Judy Fredenberg, Celia Walker, and I have had a few discussions about which
computer-based information system is best.  I have both, Ceila has Iris (and
is a strong advocate!), and I'm not sure what Judy has.  Judy and I though
it would be interesting to see what the rest of you think about what is
available.  I can start off the discussion with my own observations.   Keep
in mind that I just started in March and am new to the res. admin. game!

Infoed offers SPIN, which is easier to use and much more flexible than IRIS.
 You can run searches by keyword, sponsor, deadline date, award type, and
many other types of information and you can view,  You can run keyword
searches using Boolean logic, you can use any combination of fields to
search, and you can send the results to the screen, to print, or to  file.
 You can also determine what kind of information will be contained in the
output..  It also has it's companion program, SPAS Faculty, which will store
information about faculty, and you can run a match between SPIN and SPAS and
automatically generate matches for faculty who have a profile in the
database.  The idea is to run matches every time you get updates from Infoed
for SPIN.

IRIS is offered by the University of Illinois and is an on-line dial up
program, rather than a PC based program like Infoed.  IRIS is less expensive
and they are usually willing to contract with a system of universities (in
our case the contract is with the State Board of Regents) so you can split
the bill.  Included in the price is a subscription to the CBD, which is
updated daily.  In addition to being economical, it requires no maintenance
(unlike Infoed).  However, it is less user friendly, and quite a bit less
flexible.  It doesn't have a prepackaged program for faculty profile or
match capability.

I have found that I like both.  SPIN has so much flexibility and sparkley
features compared to IRIS, but I have found that IRIS is generally easier to
use if you are looking for programs in highly specific areas of physical
sciences and engineering.  The keyword thesaurus for IRIS gets very
specific, so you can find good matched.  There is a new version of the SPIN
thesaurus that is less general, but I haven't looked too close yet.

I haven't been able to see very much difference in terms of content.  I
think both programs cover the same funding opportunities for the most part.

What do you think?