Apimba began in 2003 as an organization devoted to collecting information about biochemistry and making it available to everyone before it was lost. It is named after Aeri Park, a brilliant scientist who was born in South Korea, thus the name Aeri Park Institute of Molecular Biology and its Applications.
Apimba is a working researcher's library on the open web. Not a textbook warehouse—not millions of books that repeat what is already known—but the material a bench scientist actually needs: detailed protocols, methods papers, NMR know-how, and the reference works that are indispensable when you are trying to get an experiment done.
University libraries used to serve that role. They no longer do, at least not for most of us. Chemistry collections have been closed or locked away. Journals are behind paywalls. Even affiliated scientists often cannot get at what they need. Independent researchers and the public are simply shut out. Apimba exists because that is a stupid way to run a civilization that depends on science.
Our focus so far has been NMR and biochemistry, especially resources like Methods in Enzymology—the protocol books every life-science lab once had on the shelf. The Biochemistry Library page lists books and links worth having. The wikis collect methods, background, and literature that should stay findable. Where we can point you to legal open copies—libraries, archives, open-access journals—we do. Where we cannot, we say so plainly, and we invite you to ask.
This is colleague-to-colleague access: the way knowledge used to move before everything was rented back to you by a publisher. We are not building a piracy site. We are building the chemistry library they closed, maintained by people who still think you should not need a fifty-thousand-dollar institutional subscription to purify a protein or read a protocol.
The goal expanded as it became clear that much more knowledge could be captured and kept. The scope will grow beyond NMR and biochemistry as time allows. Much material can still be found on Wikipedia, but based on past experience, that source may disappear once its backers realize its commercial potential and lock it behind paywalls. Much of it will also get “cleaned” by the social censors slowly taking over society. Truth is defined by those who own the printing presses—that is one way to read the old saying.
Artificial intelligence changes how knowledge is gathered and shared. Apimba will use it as a tool to organize and maintain this library, while holding the same standard as always: what belongs here is what is true, verifiable, and useful to someone doing real work.
Apimba is a non-profit. If you want to donate to the cause, send your donation to 1717 Southworth Branch Drive, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, 47906.
Contact us at jstewart@apimba.org. If you need a volume or paper listed on the site and cannot reach it through the links provided, write to us.