Most large information stores exist today as field-specific databases. These databases are organized to support queries in ways which are relevant to a particular speciality. For instance, chemical information systems are characterized by an information model which is based on associating data with molecular structure. Such data systems may be very powerful within a speciality but are poorly-suited for integration with other types of data. This is unfortunate, because interdisciplinary research is where the action is today.
Web technology provides both the motivation and method for cross-field data integration. Some of the information universes which neighbor chemistry include natural products, bioinformatics, genomics, materials, computational, patent and literature databases. Approaches to integration of chemical information with these information universes will be discussed, with emphasis on extraction of commonality using WWW methods.