Tales from the Terminal Room

December 1999 Issue No. 4

Archives

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Tales from the Terminal Room (TFTTR) is a monthly newsletter, with the exception of July and August, which are published as a single issue. TFTTR includes reviews and comparisons of information sources and search tools; updates to the RBA Web site Business Sources and other useful resources; dealing with technical and access problems on the Net; and news of RBA's training courses and publications.

December is "Online" month in the UK and the whole information world converges on the Online Information conference and exhibition at Olympia in London, so this issue of TFTTR is a review of the exhibition. I have not covered every single announcement that was made or every one of the 250 plus exhibitors. First, it would be extremely boring to read and secondly, by the time I had "done" about a third of Online, I was sinking under the weight of extreme information overload. So what follows is an overview of the events that I found more memorable backed up with information from press releases and product literature.

We return to the standard format for January's TFTTR. That will include a detailed review of Dialog's Webtop search engine and a comparison of some of the free and priced UK and pan-European company directories that are on the Web.

In the meantime, have a Happy Christmas and a great start to the New year!

Karen Blakeman

Online Information 99

Held at Olympia, London, 7-9th December 1999

It is just over a week since Online Information 99 finished and my feet and brain have just about recovered. For those of you who have never heard of "Online", let alone visited the exhibition or attended the conference, this is the big information event in the UK.

The UK Online User Group (http://www.ukolug.org.uk/) - UKOLUG for short - has provided the exhibition help desk for about 20 years. As the current Chair of UKOLUG, I was involved in helping set up and run the two help desks this year. We direct people who are lost (it is a very big show), advise them on who they should see for particular services, and try and help them with technical problems that they may be having back at the office or at home. We also provide answers to the more important questions such as "Where are the toilets?" and "Where is the bar?"!

Best Stand Award

This year Learned Information, the organisers of Online, invited UKOLUG to judge the Best Stand Award. It was left to us to decide on the criteria for judging and we felt that as well as overall design it was also important to assess "user friendliness" and the helpfulness of staff on the stands. Therefore, those stands that made it onto the short list were subjected to a "Mystery shop". (After the award had been made we discovered from the winners that the "shop" was a mystery in more ways than one: "We wondered why you lot kept coming back and studying our stand in such detail" they said.)

The judging panel was unanimous in choosing Westlaw (http://www.westlaw.co.uk/) as the winner. The overall design of the stand was pleasing and enticing; demonstration areas were close enough to the edge of the stand so that one could watch from the aisles; it was clear who the company was and what they did; and the staff were courteous, knowledgeable and helpful.

Close runners-up were TFPL (we loved the black carpet and backgrounds), Gale (wonderful flowing lines) and Northern Light (another stand with heavy use of minimalist black and I, personally, had my eye on those film directors chairs!)

Best Freebie

The UKOLUG members amongst you may recall that UKOLUG once had an award for the best freebie at Online called the Golden Daffodil award. This was abandoned several years ago when the standard of freebies fell to an all-time low. This area of Online has not been totally forgotten though: Sheila Webber headed a panel which went in search of the Mousemat for the Millennium (I am not sure if the winner of this has been announced yet) and the UKOLUG members who staffed the help desks decided that this year the freebie efforts of exhibitors should be acknowledged.

The runner up was up Sweet & Maxwell and Westlaw with their Yo-Yo. This is a nicely balanced Yo-Yo that lights up when you use it - and my cat loves it!.

The outright winner, though, was BizInt (producers of Smart Charts) with their jig-saw cubes. These come in a range of colours as flat jig-saws but can be put together to form a cube. Each colour represents a different level of difficulty, the red or pink being the easiest and the green the hardest to complete. As you have to study the structure of each of the pieces in some detail, you cannot help but notice the database names that are emblazoned on the pieces. Thus, as well as having entertainment value, the cubes are a clever way of creating awareness of the services that are incorporated into Smart Charts for Pharmaceuticals and Smart Charts for Patents. If you have collected all of the colours and successfully built up the individual cubes, you can combine the different colours to form one giant cube. More information about Smart Charts together with Puzzle Hints can be found at http://www.bizcharts.com/

The Exhibition

Users of electronic information expect anyone who is anyone in the information provider world to be at Online. It certainly seemed that way with around 250 exhibitors but some well known companies such as ICC, IMS and Primark were conspicuous by their absence. A very obvious new name but with no obviously new services was Factiva, (Dow Jones-Reuters). This confused many visitors at first, and opinion was divided on the lime green corporate colour that pervaded the stand.

Dun & Bradstreet

Dun & Bradstreet UK (http://www.dnb.com/uk/), as well as promoting their standard business and company information services D&B unveiled their new free business service on the Web. This enables you to search their UK Marketing File database of 1.8M businesses by company name, product or service, and address information (town, county or postcode). The free information includes company name, address, phone and fax number, business category and description, and a contact name. The service is powered by the AskAlex search service.

