Special Report: CD-ROM Makes Database Searching Easier

Materials scientist Mike Viola used to spend countless hours thumbing through volumes of The Official Gazette of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. As manager of product technology for Hyperion Catalysis International Inc., a startup chemical company in Lexington, Mass., Viola is responsible for keeping current with technical developments in Hyperion's line of business, commercializing graphitic microfi-bers such as those used in batteries and adhesive plastics. So each week, when a new, 1,000-page volume of the gazette arrived from the patent office, Viola would search--page by page, patent number by patent number--for those patents of importance to him. When he was finished, he would place the volume alongside the more than 50 back issues he kept on hand in his office, unlikely to open it again. In the five years that CD-ROM products have been available, no one publisher has emerged as the leading marketer of disks for the scientific community, according to Norman Desmaris, editor of CD-ROM Librarian, an industry newsletter. On the other hand, Medline, the National Library of Medicine's database, has become one of the top-selling disks for those companies publishing scientific CD-ROMs. Currently, more than a dozen versions of Medline are available from publishers such as Silver Platter Information Inc. in Newton Lower Falls, Mass., and Compact Cambridge in Bethesda, Md. The majority of Medline users are researchers in the life sciences and medicine. Prices vary from version to version of the database, but most cost between $1,000 and $2,000, depending on backfile configurations. What differentiates the Medline versions from others--and what differentiates all publishers' CD-ROM databases from each other--is the search software on which they run, the frequency with which they are updated, and, of course, the price. The following is a sampling of scientific databases available on CD-ROM. For a catalog of all current CD-ROM titles, contact the Bureau of Electronic Publishing, 141 New Rd., Parsippany, N.J. 07054; (800) 828-4766. Title: Science Citation Index Compact Disc EditionPublisher: Institute for Scientific Information3501 Market St.Philadelphia, Pa. 19104 (800) 336-4474 An index of bibliographic references dating to 1980 from 3,100 leading international science journals covering various disciplines. Issued quarterly. Also offered as an online database, updated weekly, under the name SciSearch. What makes SCI CDE unique among CD-ROM-based databases is a hypertext, or bibliographic coupling, feature allowing researchers to navigate the database regardless of the terms chosen by individual authors. "What the ISI-related records feature does is provide a very powerful link between references," says Joshua Lederberg, a professor at Rockefeller University. "Using the index, I can find all there is on a topic without doing any work by hand because the system is fully automated. It offers a unique way to get semantic linkage between articles." The annual subscription rate for qualified researchers is $3,500. (Contact ISI for information on grant rates for small or Third World libraries.) Title: MicroPatentPublisher: MicroPatent 25 Science ParkNew Haven, Conn. 06511(800) 648-6787 A database containing 17 years' worth of U.S. patents, accessible by bibliographic and abstract search of six compact disks. For each U.S. pat-ent on disk, MicroPatent contains 11 searchable fields, including number, date of issue, assignee, references, and keyword searchable title and abstract. "MicroPatent and CD-ROMs in general are indispensable tools," says MicroPatent user and materials chemist Mike Viola. "Whenever a bright idea strikes you, you can swivel your chair around, push a couple of keys, and you have the information you want." MicroPatent is updated monthly. A subscription to the current year's files is $950 for individual researchers. Backfile disks for the previous 16 years are available to subscribers for $45 per year. Title: Water Resources AbstractsPublisher: National Information Services Corp.3100 St. Paul St., Suite 6Baltimore, Md. 21218(301) 243-0797 This product contains the entire Selected Water Resources Abstracts database--230,000 abstracts--from the Water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). It is updated quarterly with coverage dating to 1967. The annual subscription rate for an individual researcher is $625. The USGS itself is one of the main users of this product, according to Jerry McFaul, a computer scientist with the agency and chairman of a nationwide CD-ROM users' group. "Prior to the release of this disk, our own researchers had to pay to access their own research [online]," Mc-Faul says, adding that this has been the case for many government agencies. "Now, CD-ROM has the potential to change that. This disk, for example, allows the government to conveniently get at its own data again with no intermediary." Title: Life Sciences Collection: CD-ROMPublisher: Compact Cambridge 7200 Wisconsin Ave.Bethesda, Md. 20814(800) 848-7751 This interdisciplinary database contains abstracts from more than 5,000 journals, books, conference reports, and other publications. Coverage goes back to 1982 and includes biochemistry, genetics, immunology, neurosciences, and virology. The disks are updated quarterly. The cost of 1990's disk and backfiles from 1988 and 1989: $1,750. The Life Sciences Collection on CD-ROM was recently installed by the science division at City College, part of the City University of New York. Currently, the system is being used primarily by biochemists, who previously conducted manual searches at the library, according to chemistry professor David Calhoun, who describes the system as "a very convenient technology." --J.K. Meanwhile, at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Mass., molecular biologist Hemant Chikarmane would often read from dozens, and sometimes hundreds, of journals each month. When he needed additional data published in journals other than those he read regularly, Chikarmane would enlist a staff librarian to conduct an online literature search. He would tell the librarian a few key words to search for, and if what he wanted didn't turn up, he usually stopped there. Knowing that the cost of the search--$60 per hour--would be charged back to his lab, Chikar-mane was hesitant to experiment with other search words that might not yield the kind of information he was after. Viola and Chikarmane, who have both become CD-ROM users in the last year, now have the ability to search 350,000 pages of information --the equivalent of six fully indexed encyclopedias, or 1,900 floppy