Showing papers in "Library Journal in 1998"

Data Dealers Face Stormy Weather.

Abstract: Librarians should consider forming alliances to strength for negotiating the stormy database marketplace's flood of new information and new choices being promoted by database companies. Libraries must choose from among at least 29 database providers using 58 separate online, web or CD-ROM systems. Full Text: This report, the second annual Database Marketplace survey, analyzes information gathered from 29 companies serving the library market that responded to a survey distributed early in 1998. (In a few cases the 1997 information is used when companies had no changes to their products, services, or markets.) These 29 companies collectively distribute and produce information available through 58 separate online, web, or CD-ROM systems. In addition to factual data, the survey requested comments on each company's accomplishments and future plans, key goals and objectives, plus opinions about what issues in database distribution will most affect libraries in the future. In the world of weather, 1998 is the year of El Nino; in the database marketplace world, stormy weather also prevails. Mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, company failures, and a fickle marketplace together make the database arena more volatile than in recent years. Librarians are flooded with new information choices and additional options from old companies. Many of the trends reported last year (such as new web versions, a variety of pricing options, and full-text delivery to the desktop) continue, and librarians are helping information companies focus on the products, services, and pricing options they want most. They will also need to determine whether database companies are merely weathering the storm, are in full control, or are about to be swept out to sea. Fishing grounds disrupted The most obvious trend in the market is the sale of some major information companies. Knight-Ridder Information Inc. (KRII) ceased to exist in November 1997 with its sale by Knight-Ridder to the British company M.A.I.D plc. With the purchase, M.A.I.D decided to rename the two companies \"The Dialog Corporation\" after their most recognizable component. The Dialog Corporation includes the online services of DIALOG, Profound, and DataStar, plus Dialog OnDisc and several web-based end user services. The CARL Corporation, with its products such as UnCover, NoveList, and library automation software, doesn't reflect M.A.I.D's core strengths and is once again for sale. A few things are notable (and, perhaps, unsettling) about this deal. Unlike most acquisitions, here the little fish swallowed the bigger fish. M.A.I.D has assumed a sizable debt with this purchase. Approximately one-quarter of the employees of M.A.I.D and KRII were let go (to eliminate redundancies and to be more efficient, according to Dialog). The new Dialog Corporation has promised to maintain DIALOG's strengths in scientific and technical information, although M.A.I.D. comes from purely a market/business emphasis. It also promises to support and to enhance the command \"classic\" DIALOG used by information professionals, although M.A.I.D's market has been mostly end users. In a more common scenario, the big fish (some might say sharks) swallowed the smaller fish. Just a few months ago, Elsevier Science purchased Engineering Information, Inc. (Ei). (Ei responded to the 1997 survey but not this year since it went out as the purchase occurred. Elsevier Science declined to participate.) Elsevier adds the venerable Ei, with its well-known Engineering Index (Compendex) and Ei Village, to its significant online and CD-ROM product base. Since academic librarians particularly have been unhappy with Reed Elsevier pricing policies for their print and online serials, this announcement was met with some trepidation by many. Still, Reed Elsevier's purchase of Lexis-Nexis several years ago was hardly noticeable to most Lexis-Nexis customers. All of these purchases see companies passing out of U. S. hands--M.A.I.D. is from the United Kingdom and Elsevier is from The Netherlands. Is El Nino sweeping U.S. companies overseas? Falling off the cliff We've all seen pictures of houses falling off cliffs in rain-soaked California. Some services that appeared in last year's survey have disappeared, too. Individual Inc. and Desktop Data, two services that delivered business information to the corporate desktop, merged to form NewsEdge. (NewsEdge declined to participate in this year's survey.) Both companies have undergone a fair amount of merging and reemerging in the last few years. Individual Inc. purchased the Hoover service from Information Access Company (IAC) in 1996, and in 1997 Desktop Data purchased Individual Inc. Together as NewsEdge perhaps these companies will at last find longer term stability. Two years ago, UMI purchased DataTimes, the Oklahoma-based online newspaper service. UMI kept it going in parallel to UMI's ProQuest services until last year. UMI just