The full priced Direct Marketing Services which you can use to generate mailing lists is still available but is now under a "Buy Lists and Labels" link.

Another new feature of the revamped Web site is the ability to order images of official company reports and documents which are then emailed to you. This service is being launched in January 2000.

D&B were also promoting their new Eccelerate.com division which has been set up to support its customers in secure business-to-business (b-to-b) e-commerce transactions. The service will provide authentication for each company in an online business transaction confirming who they are and whether they're fit to do business commercially. The Eccelerate Web site is at http://www.eccelerate.com/

Companies House

Companies House (http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/) has offered a free online search for disqualified directors and basic company information for a while now. If you required more detailed information, though, you could not access or download company documents direct - even for a fee. That is all changing and customers can now download predefined packages of company documents as a single product and at a fixed price of GBP 5.

Further developments for 2000 include the provision of Company Reports, supplying predefined combinations of specific company data via the electronic service.

Also on show was the CD-ROM Directory, a monthly snapshot of the complete register, and the Change of Name and Dissolved Companies CD-ROM. A single, one off purchase costs GBP 30 (expires after 6 months) and an annual subscription costs GBP 300.

PIRA

PIRA (providers of information on the packaging, pulp and paper, printing and publishing industries) launched version 2 of their database on the Web. The database has been upgraded to provide a system which can be used at varying levels of expertise, from the first time user to the experienced database searcher. Further information is available on their web site at http://www.pira.co.uk/

DIALOG

Dialog launched a new service under the banner "Dialog Revolutionises Web Searching". This is a general Web search engine called WebTop.com (http://www.webtop.com/) which they claim is "targeted at the millions of professionals using the Web for business purposes".

The press release goes on to say:

"As the number of business professionals using the Internet increases exponentially, there is a real challenge to make the Web simpler to navigate, and business-related information easier to find. WebTop.com addresses this challenge by giving users three search options to make finding information on the Web quicker and easier:

Type & Search: Using natural language searching, where the user can type in full sentences or multiple key words.

Copy & Paste: The ability to copy and paste text from a document straight into the search query box.

Drag and Drop: Offered via the k-check desktop application, enabling the user to 'knowledge check' a document or email, to find related information available on the Web."

I have had a quick look at the service, and it does seems to return relevant results but I have yet to test and compare it fully with other search engines. One thing I did notice, though, is that advanced search tricks such as using double quote marks to specify phrase searches and plus signs to make search terms mandatory are ignored by Webtop. The service will be reviewed in full in January's Tales From the Terminal Room.

Ebsco

Ebsco (http://www.ebsco.com/) once just a journal subscription agency has introduced links to third-party databases to allow subscribers to download the full text of journal articles that they have identified through keyword searching. The enhanced service is made possible by allowing access to proprietary databases from Ebsco's online reference system and to the full text of electronic journals available through its electronic journals service.

Springer's Link Service

Springer was heavily publicising its own full text journal article service called Link (http://link.springer.de/). The Link service has been around for over two years but has now been expanded to include more journals and ancillary materials, and a new service called Online First which allows access to peer reviewed articles prior to publication in print. There is a much improved search engine that allows you to search specific fields such as the title, author or abstract. You can search and display bibliographic information and abstracts free of charge but you must have a subscription in order to view the articles in full.

Thomson Financial

Thomson Financial announced several developments at Online. It has expanded the regional and industry coverage of Intelliscope (http://www.intelliscope.com/) by adding new sources to Investext, MarkIntel and Industry Insider, and Intelligence Data launched its own new Web site at http://www.intelligencedata.com/. Intelligence Data offers access to sample reports on Intelliscope, Intelligence Monitor, product demos, FAQs and links to other Web sites. Intelligence Monitor is an alerting service that provides a free listing of reports that have been recently published on an industry.

Another new service called ThomsonDirect.com (http://thomsondirect.com/) provides desktop access to information on over 600,000 public, private and joint venture companies from thirteen information providers. Information includes securities ownership, M&A, new issues, broker and market research, league tables, company filings and earnings estimates.

Chadwyck-Healey launches KnowEurope

Chadwyck-Healey launched a new online service that offers users access to a variety of legislative information from within the European Union and its member countries. Called KnowEurope (http://www.knoweurope.net/), it provides access to a range of information about the European Union and Europe generally - the institutions and organisations, policy initiatives and legislative activities, and the peoples and nations of the region. The service is currently in beta testing and is therefore free to access. There will be a charge, though, for the full commercial service. Let us hope that they do something with their dreadful Home Page first. At present it is made up entirely of slow loading graphics with no alternative text links.

