I hope when I have been asked about my assessment of electronic info sources in pre-award I have been very clear about why IRIS has worked well *for our institution,* and haven't come across as biased. To be sure that is the case, let me reiterate: Colorado State University is a land-grant Carnegie Class I Research Institution, about $118M research expenditures per year, ranked between 75th and 60th in the country by NSF, depending on what they're counting. The other 2 schools in our system, for which we are the flagship, are in the far western and southern corners of the state. Enrollment at our campus is about 19,000. Academic faculty on our campus number nearly 1,000; another 1,000 Administrative-Professionals can apply for projects. Emphases in engineering, veterinary, biomedical, environmental, and agricultural. We distinguish between contractual and donative, with separate offices; we assign essentially one professional position and one staff position to "research initiation"--brainstorming with faculty, maintaining about 3,000 programs in-house, providing applications, and basic grantsmanship training. Budget guidelines for research initiation are "do it for less." Sponsored Programs enjoys an excellent reputation on campus as being an office that takes time, has a personal touch, is responsive, has current information, and can deliver it timely. We want to keep it that way. In 1987 when I began looking at databases, IRIS and SPIN were the only 2 logical choices. DIALOG's was just an electronic version of Oryx Press' printed "Grants," not updated, with an expensive access, and sorely outdated. SPIN was very unstable administratively. Cost-wise, IRIS was the best deal for us--4 "outlets" on 3 campuses for $1700 (and the price has gone down over the last several years) for an unlimited number of searches, plus a very low CPU-based cost for each search (rarely much more than $0.60). We quickly migrated to Internet access, which cut our connect charges to zero and gave us the option of eliminating printing/mailing expenses as well. We now run the entire system (faculty and graduate students, 3 campuses and now 5 "outlets") for annual expenses of something like $2500-$2800. IRIS entries match up well with our faculty's interests. The only fault I've really had is that I would prefer more specificity for NIH--maybe the PAs from the NIH Guide rather than just the program name and each funding mechanism within it. IRIS used to include very few foundations, which suited us fine because those were considered donative and not ours to deal with. Far more foundations have been included in recent years, but we too have matured in how we interact with our development office and now share IRIS results with them, thereby helping them. The accuracy of the listings has been impeccable, and I'm a stickler for that. The timeliness of the updating has been very good. The University of Illinois system is designed by, administered by, and operated for a university, not a private company that may undergo mercurial changes. Their interests in maintaining a stable system parallel ours [and probably likewise, their budgetary constraints prevent them from quickly implementing changes I'd like to see, like including Boolean logic, or a mechanism for screening programs on-line.] The thesaurus structure is understandable to faculty. We have on-line access to the CBD and the Federal Register through IRIS at only the cost of the CPU time. We prefer the mediated approach to obtaining searches: I get to know faculty better, their research interests, can advise on campus policies and schedules, link them better with other faculty, distinguish between what we handle and the development office handles, and generally give much more personal attention than if a system were available unmediated. We think we get much more value from our searches that way, and apparently most faculty agree. Electronic access to info is kind of a quick moving field, and I've seen some "used car dealer" techniques used. I think we'll see more of that, as federal documents become available electronically, agencies become more interested in getting their info out, publishers see the advantage of electronic "publications." When I'm offered a cut rate, I always wonder if someone else got a better deal, how long the rate will last, why it is necessary to cut a deal if the product speaks for itself. [And no, I don't own a Saturn.] I have talked with InfoEd about SPIN, but have felt uncomfortable with their marketing tactics. Several of us have talked about doing one search on both IRIS and SPIN, and although I have done the IRIS parts several times, I've never received the comparable SPIN results. IRIS over the years has served us very well, is extremely stable and reliable, targets sources well in our key areas, continues to make enhancements, suits *our* way of helping faculty, and has kept our search costs very low. That's not to say I don't consider other systems coming along--I'd really like to see one which could be ported to a campus weekly to avoid CPU charges--but in 5-6 years I've seen no reason to switch from IRIS for this university system. ................................................................ Celia S. Walker Assistant to VP Research INTERNET:xxxxxx@vines.colostate.edu Colorado State University TEL:303/491-6355 DESK:303/491-7784 Ft. Collins, CO 80523 FAX:303/491-6147