didn't know DataTimes's main markets (corporate and special libraries), and those markets didn't know UMI. Most of the DataTimes content has been moved to UMI's ProQuest Direct, but faithful users of specialty online services such as DataTimes see a warning here. If your favorite small online company is purchased by another information company, it may fall off the cliff. Another missing company is NewsNet. After 15 years of providing newsletters and other news materials online, NewsNet ceased operations in August 1997. Its founder and president, Andrew Elston, attributed this at least in part to the turbulence created by the World Wide Web. Free web versions of some of NewsNet's major sources and lower cost expectations by users certainly played a role in NewsNet's demise. Will the web drive more commercial online services off the cliff or provide a universal platform for commercial products and services? Libraries disappearing? Some companies may be rebuilding or even disappearing, but what about libraries? Infonautics announced in March 1998 that its online service \"The Electric Library\" will now be available to America Online (AOL) customers. Online companies claiming they replace libraries is not a new phenomenon. What is new is the huge numbers of people who now have access to online services. Services such as AOL and the web in general are becoming the first place millions turn to for information But even a low price of $6 per month may be too much for what is, after all, just a combination of content and search engine, without a personalized reference service. A more common trend reported by the companies surveyed is to provide desktop or home delivery of certain products with a library or the parent organization behind the scenes paying for access. To an individual end user the information appears to be free and, unless the library puts a customized stamp on front-end software, appears to \"replace\" the traditional library. The library can provide a shelter from the information storm for its clients with these in-house services. NewsEdge's sole purpose is to deliver news and business information to the corporate desktop, while Dialog's intranet product DIALOG@site, IAC's Corporate InSite, and SilverPlatter's ERL provide services for the in-house market. The many Z39.50-compatible services from companies such as SilverPlatter, EBSCO, OCLC, and IAC can be used to provide reference materials online to library constituents through a library's OPAC software. Building dikes Both libraries and information companies are turning increasingly to safety in numbers through cooperative ventures, as if building dikes. Almost all survey respondents have alliances or partnerships, sometimes with their biggest competitors. QL Systems, the Canadian legal information service, offers a gateway service to its U.S. competitor, Westlaw; Hoover's makes its content available through Lexis-Nexis; Ovid has a partnership with the Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI) The Genuine Article service for document ordering; and SIRS Researcher is available through IAC's InfoTrac SearchBank, OCLC's FirstSearch, and other systems. Sometimes these partnerships serve to bring in new customers that may reach beyond a company's traditional markets. Besides giving up on DataTimes, UMI found it couldn't attract enough corporate users to ProQuest Direct and in a surprise move halted direct marketing to them. UMI ProQuest Direct and Dow Jones Interactive (formerly Dow Jones News/Retrieval) will be sharing content but for different markets. UMI has agreed to focus on the school, academic, and public library markets, while Dow Jones gets the corporate and other special libraries market. By dividing the marketplace this way each builds on its traditional strengths and brings new content to libraries that did not want to purchase access to systems that don't know them well. Unfortunately for academic libraries, the ProQuest Direct prices may be higher than Dow Jones prices. One academic librarian told us that if she hadn't been grandfathered in as a longtime Dow Jones customer, the costs for access to Dow Jones materials in her university would have increased dramatically under UMI. Sometimes these alliances and relationships get complex. PaperChase, for example, offers document delivery through Infotrieve, but Infotrieve's document delivery comes from CARL UnCover and the British Library, while the CARL UnCover database is also available through OCLC FirstSearch. DIALOG@CARL provides access through the CARL system to databases from both DIALOG and the Research Library Group's RLIN and CitaDel services. High pressure Cooperation has not completely replaced competition in this finite marketplace. The most formidable competition for companies is in the area of bibliographic and full-text general information. UMI, OCLC, IAC, EBSCOhost, and H.W. Wilson all concentrate on libraries and provide access to magazines and nonspecialist journal literature. They all offer CD-ROM, web, and locally loaded