European Union Services

The European Union (EU) was publicising its range of information databases that it makes available on the Web. Most of these have been available either on a subscription basis or by following links on the Europa site. For some of the sources there are new and more memorable URLs.

Celex - http://europa.eu.int/celex/
CELEX is a comprehensive and authoritative information source on European Community law. It offers multilingual, full text coverage of a wide range of legal acts including the founding treaties, binding and non-binding legislation, opinions and resolutions issued by the EU Institutions and consultative bodies and the case law of the European Court of Justice. There are hypertext links to subsequent modifying acts, earlier acts and to national legislation implementing Community directives. This is a priced service so you need an ID and password to access the service.

Eur-Lex - http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/
This is a free service giving access to the Official Journal L & C Series for up to 45 days after date of publication (thereafter they are made available for a fee via the EUDOR or the CELEX database), treaties, EC legislation in force and consolidated legislation, preparatory acts and case law.

Eudor -http://eudor.eur-op.eu.int/
Provides access to European Official Publications such as the Official Journal L & C Series, COM documents, consolidated community legislation, merger decisions. Documents can be delivered by email, fax or ftp but there is a charge for documents retrieved via this site (payment is by credit card). Before you buy documents through these pages, first look under the "Documents free of charge" link to see if you can access the same information free of charge on the Europa site.

TED - http://ted.eur-op.eu.int/
Full coverage of open calls for tender and updated daily. I have serious problems accessing this site. It will only let you in if you have use Netscape 4.51 (Netscape 4.05 or 4.6 is no good, neither is IE 5). I tried to sneak in by using the URL http://ted.eur-op.eu.int/ojs/en/eurlex.htm. It spawned two new browser windows and then stalled at a Java Applet error. Nil points for accessibility.

Cordis - http://www.cordis.lu/
With a new and enhanced service currently in beta test at http://www.cordis.lu/beta/ Cordis is the EU's official information service for its Fifth R&D Framework Program. The new Cordis Web portal will be formally launched on January 25, 2000.

EIROnline and Industrial Relations Information

The European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) is a major project of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. EIRO initiates, collects, stores, disseminates and provides access to information and analysis on developments in industrial relations in the 15 EU Member States, plus Norway, and at European/international level. EIROnline (http://www.eiro.eurofound.ie/) contains up-to-date information and analysis on the most important events and issues in industrial relations in EU Member States and Norway.

Datamonitor

Datamonitor (http://www.datamonitor.com/) has completely redesigned its Web site and was demonstrating a new range of market analysis tools. The new service gives access to all of Datamonitor's business information and you can search the database and display contents pages free of charge. The full reports can be purchased online via a secure credit card payment system.

Macmillan launches Encyclopaedia of Life

Macmillan Reference Ltd (part of the Nature Publishing Group) launched the Encyclopaedia of Life Sciences (ELS) in what it calls an "embryonic format". ELS (http://www.els.net/) is scheduled to be completed in March 2001 and will feature over 4,000 signed articles from scientists. It is intended to be a key resource for students, researchers, academic and public libraries and schools. ELS is a subscription service and you can subscribe to the embryonic ELS for GBP 125. This can be redeemed against a new subscription to ELS when the full version is launched in 2001.

World Markets Research Center (WMRC)

WMRC (http://www.wmrc.com/) launched a daily online news service aimed at keeping users up to date with legislative changes around the world. The Impact Global service provides legislative information on 183 markets around the world. New and impending business regulations, amendments and laws are flagged up on the service and articles assess how new or altered regulations and laws will affect businesses. The Impact Global service is charged at a flat rate. Subscriptions cost GBP 995/year (USD 1,600) for the whole service or GBP 250 (USD400) for each region. The regions are: Europe - including Balkans, CIS and Eastern and Western Europe; Asia - including Central, East, South East, Pacific and Australia; Africa and the Middle East; and Americas - including Latin America, Caribbean, North America.

Next Year

If you missed the bash this year the organisers, exhibitors, presenters and help desk staff are already preparing for Online 2000 which will take place from 5-7 December 2000 at the National Hall and Olympia Conference Centre in London. It is a good idea to get hold of an event guide beforehand so that you can decide in advance who you want to visit at the show. This means that you will have to pre-register; the best way to ensure that you get onto the mailing list is to keep an eye on the Online Web site at http://www.online-information.co.uk/

Karen Blakeman

TFTTR Contact Information

Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services
UK Tel: 0118 947 2256, Int. Tel: +44 118 947 2256
UK Fax: 020 8020 0253, Int. Fax: +44 20 8020 0253
Address: 88 Star Road, Caversham, Berks RG4 5BE, UK

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