Sources of Information on Medicinal Plants 

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c) tapping the global pool of information;

d) prevention of duplication of research projects;

e) keeping in touch with current trends and developments;

f) sharing international herbarium, library, database and research facilities;

g) access to developments in related areas of research;

h) communicating more effectively with scientists, administrators, policy makers, non-Governmental organisations, industries, students, mass media, etc.; and

i) being informed well in advance, about new publications and the schedules of meetings, symposia, and conferences.

        A number of institutions, organisations, journals, etc., have a ‘Web Site’, the specific location with an address on the internet where they can be reached via the computer. The contents pages of scientific journals or even abstracts of papers can now be accessed on the internet. Some research organisations, scientific societies and educational institutions produce ‘Newsletters’ and some have a ‘Home Page’ to provide information on their activities.

        The ‘World Wide Web’ (www) is the most powerful means of accessing any kind of information. The web site addresses start with ‘www’. The prefix ‘http’ stands for ‘hypertext transport, protocol, that accesses information through the www.

        The e-mail (electronic mail) is the means of correspondence and document transfer among individuals and institutions.

        There are news groups which interact through what is called ‘Usenet’ (or Internet News) and these addresses begin with ‘bionet’, ‘bit’ or ‘sci’,

        There are several databases relating to Alternative and Complementary Medicine available on the internet. Some examples are given below and the available web site/e-mail addresses are listed in Appendix 40.

CPMCNet: This is a directory of databases for research into Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and the related courses taught in the US Medical Schools.

DEREP: A database of physical constants for natural products.

DIWAN: The database for holistic medicine and frontier sciences from Germany.

IBIS: A database of the Interaactive BodyMind Information System

ILDIS: International Legume Database and Information Service, with the regional centre for south Asia at the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow.

INDEX MEDICUS: Indices and general information on several medical issues.

INMEDPLAN: Indian Medicinal Plants National Network of Distributed Databases organised by the Foundation for Rehabilitation of Local Health Traditions (FRLHT), Bangalore.

NAPRALERT: A database of global literature since 1975 on ethnomedical, biological and chemical information on plants.

MEDFLOR: A database of the world’s ethnobotanical usage, with emphasis on ethnomedicine.

MEDLINE: A lot of information, more on modern medicine.

PHYTODOK: A database of overview of publications on herbal medicine covering toxicology, pharmacology, therapeutic uses and isolation and analysis of active ingredients, relating to about 13,200 species of plants, and growing.

        In view of the enormous advantages the computer networks give us, some important electronic ‘addresses’ that would be of use to those interested in medicinal plants and related areas are provided in Appendix 40. The internet addresses use an alpha-numeric format, the alphabets written in the lower case (non-capital) letters, except where indicated otherwise. Usually, ‘com’ indicates commercial organisation, ‘org’ organisation, ‘gov’ government, ‘edu’ educational, ‘uni’ University , etc., and the last two (or three) letters, generally are an abbreviation of the country (like ‘ca’ for Canada, ‘in’ for India and ‘uk’ for the United Kingdom). The e-mail addresses can usually be recognised by the sign ‘@’, in the address.

        Internet (including e-mail) addresses are read by the computer from the right (like the Arabic or Urdu texts), starting from the country, the specific network, the server and the user name. In the e-mail address, krao@blr.vsnl.net.in, the access is India, network served by VSNL, to the user at Bangalore with the abbreviated name krao. The user name ‘krao@blr’ is assigned to only one customer under the Bangalore Server Domain. Now shorter e-mail addresses, for example krao@vsnl.com are in use.

        Another popular and free e-mail service is ‘hotmail’ with such addresses as chavalikrao@hotmail.com. The internet addresses should be typed exactly the same as given by the addressee. The addresses should be periodically updated as it is not uncommon that Websites move addresses and new Sites continually appear.