A selected review on the separation of the stereoisomers of menthol by gas chromatography serves to demonstrate a new approach to tackle the increasing number of publications on enantiomer separation. The graphical molecular database CHIRBASE covers information (structural, bibliographic and chromatographic data) on liquid chromatography, supercritical fluid chromatography and gas chromatography. CHIRBASE is based on standard database software, thus meeting the requirements of "state of the art" information management in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and academia. The scrutiny required to create and maintain a factual database revealed that the information content of the contemporary literature with respect to chromatographic data requires improvement.