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Because our schedules didn't mesh during the Online Information conference and exhibition the first week of December 2002, Judy Vezmar graciously invited me to LexisNexis Butterworths Tolley headquarters in Chancery [...]

ONLY 2 YEARS AGO, I characterized electronic books as 'A New Publishing Revolution' (ONLINE, July/August 2000, pp. 14-28 and September/October 2000, pp. 18-36). In 2000, the e-book market was awash [...]

What decisions go into making a print product available online? For some, the development of a Web site is merely a 'me-too' approach to marketing, with the publisher saying, 'I […]

Online is at its quarter century mark. Technologically, 25 years is several lifetimes--and certainly long enough to introduce some serious legacy issues for long time database producers. Those new to [...]

Editor's Note: Yesterday I attended one of a series of luncheons for major customers among information professionals and listened to Dan Wagner's presentation. I thought it was sincere and articulate, [...]

One of the most common business questions asked at reference desks in all types of libraries -- even virtual ones -- concerns cost of living statistics. It may be an [...]

Traditional databases available on CD-ROM and from commercial online services are usually evaluated on record cleanliness, scope of coverage, structure, and timeliness. These databases have been criticized at times for [...]

Recent economic news from Japan focused the world's attention on the financial viability of Japanese companies. Despite Japan's status as the world's second largest economy, historically it has been very [...]

When Mary Howitt penned her famous 1844 invitation, with its not-so-hidden agenda, she probably never imagined this 1998 'spin' on her words. While the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), one [...]

Dan Wagner, CEO of The Dialog Corporation, plc, is invariably described as young, yet he's been in the information industry for over a decade. It was in 1984 that he [...]

EDITOR'S NOTE: Gale Research must be one of the most well-known companies in the information industry. Gale's President and CEO, Dedria Bryfonski, may be one of its least well-known chief [...]

In an issue devoted in large part to the challenges scholarly publishing faces from digital developments, we turned to one of the leading secondary publishers in the field, Chemical Abstracts […]

This month the picks include the experimental Web version of the mother of all catalogs, that of the Library of Congress and a relatively small full-text Web database: Contemporary Women's [...]

Usually the first idea you associate with online data bases is that they are more current than their printed or CD-ROM counterparts. We journalists and educators certainly have contributed to [...]

For many years the online business situation was a status quo. Venerable names such as DIALOG, Dow Jones News/Retrieval, and LEXIS-NEXIS amassed vast collections of business data and developed powerful, […]

Here we go again with a compilation of what was new in 1995 in online search resources for sci-tech and patent literature. I start with my usual caveats: My views […]

In 1991, the Predicasts company and its databases were sold to Ziff-Davis and its subsidiary, Information Access Company. Soon after, International Thomson bought most of Ziff-Davis, including IAC and what […]

Many changes have occurred since Mark Nelson began CD Plus over ten years ago as one of the first new CD-ROM publishers. Last year, they acquired what remained of the […]

This is the first in an occasional series of interviews with interesting people in the CD-ROM arena. Fred Durr has been involved in this industry since its beginnings 10 years […]

Editor's Note: In March 1994, Questel acquired Orbit Online Information, part of InfoPro Technologies, formerly part of Maxwell Online, and so on back to its origin under Systems Development Corp. [...]

Editorial Comment The other day I got a letter from an end user. It was so earnest, so well-considered, and so true that I decided to make it the basis […]

When the faxes and promotional materials from Mead Data Central started rolling into information centers around the country last year announcing a soon-to-be-released major restructure of NEXIS, a small knot […]

When Maxwell Online became InfoPro Technologies at the beginning of 1993, we interviewed Andrew Gregory, president of both Infopro Technologies and BRS Software Products. Before these posts, Gregory was executive […]

Five o'clock. Monday Morning. The first employee arrives in the Information Access Company offices in Foster City, California. The weekend and Monday a.m. editions of several newspapers are already waiting [...]

The sensational death of Robert Maxwell revealed the Maxwell empire as a giant Ponzi game in which enormous sums were plundered from one part to shore up shortfalls elsewhere. In [...]