disks--in a matter of a few keystrokes and a few seconds. Viola now has 16 years' worth of the patent gazette (the equivalent of 800-plus volumes) on five 4.7-inch CD-ROM disks. As for Chikarmane, he now conducts most of his searches himself, using an offline personal computer equipped with a CD-ROM drive. In the process, he saves at least $100 per month in online charges. CD-ROM, short for "compact disk read-only memory," is the digital cousin of the audio compact disk. And just as audio CDs have sent many LP recordings and cassette tapes the way of the $2 haircut, some information experts are predicting that CD-ROMs will come to replace hard copies of archival scientific journals and, in many cases, the need to access scientific databases through online information vendors. Already, CD-ROM technology has been installed in most major research libraries, and more and more publishers are offering scientific and technical information in CD-ROM format. At least a half-dozen publishers now sell various CD-ROM versions of Medline, the National Library of Medicine's database, which is by far the top-selling scientific CD-ROM on the market. And recently, the American Society for Microbiology began publishing all seven of its journals, including three years of back issues as well as current issues, in CD-ROM format. The microbiology society disks differ from most other CD-ROMs: Rather than abstracts alone, they contain the full text of articles as well as all citations and high-resolution, digital replications of electron micrographs and other graphic information. The society is testing its new CD-ROM collection at the MBL library, which also offers scientists several CD-ROM databases, including Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Abstracts and Life Sciences, a collection of abstracts from 5,000 different scientific journals. Both CD-ROM subscriptions cost $1,250 per year and are put out by Compact Cambridge, a CD-ROM publisher based in Bethesda, Md. "We started using CD-ROMs about two years ago, and the scientists have taken to them like ducks to water," reports Cathy Norton, director of library planning for the MBL. "The reason is that [with CD-ROM], they can search so much more effectively than they can online. In the last year, our use of online services has fallen off by about 40 percent." Most scientist users of CD-ROM say they prefer searching on disk to searching online because simple search software, including constant onscreen help menus, is made available to them along with the data. Because they are not racking up hourly online charges, researchers not only can carry out more comprehensive searches, but also feel free to "browse" without fear of blowing their budget. "Knowing you don't have to pay for additional information, you're willing to try things that you wouldn't try online," says MBL's Chikarmane. By contrast, to efficiently retrieve information online, scientists must first become proficient in specialized search protocols, which vary from vendor to vendor. Protocols used by Dialog Information Services, for example, differ from those used by the National Library of Medicine. And the cost of accessing an online database can range from $60 to $160 an hour, depending on the database and an institution's individual contract with the online vendor. These charges can add up quickly, especially for the occasional user who may not be familiar with a service's protocols. Using CD-ROM, scientists type words rather than protocols or commands to search for what they want. For example, Hyperion's Viola recently wanted to know how many U.S. patents dealing with graphite fibers had been issued to Japanese companies over the past two years. Using a CD-ROM product called MicroPatent, a database of all U.S. patents issued over the last 17 years, he simply typed in the words "graphite" and "fiber" and the letters "JPX," an abbreviation for Japanese that is recognized by the system software. In a matter of seconds, the number nine flashed on the screen. By striking one other key on his PC, an IBM clone, he then retrieved the patent numbers, abstracts, dates of issue, and names of the inventors for all nine entries. "The benefit of having this information on CD is that it is searchable by any key word in the title or abstract," Viola says. "Key information is available to me instantly. If you believe you have a hot area of technology, you can find out who is working on it and what their approach is. This helps in developing a strategy in terms of what you should do in the lab every day." Since 1985, the year CD-ROM technology premiered, about 2,000 CD-ROM products covering a wide range of specialized databases have been published. The vast majority of these are designed for use with an IBM PC, which, along with a CD-ROM player or drive, is the only equipment necessary to get up and running. The drives, all of which are manufactured to a single international standard, cost between $600 and $800, and are available from several consumer electronics manufacturers. But despite this low entry cost, relatively few individual scientists have begun using the technology. At a recent scientific computing show in Philadelphia, for example, only about 20 percent of scientists surveyed at a CD-ROM seminar said they had any experience with the disks. One possible reason is that at present only a small percentage of the scientific and medical data that are available online or in print is available in CD-ROM format. Additionally, the CD-ROM-based data that are available are generally not as current as data in other formats. Compact Cambridge, for example, offers quarterly updates to its Medline CD-ROM subscription, while Medline itself is updated every month. Consequently, most scientists who are using CD-ROM have not pulled the plug on their online databases, which they can tap for recent updates. Nor have they canceled their subscriptions to print journals, in which they can find the full text of scientific articles, as opposed to the abstracted versions contained on most CD-ROM disks. Rather, they are using CD-ROM as a supplemental research tool. At least for now, that is. Eventually, all scientists will be accessing most of their data from CD-ROMs, predicts Barry Cinnamon, president of the Bureau of Electronic Publishing, a CD-ROM distributor in Parsippany, N.J. "Things will come out on CD-ROM that were never available online because there wasn't enough of a customer base for them," Cinnamon says. "In the long term, we're also likely to see popular hard copy texts, such as the The Merck Manual, on CD-ROM."

Special Report: CD-ROM Makes Database Searching Easier

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