I have read the interesting discussion on SPIN, IRIS, Dialog, etc., with great interest, as I like to keep up with all the options. The discussants have made some excellent points. I would like to offer my perspective on SPIN - it is a complex product (actually series of products), and there may be some aspects that are not clear to everyone. I am using SPIN Micro: this is a database updated every 2 weeks on disk by InfoEd Inc. It has about 6000 opportunities (federal and non-federal). You can search on disciplinary keywords (adapted from the NIH/NSF thesaurus), type of award, deadline dates, type of applicant, etc. The InfoEd staff do a good job of keeping the records up-to-date. You can structure complex searches and keep them narrow, or broad I use it as my primary means of doing custom searches for faculty. It is quick, flexible and effective, and users are happy to receive their searches on disk or to FTP them from our server. Satisfaction is high. SPIN also offers an automated update function called Faculty Match which allows you to generate reports of new opportunities for faculty: You first create a faculty database containing their thesaurus interest codes: if you run the match at regular intervals (e.g. each time you get the on-disk update). Faculty Match is a very powerful tool for keeping faculty campus-wide up-to-date on new opportunities. (At LSU we have just developed an automated system, (using a UNIX server) for e-mailing the results of the biweekly matches. For those who don't like disks, updates will be available shortly by FTP; I have tested the FTP update function successfully: InfoEd sends the file to us with an e-mail telling us it has been delivered. SPIN can also be accessed at InfoEd's site on-line in two flavors: the best may be SPIN Gopher which allows on-line searching using boolean operators, and is designed for faculty who want to do their own searching. A limitation is that you can only download one announcement at a time. A nice aspect for faculty is that they can search the thesaurus on-line. there is also a service called Spin Alert, which is a sort of on-line faculty match service. The Commerce Business Daily and Federal Register announcements of interest to universities are also available by Gopher from InfoEd at extra cost. They are WAIS indexed and therefore can be searched using Boolean operators. You can also search by day, month, etc. I have tried them and I found the CBD announcement I needed immediately. The criticisms I have heard about SPIN mainly come from people who used the old on-line version before it was updated and modernized; the on-disk and Gopher versions are quite different. With respect to price, InfoEd has a variety of pricing options for institutions of differing size and with different needs. Someone commented that InfoEd is a corporate entity, and so somehow less desirable. InfoEd was founded by an ex-sponsored research professional, has trained staff for sponsored programs research, has an advisory board of experienced sponsored research professionals, has always been very open to user suggestions, and this year started an annual users' group meeting. I would prefer to base comparisons on product and support. Windows and MAC versions of the InfoEd products are scheduled for release this summer (the current versions are DOS). While it is true that the original dates for these products could not be met, InfoEd has issued several updates of its DOS versions which have added improved functionality. I would like to comment in reference to these types of product in general, that it is difficult to appreciate their full power (and limitations) unless you have worked with them for a while, or spent a day being shown the ropes by an experienced user. Individuals also tend to become strong advocates of products they have become used to, irrespective of their relative advantages - this is just human nature. I am sure this is just as true of me as of anyone else. So I recommend becoming thoroughly familiar with a product before committing to it. A reputable vendor will probably let you use a product for an evaluation period before committing long-term. A group of universities in Louisiana including smaller 2- and 4-year institutions have negotiated a multi-site licence for SPIN which offers substantial cost savings: this helps us all financially. We have found InfoEd very flexible in working with us to meet our needs - different combinations of products for different institutions under the same multi-site licence, and pricing graduated to the size of the institution. 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 commercial electronic resources, so I can't make any direct comparisons with other products. 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. No other product offers the unique Faculty Match update feature, which I think will ultimately prove to be SPIN's greatest strength. One of the other strengths of SPIN is that it is designed to work with another InfoEd product, SPAS, which is a very complete proposal tracking system (however either can be used without the other). I should disclose that Ed Johnson, the CEO of InfoEd, recently asked me to serve on his product advisory board because I had made many product improvement suggestions to InfoEd over the last 4 years. I agreed to serve because it is helpful to me in my job to have insight into the further improvement of products I find very useful, and because of my interests in electronic information technology in sponsored research; I receive no direct benefits. Lastly, nothing I have written should be considered as an endorsement of InfoEd products by LSU. For further info on SPIN, you can e-mail xxxxxx@infoed.org: 1-800-727-6427 Whatever your funding resource choices - Good Hunting! ********************************************************************* Charles E. Graham, PhD. xxxxxx@UNIX1.SNCC.LSU.EDU Director, Office of Sponsored Research 504-388-8692 117D David Boyd Hall, Louisiana State University FAX 388-6792 Baton Rouge, LA 70810 *********************************************************************
