I'm not sure that having more selections to choose from in a search
category either 1) means the search is necessarily more sophisticated or
2) results in hits that represent all the possibilities one desires to
see.

After some years playing with funding source search tools, including SPIN
and COS, I have concluded that the best way to search for the best places
to give you money is too start VERY general and have the time and the wine
and comfortable chair to wade through a lot of irrelevant stuff.  Refining
searches can be dangerous.  Just like spell and grammar checkers, these
search tools don't come close to the ability of the human brain in
deciding what makes sense.  (Of course, it needs to be the brain of the
potential applicant to work.)

Charlie

> Hi Tracy,
>
> Our institution subscribes to both SPIN and COS.  I can only speak to a
> comparison of the funding information databases SPIN and COS.  As you
> probably know, each of these companies (InfoEd for SPIN and  Proquest for
> COS) also puts out an associated alert service and expertise service) for
> an
> additional fee. We subscribe to SPIN and its associated alert service
> called
> SMARTS as well as Proquest's funding database only of called COS.
>
> My general observation is that SPIN has a much more sophisticated
> searching
> mechanism than COS.  For example the number of selections in several
> search
> categories are more abundant in SPIN than in COS.  SPIN allows you to
> distinguish between numerous applicant types such as postdoctoral, faculty
> member, researcher, physician/medical professional, young investigator,
> senior
> investigator, etc. whereas COS lumps them all together under one
> heading "PhD, MD or other Professional". Same thing with award types -
> SPIN
> allows you many more selections from which you can choose to refine your
> search.  SPIN also allows you to elect NOT to include terms.  So if you
> would
> like to exclude certain criteria, you can do this in SPIN whereas in COS
> you do
> not have this feature.
>
> If I had to choose between the two I would not hesitate to choose SPIN.
> That being said, there are some features I really like about COS.  COS
> tends
> to have more opportunities for graduate students.  COS provides a more
> detailed heirarchy for it's keywords which allows you to locate keywords
> more
> easily by discipline.  COS also has an "Internal Coordination" criteria
> that allows
> you to quickly find all those limited competitions that require
> institutional
> coordination.
>
> That's it quickly in a nutshell.  I am more of a SPIN user than COS so
> there
> might be some COS experts that would have an additional or different
> perspective.
>
> Hilda
> --
>
> Hilda Alajajian
>
> Grant Resources Specialist
>
> University of Vermont
>
>
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