There was a 2-day Residential Course on Interpretation of Vibrational Spectra in Pontypridd, UK, jointly organised by the University of Glamorgan and the Infrared and Raman Discussion Group (IRDG) on 13,14 April 1999 at which the principal speakers were Dr Clara Craver (Craver Consultants, Inc Missouri), Professor Bill Fateley (Kansas State University) and Professor Pat Hendra (University of Southampton) backed by seminars and tutorials led by Dr Derek Steele (Royal Holloway College), Geoff Dent (Zeneca Ltd) and David Cunliffe-Jones (recently at Kodak Ltd) and from representatives of Biorad, Bruker, Nicolet, Perkin Elmer and Renishaw.
The course was followed by a meeting of the IRDG commencing with lectures from Professor Ian Mills FRS, University of Reading, on "Normal Modes and Local Modes of Vibration in Polyatomic molecules" and Professor Bill Fateley on "Real-Time Spectroscopy - Chemical Mapping".
The afternoon was devoted to a seminar on "Spectroscopic Uses of the Internet" Professor Bill George, University of Glamorgan, reviewed a number of web sites. Examples were discussed for better use of the Internet and E-Mail for transfer of standard files of spectra, molecular models and of files associated with ab initio calculations. This was illustrated with data from recent publications showing that hydrogen bonded forms of alcohols could exist in chiral forms and with unusual symmetry properties. Professor Pat Hendra described the opportunities for publishing on the Internet and the likely move away from traditional library based Journals. Electronic based journal are seen to lead to more rapid publication at lower cost providing opportunities for multi-media material and accessible, in principle, to a much larger readership. Dr Clara Craver described experiences in the USA of Internet based searches of spectra of unknown compounds against electronically stored libraries of spectra and demonstrated searches and manipulation of spectra from the NIST Web site together with the use of the Web site of the Coblentz Society. Other members displayed and discussed relevant web sites