Book excerpt: Neuroscience Databases: A Practical Guide is the first book providing a comprehensive overview of these increasingly important databases. This volume makes the results of the Human Genome Project and other recent large-scale initiatives in the neurosciences available to a wider community. It extends the scope of bioinformatics from the molecular to the cellular, microcircuitry and systems levels, dealing for the first time with complex neuroscientific issues and leading the way to a new culture of data sharing and data mining necessary to successfully tackle neuroscience questions. Aimed at the novice user who wants to access the data, it provides clear and concise instructions on how to download the available data sets and how to use the software with a minimum of technical detail with most chapters written by the database creators themselves.