Yet again our team has completed this volume well behind schedule, and is all
too aware of the inappropriate delay in reporting on the literature of our field
published in the last (or second last?) year of the millennium. Half of our
members are under undue work-related stress, and it is unreasonable to expect
them to continue in these circumstances - especially with an ever-expanding
and increasingly complex job. Volume 34, covering the literature for the year
2000, may therefore be the last of the current series - unless of course less
pressurized volunteers can be found to allow it to continue. It was interesting
to note at a recent meeting of Senior Reporters of the Specialist Periodical
Reports that I was alone in recording our need to call a halt, and I had to
wonder whether activity in carbohydrate science has recently been increasing
in a selective manner. Given the birth of glycobiology and the overdue wide
recognition of the sugars as substances with ‘real’ organic chemistry and also
with immense potential significance in pharmaceutical science, perhaps this is
not unexpected. Electronic searching methods are seemingly at the point of
largely replacing traditional abstractindreviewing hard copy procedures in the
field.