Publisher's Note: Following is the first published interview with Dialog's new CEO, Pat Tierney. The interview was taped at Dialog's Palo Alto offices just after the ONLINE/CD-ROM '91 conference in [...]

PH: Good morning, Bill. I know you as the former President of BRS, but I understand that your education ties into your recent project with the HEALTH PERIODICALS DATABASE for [...]

Editor's Note: In the past four years Data-Star has quietly become a presence in the U.S. Online market. While it is not usually the supermarket system of choice for online [...]

[EDITOR'S NOTE: In the September 2002 issue of Searcher, we published an article by veteran searcher Amelia Kassel ('Tales of a Searcher's Life. A Comedy of Errors or A Test […]

A mid the many corporate earnings announcements for the fourth quarter 2001, an unassuming release from Hoover's Inc. could be easily overlooked. The company, which went public only in 1999, [...]

Search and retrieval capabilities have long been a key element in knowledge management. Information-laden government agencies must be able to search their knowledge storehouses or creating them will have been [...]

With Reed Elsevier's acquisition of Harcourt cleared by the antitrust authorities, and online sales now approaching $2.8 billion this year, Elsevier Science chairman Derk Haank says in this interview that […]

It's tough being an aggregator. But then, it's always been tough to be an aggregator. It's tougher than being the other two sides of the information triangle: the buyers and […]

A prominent news librarian from one of the nation's top-10 newspapers recently called her primary full-text vendor and asked for a report on which data had gone off-line due to […]

Personally, I don't watch reality programs on television. Frankly, the concept makes me uncomfortable. It feels too much like some dire end-of-civilization predictions coming true. I can almost hear Orwell, […]

H. W. Wilson is celebrating its 100th year in business this year Recently, IT contributing editor Paula Hane interviewed president and CEO Harold Regan, who has been with the company […]

Does this description fit you? You're a talented and ambitious librarian or information professional. You've spent years gaining knowledge and information skills in the new online information age. You're an [...]

Although I've been a librarian for a number of years -- with my share of horror stories about locating government information -- my blood still runs cold when I have [...]

Editor's Note: With this issue, we introduce a new columnist to DATABASE readers. I've asked Ernest Perez to take on the task of covering not database searching, but database construction, [...]

As each year passes, the dawning of the Age of the Internet recedes further into the dim technological past. The command line use of ftp and gopher and arcane UNIX [...]

I started writing for DATABASE magazine in the late 1980s, a time of dramatic growth for scientific and engineering information. STN was taking bold steps to build an integrated system [...]

[Editor's Note: Donal Smith is managing director of electronic business information at Financial Times Information in London, which is part of Pearson plc.] Q Where does electronic business information (EBI) […]

Looking for joint venture firms online sometimes takes more time. Joint ventures are typically set up to be temporary firms that achieve specific goals. Another problem is that joint ventures often occur between two companies in different countries. Searching for financial information about a joint venture is more difficult than a search for general news. Databases may also enter joint venture names in different ways., It's not unusual. You are trying to find information about a company. You, your client, and your colleagues are all familiar with the company name. But you come up empty-handed [...]

Most people who have spent decades in a culture other than their own would probably agree that it becomes difficult to 'keep one's assumptions straight.' I noticed that fact once […]

When I first began to consider the theme, for this month's issue, document delivery, I wasn't sure how I could work it in with my overall theme of 'online treasures.' […]

Online searching has been well established in Australia since the late 1970s. Products and services from the rest of the world still predominate, with a small but growing percentage of […]

Well, the information industry has been 'off to see the Wizard' and has finally arrived at the Land of Oz. Now how do you make friends with the Munchkins? And, […]

These days more and more information professionals find themselves involved in developing Internet-based information environments, as well as acting as hunters and huntresses for specific pieces of information. We considered […]

M.A.I.D (Market Analysis and Information Database) has long had a low profile among its peer group of business information services. There are several reasons. It is a British company that […]