Today, the equivalent of those two chance conversations can happen via Google and email. I feel certain that science of many kinds is developing much more rapidly than it used to for this reason (except, perhaps, in fields where progress is kept secret for reasons of financial gain)

Even if some paper or journal is not downloadable from the internet, books.google.com and scholar.google.com are helpful in searching for archived information. Recently, an ambitious project called European.eu was launched which is designed to be a massive digital library. However, with 10 million hits an hour, it crashed. Work is currently underway to resurrect the site. The aims of the website are indeed impressive:

Europeana – the European digital library, museum and archive – is a 2-year project that began in July 2007. It will produce a prototype website giving users direct access to some 2 million digital objects, including film material, photos, paintings, sounds, maps, manuscripts, books, newspapers and archival papers…

The digital content will be selected from that which is already digitised and available in Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. The prototype aims to have representative content from all four of these cultural heritage domains, and also to have a broad range of content from across Europe

Let’s watch out for new developments on European.eu

• TENCompetence PhD researcher network describes itself as the following:

The TENCompetence PhD research network aims to provide researchers with a space in which they can meet, discuss with and learn from their peers. It is intended as a Europe-wide community “hotspot” where researchers can share working interests, problems and solutions.

• Academia.edu provides a tree of academics around the world

• Graduate Junction describes itself as the following:

The Graduate Junction is the first website to bring together Masters, Doctoral and Postdoctoral researchers and scholars from any discipline across the globe. The Graduate Junction provides an easy way of making contact and communicating with others who share common research interests.

• ISI Web of Knowledge is extensive and says, “Over 20 million researchers in 90 countries base their research, planning, and budget decisions on the content and analytics they find in ISI Web of Knowledge.”

• Emerald Research Connections has the following vision:

Good research in management should help the world to be better managed. As the world’s leading publisher of business and management research, with 190 journals and a wide range of serials, series and books in management and related fields, we believe we have an important role in encouraging research which helps the world be better managed.

• National Council for Graduate Entrepreneurship provides a forum for budding entrepreneurs.