Hello!
My name is George Johnson and I work for a group which maintains
the Kabat database of Sequences of Proteins of Immunological
Interest. If you are familiar with the 5th edition of the book,
you know what we do. If not, we align Ig, Tcr, Mhc and other data
and keep it electronically in a large database. Periodically, the
database is frozen and printed.
In the past, the database has been small enough to make printing
the book easy. If you have seen the fifth edition, you noticed
that it is 3X larger than the 4th edition. As of Oct. 1992, the
amount of data in the database has more than doubled.
If you can spare a few moments, it would be extremely useful
for those of you familiar with the database to answer the
questions below (11 questions).
Please e-mail your responses back to survey at immuno.esam.nwu.edu.
Thanks-a-million,
George.
________________________________________________________________
1. Are you familiar with the Kabat database of Sequences of
Proteins of immunological Interest?
Yes
No
**
The remaining questions involve people who use the Kabat
database or book in their work
**
2. Did you request/receive a copy of the fifth edition of
Sequences of Proteins of Immunological Interest?
Yes
No
3. Do you use the book as a general reference, or do you
use some parts of it more than others? For example,
do you use the book to look up mouse lambda light
chains frequently?
Yes, I use more parts of the book than others
No , I use the book as a general reference
4. Do you own or have access to a computer?
Yes
No
5. Do you or someone you know have access to the Internet?
Yes
No
6. How 'comfortable' are you around a computer?
<<Pick your highest level>>
a. I don't use one
b. I can read the newsgroups and my e-mail and use
a wordprocessor
c. I can do some basic programming in some sort of
language
d. I'm pretty good with programming and manipulating
files and data structures
7. If given the choice, would you be happier using the
book version of the Kabat database or the electronic
version? The electronic version refers to the files
at NCBI or on tape that resemble genbank flat format.
a. Book version
b. Electronic version
c. I could find a use for both
8. Do you know what postscript is?
Yes
No
9. Do you have access to a laser or other non-dot matrix
printer?
Yes
No
10. Does your computer have a postscript viewer? Like
SUN openwindow's pageview?
Yes
No
If you have gotten this far in the questions and wonder
where this is all leading...
Many different systems can use postscript files for
viewing and printing. As a matter of fact, the 5th
edition of the book is in postscript. That means that
it can be printed in whole or in part on any laser
printer supporting postscript.
Many people requested the printed form of the book, but
very few requested the electronic version. We are
throwing around some ideas of how to get a printed version
of the book (or the parts that people want) out in a
timely manner. The last book was 3 volumes, and if the
book were printed today (October 1992), it would be over
twice as big. The electronic book is being handled by
NCBI. We are working with them to convert the book into
ASN.1. But, that leaves people who don't have a computer
or would rather have a printed version of the book in the
lurch.
If people could have access to different parts of the
book already set in postscript, they could print it out
or view it at THEIR convenience, and we could supply those
people with updated postscript files every week, month, or
whatever by anonymous FTP or something.
Which leads to question 11:
Could you find a use for postscript files of the book?
Yes
No
------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for your responses to the questions. They will
help us enormously in the coming months and years to keep
giving researchers the most up-to-date aligned data.
