to everyone who has sent ideas and suggestions of ways ACS can help our members, families, students, and institutions affected by the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

You may recall that ACS efforts began with a resolution on August 31 by the Council of the Society at the ACS National Meeting in Washington, D.C. expressing its deep concern. Please see here. We continue to encourage members to donate to relevant agencies who are able to address immediate short-term disaster relief. To address longer-term needs, Board Chair Jim Burke, Executive Director/CEO Madeleine Jacobs, and I have taken the following actions:

* We have created the Hurricane Katrina Response Task Force, chaired by Board Member Eric Bigham. This task force has members with extensive knowledge of the expertise in our Local Sections, Divisions, and Committees.
* We have created a Web “blog” to help connect those members within and outside the region affected by Hurricane Katrina. We also have created a place within the main blog for ACS members to share Katrina-related observations gathered from our members, their families, and friends.
* We have alerted the committees and divisions with expertise in environmental science and chemical health and safety and asked for volunteers to collaborate and share expertise with state and federal environmental authorities. In the next few weeks, we hope to have a list of priority actions for ACS to implement.
* We have asked the ACS Task Force to focus much of its efforts on understanding the longer-term needs facing colleges and universities and other institutions in the region.
* The Membership Division, Publications Division, and Chemical Abstracts Service have taken steps to assist institutions and individual customers in the afflicted areas; and a number of ACS divisions and local sections are providing services or offering expertise to assist students, faculty, and others in need.
* We have asked that the new ACS Legal Assistance Network (ACS Comment, C&EN, August 29), provide legal triage specifially related to Katrina. This service is available through the website of the Chemistry and the Law Division.
* Finally, we will send one e-mail to all members describing the Society’s response. A more detailed version of this letter may be found in the September 26 issue of Chemical & Engineering News.

We’re all trying to do our part. As ACS President, I welcome additional suggestions of ways we can help via the blog or by e-mail to president@acs.org, and I urge you to keep giving and volunteering to aid in the relief, recovery, and rebuilding efforts needed to overcome this unprecedented disaster.

Sincerely,
William F. Carroll, Jr.
ACS President

We are now on Wikipedia!

Hi all,

Just wanted to let everyone know that we now have an article on Wikipedia.

Jen

ACS Committee Members resign to support PubChem!

Two members of an American Chemical Society (ACS) committee have resigned to protest what they say is the society's tight-lipped handling of its battle against a free federal chemical database.

The flap involves the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) PubChem, which ACS leaders see as a threat to the fee-based Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) (Science, 2 September, p. 1473). Details on the Chemistry Information Sources Discussion List

Here is a brief explanation of the fight to support PubChem, from the SPARC E-News April-May 2005:

SPARC last week issued an action alert encouraging members to support the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in its effort to develop the PubChem online database. PubChem is under assault by the American Chemical Society (ACS), who is calling on Congress to restrict the freely accessible database. PubChem connects chemical information with facts in numerous public databases and is a critical component of NIH's Molecular Libraries Initiative, which in turn is a key element of the NIH strategic “roadmap” to speed new medical treatments and improve healthcare.

ACS claims that PubChem competes with its Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS). In reality, PubChem and the Chemical Abstracts Service databases are complementary, not duplicative. If ACS succeeds in eliminating PubMed, it will hamper scientific progress. The University of California Office of Scholarly Communication lays out the facts of this issue in The American Chemical Society and NIH's PubChem. This page collects the position statements, the major documents, and a list of actions that researchers can take to support PubChem.

Thanks to Brian Lynch for raising this issue.