Comparative Analysis of Select Databases in Life Sciences

Introduction

Modern biology is very closely related to the disciplines of Chemistry, Physics, Agriculture, Medicine, Geology, Archaeology and Anthropology. Sometime during the formation of these affiliations and advanced research, the term Life Sciences emerged. It was first used probably by G. W. Hunter in 1941 in the title of his book, “Life science: a social biology”. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), “Life Science is any of the sciences (such as Zoology, Bacteriology or Sociology) which deal with living organisms or such sciences collectively”.

Life science is broadly divided into two categories:

• 1.

  Study of biological structure and function: which includes – Morphology, Physiology, Taxonomy, Biophysics, Biochemistry, Genetics, Ecology, Cytology, Embryology, Paleontology, Molecular biology;

• 2.

  Study of types of living organisms: which includes – Zoology, Botany, Microbiology, Physical Anthropology.

In addition, Life science may also include applied subjects like Agriculture, Fisheries, Silviculture, Sericulture, Eugenics and Genetic engineering.

An understanding of the basic biological processes requires an all sided approach and knowledge of the fundamental principles of all sciences. Because of this, the recorded information is also varied and scattered over many disciplines

Electronic Information Sources

Technological advances, especially Information Technology, revolutionized the information sources. Manual searching for information in the vast multitudes of the sources had become a back-breaking and an eye-straining exercise due to the sheer volume of the available literature. Moreover, in case of printed publications, there is always a time lag between generation of information and its access by users, which may be further increased due to publication delays. To overcome this problem, searching for information online became a viable alternative because it enabled quick and easy searching of pin-pointed information and there is no time lag between generation of information and its posting on the Web. Electronic information sources opened comprehensive stores of information to anyone with a computer terminal. Various types of electronic information sources with their example are listed in Table 1.