LM_NET: Library Media Networking
To all who responded with opinions, many thanks. And boy, were there a
lot of you who wanted the results. InfoTrac wins although there are some
good questions raised. I did see a demo of ProQuest and thought it was
perhaps an "overimproved" product. I personally liked that I could enter
just about any request into InfoTrac and get into the databse. I also
like the expanded search that does not depend on Boolean terms. But
then, that is what I have used, and that is what our public library
system uses, so... What will we do? We will stick with InfoTrac, but
now that we will have a tower and greater access from multiple terminals,
I will opt for superTom (I think) (on this Sunday in February)...
By the way, over the past many months I have read about creating hits.
To those out there without Windows, or at least the ability to run
multiple programs at one time, I don't think you can do it easily.
What I learned was to keep a Works word processing program open and
to copy and paste to it screen by screen and then save it and then
move it into my directory. Cumbersome but it works. I cannot do
that from my old 286 at school.
Anyway, here are the results:
----------------
Kari--
Our school went with EBSCO's Magazine Article Summaries Full-text
and we love it! It networks easily, EBSCO doesn't charge
extra for networking (Information Acess-TOM, does!) and
the search screen is easy to use. The price per year
for 137 magazines full-text and 504 indexed is $2799. This
includes school-quarter updates.
Good luck!
Patricia Long
Lincoln Middle & High Schools
Lincoln, Rhode Island
pllinhs@uriacc.uri.edu
Kari,
I have had UMI (Proquest) for 3 years.
We have had much difficulty networking.
On 1 station it was great but you know the stress when computers
don't work correctly. I have had a vendor in to do the networking and
results have been unsatisfactory and I now have a technician
from our county service center and he has just about given up.
We are going to use the 2 machine as stand alones requiring 2 index
discs. However further expansion beyond 2 is unthinkable until
we get the networking problems solved. UMI technical support has
not been helpful.
TOm O'Brien
aust_to@access.ohio.gov"
I have been happy with InfoTrac. It requires 2 CD's. I was also told that
some older full text is eliminated each year. If you save the Dec. copy
of the full text CD, you can keep it running for back issues. That does
require another CD bay in your tower. Good luck.
Sue Yahng, Librarian syahng@cello.gina.calstate.edu
Piedmont High School Voice (510) 420-3631 or 3632
800 Magnolia Ave. FAX (510) 652-9983
Piedmont, CA 94611-4087
I just picked up your message on Lm_net. We automated last year and use a
CD Rom tower which networks all our CDs to our library workstations. (Much
security as students do not have accesability to the software). We
subscribe to full text Tom and plan to go with SuperTom next year. They've
eliminated their networking fee for next year so I'll be able to get more for
our money. Full text requires the use of two disc drives. One disc will
remain with you for about three months with the other disc being the monthly
update that you receive. Our students constantly use this program and I
have been extremely satisfied. - Go for it!
You may also want to investigate the SIRS program. This news system carries
global periodicals as well asdomestic. This uses one disc which is updated
four times during the school year. Both of these programs are in constant
use by our students.
Lorita Jussila xabht009@llwsbe.wsbe.org
Bishop Hendricken High School
2615 Warwick Avenue
Warwick, RI02889
Hate to rain on your parade but after putting up with Info trac price
increases, decreased package offerings (size) and the ridiculousness of their
index system for the fiche I finally said to heck with it and subscribed to
Proquest...Haven't gotten it yet but after 9 years of InfoTrac I am
ready....Hope you have better luck than I....
Jerri Linke Media Director whs Willmar, Mn.
linkej@willmar.k12.cfa.org
We have had InfoTrak for nearly two years. We now run it on a school
network through our cd tower. I had a sample of UMI for about 6 months.
UMI never sent me the full text version to try.
I chose Info for a coulple of reasons.
1. the materials seemed more geared to high school students. If I had
been in a college, I might have chosen UMI. That may be a diservice to
my best and brightest in advanced classes, but I serve a wide variety of
levels of students.
2. It is easy to use. The Windows/Mac version I use now, is a tiny bit
more complicated that the old DOS version. Never the less, most kids use
simple subject searches. You can show a more determined kid how to do an
"Extended Search" (modified Boolian) in about a minute.
