The World Wide Web Psychedelic Research Bibliography
Eric Katt

Made possible by grants from: The Albert Hofmann Foundation, the Heffter Research Institute and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

The goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive, interactive bibliography on psychedelics and psychedelic research, and make that information available for free via computer on the World Wide Web (WWW). With so much effort going into trying to conduct clinical trials with psychedelics, it's important to protect and make available the valuable papers of the psychedelic pioneers.

The interactive bibliography project emerged from a study which I conducted into the feasibility of producing a CD-ROM on Psychedelic Research. The difficulties encountered revolved around the prohibitive cost of reprinting copyrighted material and acquisition of all the actual articles. In concluding the feasibility study, the logical next step seemed to be to develop a Web site containing bibliographic data on psychedelic research. A CD-ROM on Psychedelic Research may still evolve after a year or more of developing the less costly Web site. CD-ROM is considered a more useful format by many because it avoids having to connect to the Internet. Such a project could benefit from the accrued feedback of users of the pilot Web site.

The budget for the interactive bibliography project is $2,650. The basic bibliographic database will be put online before the New Year. It will be usable by any of the graphical WWW browsers including Mosaic and Netscape and the browsers of America Online (AOL) and Netcom.

Current limitations

While most researchers already have access to the National Library of Medicine's Medline database, that database only covers articles from 1966 to the present. Many domestic and foreign publications before 1966 have unfortunately never been referenced in electronic form. This bibliography will contain upwards of 6,000 references to both books and journal articles, and be incrementally developed as resources such as abstracts, graphics, and full texts of articles become available. It would be of greatest use to researchers, although students, libraries, government officials and the psychedelically curious will find the information useful.

Great Features

An online bibliography has virtually limitless possibilities for expansion. The full-text and abstracts of any articles no longer copyrighted or articles that we obtain permission to reprint can be featured. The bibliographic listings can be amended by reviewing bibliographies privately compiled by individual researchers. The complete texts of all MAPS and Albert Hofmann Foundation newsletters may be included, as can images of paintings from Dr. Oscar Janiger's private collection, produced during a 1950s study where subjects painted a Kachina doll before, during, and after ingestion of LSD. Other sections that could be included are molecular diagrams, biographies of individual researchers, general texts on the history and methods of psychedelic and psycholytic therapy and psychedelic conference literature and descriptions.

Searchable format

The online bibliography will be usable via a form-type interface. With this format, the user types in search criteria, sets parameters, and starts the search function to yield the results. For example, if a user wanted to search for work done with LSD from 1954-1960, the date range could be set, the search keyword set to LSD, and the query activated. This would result in a list of the corresponding data being returned, including the author, title, journal name, date of publication, language of article, etc. A similar database called Psychedelic Abstracts Online can currently be found at:

http://cyberverse.com/cgi-bin/L4?searchable/

The drugs to be included on the archive will be:

Approved Data

Permission has already been granted to use the following bibliographies:

Medline

Medline is a database maintained by the National Library of Medicine, containing title, author(s), date, publisher, language, and abstracts of any works published in medical journals from 1966 to 1995. Full permission has been granted to use all bibliographic data on the above listed drugs with the exception of the abstracts.

Dr. Torsten Passie

Dr. Passie is a German researcher who has been compiling a 75-90 page annotated bibliography on psychedelic and psycholytic research that includes both US and foreign monographs and articles from 1931 to the present. Dr. Passie has given tentative permission to use his listings in electronic form after the bibliography is published in hard copy form. This bibliography is especially valuable, because much of the foreign research has never been indexed electronically. Data for this portion of the bibliography will hopefully be made available on-line during the first part of 1996. The availability of this bibliography will be reported in an upcoming issue of the MAPS newsletter.

Oscar Janiger

Drs. Janiger and Paltin have compiled bibliographies of work with LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. This work covers research papers from approximately 1943 through 1959, none of which are included in the Medline database.

Negotiations underway

Negotiations are in progress to use sections of the following databases:

Sandoz

Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, the birthplace of LSD, compiled a bibliography of all articles concerning LSD and psilocybin. The bibliography was re-published in the 1970s by the National Institutes of Health, and has since gone out of print.

Books in Print

Books in Print, published by Reed Reference Publishing, is a database used by bookstores to locate in-print and out-of-print books.

Napralert

Napralert is a database compiled by the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Pharmacy. It contains information on taxonomy, chemistry, activities of extracts and active chemical constituents of natural products including plants, fungi, marine organisms, and animal products.

A common goal

Development of an interactive WWW bibliography is both an integral step and a useful tool toward furthering psychedelic research. It begins a process of digitizing and protecting the body of valuable psychedelic research papers for posterity, a project that is important to all three organizational sponsors. In the spirit of collaborative effort, interested readers are invited to submit any suggestions or individual bibliographies to me at eric@maps.org.