Commercial DBs over the 'net

[Karen G. Schneider]

A month ago I began to draw up a list of renewal CD-ROMs for our site...
and realized they had magically changed, for the most part, to commercial
databases over the 'net.  With some help and suggestions (George Porter,
thanks for the tip re CSA), plus a few trial accounts, willing testers from
various divisions, and cooperative vendors, we're pulling together a
database scenario that almost entirely closes down our CD-ROM tower while
it magically opens access to the most remote sections of our region (in the
Carribean) and for that matter, telecommuters and road warriors.

Again, we need to go final, make some decisions, finish testing (we have
some willing victims who have tried stuff out for us), get approval, and
get funding.  But just for kicks and grins, should this all come to pass,
we're looking at a webpage possibly pointing to ip-authenticated and/or
password-protected links to (among other things):

FirstSearch -- just a few dbs for patrons (staff and public), all databases
+ full text for librarians, buying by the search in large blocks of
searches
http://www.oclc.org/

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts -- IDS, not Routenet; includes LegiSlate and
some huge, key environmental databases
http://www.csa.com/

Galenet -- [still the great unknown--we just discovered this one at
National Online, and we keen for Ency of Associations via the 'net... test
should start next week]

ProQuest Direct -- especially for general resources and the NY Times 90-day
backfile... we hear it's now available via the WWW; if so, it could reach
beyond the librarians' workstations (we have an allergy to distributing
more proprietary client software to users)
http://www.umi.com/

SilverPlatter -- we have quite a few CD-ROMs from SP... many of these are
now also available as WWW-accessible dbs... we haven't tested these
(because we're awaiting an upgrade on the  Sun) but have viewed them and we
feel these have much potential

Counterpoint -- state regulations -- Puerto Rico coming in several months,
we hear

CARL Uncover for our own periodicals ("training wheels"--if we get far
enough this year, we'll go for Reveal and/or Uncover services for
periodicals we don't subscribe to)

Again, this is just a "draft," but for posterity here it is.  I still feel
that I'm hitching a space-shuttle to a surrey, because for our areas, the
electronic full-text isn't quite there, at least not to a significant
extent.  But it looks good nosing out of the hangar, anyway...

Now for the ONE WWW-librarianesque question (for anyone who bothered to
read this far).  Assuming everyone we serve has good access to the 'net via
reasonably late-model Windows boxes sporting one of the latest browsers...
is there any reason to continue to purchase commercial versions of Federal
Register and CFR?  I'm fairly impressed by the GPO Access resources.  And I
know that folks do very simple searches on the CD-ROMs we currently have on
the LAN.  We have a free trial of the Counterpoint web-based commercial
versions of FR and CFR via Internet, but though they are nice, they don't
seem significantly better (or better at all) than the freebie versions.
Are they?  Or am I too casual a user of these resources to assess them?
Keeping in mind that folks around here are not inclined to construct
elaborate searches, is there a reason to purchase commercial
Internet-accessible versions of FR and CFR?

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Karen G. Schneider * kgs at bluehighways.com
Cybrarian * Columnist, American Libraries
Author, The Internet Access Cookbook (e-mail Neal-Schuman at icm.com)
These opinions strictly mine!