3. Complete text is a little misleading--only the more recent entries
tend to include full text. However,that is still many articles and kids
love this, and actually, so do I. We print a lot of Info stuff. It very
immediate!
Of course it is text only--no illustrations or graphics.
4. UMI had more alternatives for price than Info. A nice old lady died
and left my library a nice endowment, making price not such an issue for me.
5. Info raised their prices big time last spring. I bitched big time and
they figured out a way to keep us at the same price. For next year, their
agreement with MEC has actually lowered my price. I sensed a little
disorganization out in California. That is a little troublesome.
6. Monthly updates are great and come like clock work. Installing it on
network is done by my student computer techies. They then have to
reinstall a start up on each computer on the network. This is a bit of a
pain each month, but worth to have such an up to date source. It makes
the poor old Reader's Guide seem terrible out of date. I do still keep
the Reader's Guide for crowds and the inevitable computer problem.
OU Zanesville's library uses UMI and is very happy with it. I do not
know names and numbers over there. It is more likely to include medical
journals and other more advanced titles.
Good luck, Dave Stout (Cambridge High School, Cambridge, OH)
I am new at this myself, but after looking at several products at
technology "shows" and previewing Infotrac for over 60 days (they
were very generous), we went with Infotrac. Their indexing is the
best for our students. It is sort of like looking at a table of
contents in a text book to see which area you want. Our students
have really benefitted from it. gdraper@wps.k12.ar.us
Hello, I too use Infotrac (Full text with newspapers/Super Tom) and run
it on a network. It does take up 3 drives on the tower, which is a
concern. Got a good price on it this year, cause I complained, but not
sure what to do next year. All are expensive, and I've previewed them all
and keep coming back to Infotrac. It IS very user friendly, and maybe
it's because I'm so used to it. I don't use the fiche (don't have a
reader or printer) and keep hard print copies of mags back 5 years (some
even longer, Time, Newsweek, Nat. Geo, US News). I would like to hear
any[A suggestions you might get. Hope this helps, Elisa
[A
Elisa Baker, Librarian
Ursuline High School
90 Ursuline Road
Santa Rosa, CA 95403
We have been networking Infotrac for several years and have had no
problems. The monthly update simply replaces the previous cd-rom in the
tower with no installation.
Lynn McCree, Librarian
Martin Junior High
Austin, Texas
Lmcc@tenet.edu
At Ada High School we use SuperTom Plus (I think there's a plus, although
that sounds redundant...)
[A
At any rate, the 2 CD's whir along happily on the fileserver's CD-ROM tower
and we like it a lot. The microfiche is also used more each year, and
accumulates...
I can't think of a good reason to change, especially if you're satisfied.
Best wishes,
Elizabeth Eley
I preview InfoTrac TOM, Newsbank, and UMI ProQuest Resource One. I had
all three available on preview for student use for 60-90 days all at
the same time. I picked March because we have so many papers being
done at that time. Anyway, we kept track of which ones were used the
most, on which ones the kids found what they were looking for, etc. We
had the kids keep a log next to each one with the search they did and
the results they had. We also had they write comments about ease of
use, success, etc. I talked to the kids a lot about each of them. We
[A chose Resource One (UMI ProQuest). I don't know if this is the same
product you are looking at or not. This one is also called Magazine
Express. It is full-image which is wonderful because you get the
pictures (although not very good quality), graphs, charts, maps, etc.
You don't get that with the others. Of course, since it involves so
many CDs it is NOT networkable. It also only indexes USA Today and the
New York Times. We have purchased the USA Today CD which does not have
the entire newspaper and the New York Times Current Events edition.
[A I do long for a good newspaper database. that is a true void in our
library.
Felicity-Franklin H.S.
Felicity, OH 45120 "We need to educate our students
Phone: 513-876-2113 for their future,
Fax: 513-876-2560 not our past."
From: Anne C Oelke <acoelke@peoples.net>
We have Infotrac-SuperTom & the kids love it. We are running it on a
network, and really haven't had any problems.
From: "Barbara A. Brandt" <bbrandt@jeffco.k12.co.us>
Please post a hit. We have InfoTrac with microfiche and like it very
much. However, UMI looks good, too. We plan, so far, to stay with the
fiche format because of the paper usage of full text and the amount of
time that a work station might be tied up by one user.
