The Online 84 conference held in San Francisco at the end of October provided a showcase for a number of new products and services. “User-friendly” front—end software for data base searching was the focus of many exhibits and presentations. In addition to the established products (In-Search, Search Helper, Sci—mate) and more recent introductions (Informatics' PC/Net-Link and Net—Search, Orbit's SearchMaster, and micr0CA14BRIDGE), there appears to be a new class of products emerging. These products, represented at Online by IT, use the same approach as the EasyNet system described in the October issue of LSN. From a user's natural language query, they select the data base to be searched, and also format the search. Apart from the software design, the special feature of EasyNet that differentiates it from these others is that it requires no user preregistration or password allocation—all charges are billed to the user's credit card.
Data-Ease Inc.'s IT (Information Transfer) is a software package for IBM or DEC hardware with the UNIX operating system. The software assists the end user in formulating a natural language statement of the information required and refining the request through menu choices stated as questions such as: Are you primarily interested in: marketing, economic, technical, or other information on this topic? Do you want: statistical, fulltext, or bibliographic data? Are you interested in a particular: time-span? country? language? or other? IT uses this information to select the data base(s) to be searched. The system then presents a review screen of basic information about the selected data base—subject coverage hints for ~ise, cost, etc. This data is provided as part of the IT package and will be updated regularly and re-issued as part of new software releases. It is intended that the software will provide access to most of the available data base services. At present, arrangements have only been finalized with Dialog and BRS.
After the data base has been selected, IT assists the user in formulating the information request into a search strategy. Boolean statements using AND, OR, and NOT are constructed. When the search statement has been final ized, the user may either go ahead with the search or save the query for execution at a later time. On command, IT will access the appropriate data base and conduct the search. Search results may be downloaded into the local system for further manipulation and reformatting if required. An institution can purchase the IT software and use it as an interface not only to access external files, but also to search internal data bases or private files on an external service.
Another trend in evidence at Online 84 was a move towards digital data publication on floppy disks. Biosis' B-I-T-S service has been using this approach for some time, and now several other companies are demonstrating similar products and services. Disclosure is offering Micro! Scan, compilations of corporate information, on hard or floppy disk; and Edupro offers Microcomputer Index on Disk (MIND), an index distributed on floppy disk and accessed through Edupro's MicroAccess software using an IBM PC.
Although long touted as the new digital publishing medium, products using videodisc or CD ROM were no where in evidence. In fact, Pergamon representatives admitted that the first such commercial product—Video Patsearch, the system that offered patents graphics on a videodisc as a peripheral to an online search system—had “died.” Apparently the problem lay not with the technology, but rather with the nature and size of the market.
Representatives from Disclosure, however, indicated that good progress is being made on that company's plans to mount its data banks on optical digital disk distributed to user sites through high speed, high capacity fiber optics communications channels (see LSN Vol. IV No. 8). The service is not due to begin until the first quarter of 1986. The early announcement of the service, at the Special Libraries Association meeting in New York this past June, was due to client concerns related to the SEC's announced plans to change the basis of its services to an automated system.
Information Access Company announced a new product—Information Publishing, an electronic journal which will be offered as part of its fulltext files on Dialog. Billed as “what is believed to be the world's first commercial electronic journal,” Information Publishing will become publicly available in January 1985. It has a broad subject scope covering online search and retrieval systems, library public catalogs and information services, indexing and abstracting, videotex, teletext, the economics of electronic and traditional publishing, microcomputers, videodiscs, microforms and other electronic technologies as they affect publishers, libraries, and related organizations. (The Electronic Publishing Services Division of the Hearst Corporation also recently announced the - availability of OnModem as the “first electronic interactive magazine. OnModem is available on Compuserve.]
[Contact: Data-Ease Inc., 3130 Mayfield Road, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118 (216) 371—5640; Disclosure, Inc., 5161 River Road, Bethesda, MD 20816 (800) 638-8076; Edupro Inc., 445 E. Charleston Road, Palo Alto, CA 94306 (415) 494-2790; Information Access Company, 11 Davis Drive, Belmont, CA 94002 (800) 227-8431.]
