In response to your question about electronic resources for finding grant
opportunities:

I am using SPIN Micro: this is a database distributed every 2
weeks on disk ny InfoEd Inc. It has about 5500 opportunities (federal and
non-federal). You can search on disciplinary keywords (NIH/NSF thesaurus),
type of award, deadline dates, type of applicant, etc. You can also conduct
an automated faculty match at intervals if you establish a faculty database
containing their thesaurus interest codes: this is a powerful tool for
keeping faculty up to date on opportunities if you run the match at regular
intervals.

SPIN also has an on-line version: this is really a hold-over from the days
when SPIN was available only on-line, I think. Some people prefer it, but I
like the disk version because I can do as many searches, and make as many
mistakes as I want, for a fixed price.

I am very satisfied with the product, which I use mainly for custom
searches for individual faculty requests for help. The criticisms I hear
mainly come from people who used the old on-line version before it was
updated and modernized. The micro version is quite different. InfoEd has an
on-disk demo you can try.

A group of universities in Louisiana including smaller 2- and 4-year
institutions are in the process of negotiating a multi-site licence for
SPIN: this will help us all financially. We have found InfoEd very flexible
in working with us to meet our needs. The company has also worked hard to
incorporate user suggestions and needs into the product.

I always emphasize to our faculty that you can't find all the same
opportunities that you can find in print resources. What you find in SPIN
depends on how the SPIN staff code opportunities - in this they do a good
job, but many foundations have a very broard and amorphous mission that may
not be captured by the coding. Print resources are complementary to the
electronic ones.

I have not used other electronic resources (except those free on the
Internet, which I do use and find useful), so I can't make any
comparisons with other commercial products. It is true you can find many of
the federal opportunities on the Internet: however SPIN enables one to do
rapid, comprehensive, cross-agency searches with selective criteria which
cannot be done on the Internet.

For further info on SPIN, e-mail xxxxxx@infoed.org: (518) 464-0691

I hope you find this analysis helpful.

Best wishes, Charlie.
Charlie Graham, Director, Office of Sponsored Research
117D David Boyd Hall, Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 50310       504-388-8692    xxxxxx@UNIX1.SNCC.LSU.EDU