Put me down as one who would like to see a summary either by e-mail or on
the list. As far as my experience goes, I found that Proquest's CD-ROM
was significantly more expensive than Info Trac's Super Tom Junior. If I
had the budget, I'd probably choose Proquest (if they have indeed made
their search interface less confusing for newbies), but we will probably
get Info Trac, which does have an excellent balance of utility and
simplicity in its interface. I could lose some of the "pleasure" titles
in the ST Jr. in favour of meatier magazines like Harper's and The
Atlantic Monthly, but on the other hand, the inclusion of a few
reference titles is a bonus. We've had the CD on trial here and my
students are quite pleased with it.
My one problem with Info Trac is its tendency to develop products that
need two drives to run. A one CD version of Super Tom would have been
perfect for us ... oh well.
--Mary Lacroix, Librarian De La Salle College "Oaklands"
mlacroix@interlog.com Toronto, Ontario
We have SuperTOM (the only networkable solution they have at the moment)
and it works like a charm. We have two 5-up towers (total of 10 drives)
and DiscPort which is the hardware/software to distribute the CD info
onto the network. We have a menu which allows the student to select Dynix
Scholar (the OPAC) or InfoTrac or NewsBank at each of the 6 OPAC stations
in the library. This is true (or will be soon (???)) in each of the six
schools in the district. Each school site has its own tower/DiscPort
arrangement in the library, so it's easy to change the CDs when the
arrive every month. We then call the Tech Support team at the district
office and tell them the new CD is in; they make some software changes so
the program can access the new disc (it has an internal name which must
be recognized) and away we go!.
We have not had any experience with UMI.
Joyce Conklin jconkli@ed.co.sanmateo.ca.us
Hillsdale High School
San Mateo, CA
Kari, I would be interested in the comments you got on InfoTrac and ProQuest.
We have InforTrac, but I am not happy with it. I am currently previewing
Ebsco's magazine Index. It is more user friendly than InfoTrac. I haven't
seen ProQuest but have heard lots of good reports about it. What do you think?
Also, expect to see you at book club on the 11th!
Joan Miller (KBX_MILLER@K12.MEC.OHIO.GOV)
From: Greenwoodl@AOL.COM
To: kbw_inglis@K12.MEC.OHIO.GOV
Subject: Re: InfoTrac TOM vs UMI ProQuest
Kari,
We have SuperTom from InfoTrac and I find that the teachers and kids really
like it. What is nice about it is the index which is so helpful in locating
the type of information needed. You know how kids (and teachers, too!) do
not think how exactly what they want before they begin to research. The
index list is very useful. Having the newspapers and reference books
full-text is also a nice feature.
Good luck!
Linda Greenwood
Manchester Twp. High School
Lakehurst, NJ 08733
I have TOM CD-ROM (3 disks) for indexing and a majority of full-text
articles and last year I previewed UMI Proquest with the index on a
networkable disk and the full text on separate CD-ROM's. You are
probably talking about the Proquest which is most like TOM and I have
seen it demonstrated. I run TOM on a Novell networked CD-ROM tower. It
has been very successful but one thing is very annoying. That is the
inability for me to program in the journals that we have in the journal
holdings section. It is a feature that Information Access is still
working on. At the present time, if the journal holdings are designated,
only the first user will get the messages about the holdings the library
has. I decided to stay with InfoTrac because we had invested the money in
the microfiche and our county public library system has InfoTrac. I
wanted the students to have the continuity. However, I LOVED the
Proquest on CD-ROM with the articles available on the individual
CD-ROM's. I didn't switch to it because of the above reason and also
because the articles could only be printed from one workstation in my
library because our terminals do not have individual CD-ROM players in them.
InfoTrac full text is good but there are no graphics which can be a real
loss. But by and large I am satisfied with it. The regular Proquest
does not have graphics either so if you already have Infotrac I would
stay with it. One warning, if you choose the 3 CD-ROM version they must
be assigned to consecutive drive letters which initially was a problem
for us on our network because InfoTrac said one of the drives had to be "C"
which was our hard drive designation. But the technicians figured it out.
Good luck!
Jane Tully
Manasquan High School
Manasquan, NJ 08736
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