Addressing the use of optical disks for the publication of material in machine-readable form Martin Hensel--a cofounder of Laserdata who is now with the Hensel-Nelson Company--also emphasized the potential of compact audiodisks as a digital storage medium. Audio disks lack a visual capability and have a lower data storage capacity. However, they do have the advantage of adhering to a single worldwide formatting standard Hensel postulated player systems costing in the region of $4,000 for videodisk based systems and less than $2,000 for audiodisk based systems.
Hensel believes that "real" operational disk-based products will be available within the next twelve months. The major area of lag at present is in the development of appropriate software for retrieval. Such software needs to be:
- compatible with the editorial content of the disks
- compatible with the microcomputers owned by users
- compatible with existing search software, such as the Microsearch programs developed by BRS
The technology is a reality; it is developing rapidly; and it brings with it numerous opportunities.
Speaking on new directions for SDC Information Services, Kathleen Shenton indicated that the company plans to implement a dynamic new approach to its Orbit services. Among other things, SDC will offer a new private file service which will allow interested parties to test the use of Orbit for private files before fully committing to the service. Orbit is working with Saztec to offer the opportunity of mounting and accessing 250 pages of machine-readable data online for up to six months for a flat fee of $3,000.
The company is interested in making outside sales of the Orbit software. It was recently awarded an $8 million contract to support the operations of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in its use of the Orbit software. The current competitfve climate and the Patents Office contract have led the company to pay increasing attention to developing ways of making its software more user- friendly. A new interface product is currently in Beta test and is to be released next month.
Among the foreign products on exhibit was TINMAN, a data base management system developed by Informatics Management and Engineering Inc., a U.K. firm which is looking to expand its services beyond Europe. In addition to handling data base creation and management, the software is said to be particularly well suited to information retrieval, and for establishing connections to external systems such as remote data bases.
The company is promoting the software for a range of applications, including the establishment of local information systems. The data base management aspects of the software handle data formatting with users specifying the linkages that are to be established between different files such as the bibliographic data base and a thesaurus. The software can handle both bibliographic and full- text files.
In applications of the software for information systems, customers can choose a standardized package or the company will undertake a certain degree of customization. The standardized system permits some parameterization in terms of screen format, input control, help and error messages.
The "connecting" software module is called Interceptor. It supports automatic downloading of bibliographic records in any (specified) format, automatically accessing and connecting with a remote computer, performing a search, downloading the records, and converting them into the format of the local system.
The company does not yet have any fully operational installations for library applications. However, six sales have been made in Sweden where the system will be used to access bibliographic resource files and support local online catalogs. Modules to support circulation and acquisitions are being developed.
The software can be used on any micro that supports the MS DOS or CP/M operating systems, and a version is being prepared for micros which support UNIX. All applications require the use of a hard disk. The system is capable of supporting library data bases of 40,000 to 100,000 records. TINMAN can also be used in multiuser, multi-tasking environments.
[Contact: IME, Gough House, 57 Eden Street, Kingston on Thames, KT1 1DA, England (441) 546-7968.]
Also on exhibit at Online was In- Search, a microcomputer software package developed by Menlo Corp. to facilitate accessing, searching and downloading from databases mounted on Dialog. In-Search is available for Texas Instrument, IBM PCs and IBM compatible personal computers. It requires two double-sided floppy disk drives or one floppy and one fixed disk drive, 192 KB of memory, and a Hayes or Novation modem. The user-friendly package costs $399.
[Contact: Menlo Corporation, 4633 old Ironsides Drive, Suite 400, Santa Clara, CA 95050 (408) 986-0200.]
