Search results

A survey was made in the Spring/Summer of 1981 by Online Review of users of online services in Europe. Questionnaires were sent out to some 7,000 individuals. Replies were requested, and only accepted, on an organisation basis; some 497 organisations in Europe were represented in the analysis. Questions were asked to establish the nature, size and areas of interest of the respondent organisations, to establish equipment used and services used, to provide indications of the future plans of online users and to establish a profile of the typical terminal user. When analysed, it was ascertained that the users surveyed had been the users of the major international, bibliographic online services.

As a member of the Editorial Board, I wish to publicly disagree with Harry Collier's ‘letter to the editor’ published in the December 1977 issue of Online Review.

Annual fairs have a long tradition; in medieval times, they created the one time each year when everyone saw everyone else, when the ‘invisible college’ of traders and purchasers met together for a few days, when one caught up with all the news, when rumours were verified and new rumours were recreated. Established traders, charlatans, those trying to break in and those weighing up the scene all congregated at some traditional spot for the same few days — and often complained about prices, transport and lack of facilities.

ISI: 1977 On‐line training program. We have asked ISI to prepare a report of their training program for us. The report follows.

Tuesday 13th December 1977 was a cold, damp day in London, but the staff of the registration desk at the Tara Hotel soon got warmed up as over 400 delegates from twenty‐four countries arrived to collect their preprints volumes and attendance lists.

The growth of UK produced online databases is explored with particular reference to activities in and the problems of marketing in the non‐profit sector.

In the past, the convergence and simultaneous appearance of technological innovation and change has brought about the means and the methods for accessing biomedical information online. The situation has not changed but the means and the methods are themselves beginning to undergo innovation and change, mainly as a result of technological progress but also, most importantly, as a result of changing patterns of usage and new user groups. This paper will discuss various emerging technologies as the basis which will determine how biomedical data in electronic format, such as that held in the EMBASE database, could be accessed in the future. From the point of view of the database producer, the questions on this topic which have to be answered are, in order of importance: given an ideal world, what is the user wish‐list?; what are the new technologies and how do they affect our current products?; and, using this new technology, how can we make products which will meet the user wish‐list? It will be seen that the results of applying technological development to online access to biomedical data, or any other type of bibliographic data for that matter, will be transparent to the user, and that online searching for the end‐user will become easier than we could ever have imagined. What I will say is not an announcement of where EMBASE is heading over the next decade, but some speculation in the most general terms of where any bibliographic database could develop in this period Much depends on the simultaneous arrival on the information scene of mutually‐compatible technologies. Much also depends on the desires and preferences of the customers, for as much as they may malign us at times it is true that they are at the heart of our business.

Although online searching has been available to libraries since the late 1960s, it is only in very recent years that a significant number of academic institutions have begun offering information retrieval through commercial vendors such as Dialog, BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Service), and SDC's (System Development Corporation's) Orbit. Because online searching is so new compared with traditional library services, it is still developing as a standard offering in most academic libraries.

Tuesday, December 8 was an unusually cold and snowy morning in London, which made it difficult for participants of the Online Information Meeting to arrive on time at the Cunard International Hotel in Hammersmith. The hotel was hosting for the third consecutive time the meeting and its satellite events.

The Norsk Senter for Informatikk A/S (NSI) recently became a privately‐owned limited company. The main shareholders are the Bergens Tidende, Fabritius, IDA (a consortium of three banks), NTNF, Kunnskapsfor‐laget and twenty‐nine of the thirty‐four NSI staff members. Among its new projects will be a videotex network between Oslo and Bergen so that users in Oslo can use the Bergens Tidende videotex service bureau. Under the reorganisation NSI will place more emphasis on being an umbrella IP, on the establishment of closed user groups and development of hardware and software.