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
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