On Mon, 5 Jun 1995, PETER BARCHER 608-263-2085 wrote:

> While it is true that IRIS has updated it's search capabilities and has a WWW
> site, it is a poor choice compared to SPIN for a number of reasons.  First,
> IRIS has only 4 employees, of which only 2 actually manage the database.  SPIN
> has over twenty employees, and this level of staffing is necessary keep the
> information up to date. The QUALITY and accuracy of SPIN's information is far
> superior.

As someone who has been using BOTH SPIN and IRIS for two years, I
would have to say that this argument doesn't hold water.  I have had
as many problems with SPIN programs being out of date as I have
had with IRIS.  In fact, out of curiosity, I just ran a search on
SPIN to check follow up dates and found several programs that were to
have been reviewed in January, March, and April that have not yet
been updated.  I would do a comparision search, but I can't because
IRIS doesn't provide the follow-up date feild.  To be fair, from my
experience, I'd say they are about the same in terms of having some
out of date deadlines listed.

Also, we recently had a problem with SPIN where a deadline in SPIN
was off by a month and a faculty missed the applying to an IMS
program because of it. To err is human and I don't think that even a
big staff can help with that.

>Second, the SPIN family of products is much more complete,
>and the  Faculty Match module, which I use, is an ideal way to keep faculty inf
 ormed.
> IRIS has no plans for a product of this type, or for micro versions.  Third,
> SPIN has 800 number support and highly qualified staff.  The gopher version of
> SPIN is great, and allows all users who have accounts at your university the
> ability to search for grants and fellowships as often as they wish.
>
We have the faculty match module and I have found it difficult to use
as a routine feature.  It takes too much time to run the searches and
then you have to find a way to parse the results, otherwise you have
to run a seperate search for each faculty member.  With over 2,200
faculty, it just wasn't feasible for us to use this without some
additional programing.  As for the SPAS database, I'm probably going
to end up creating my own database.  A DOS program just doesn't fit
with our windows based world at ASU and the thesaurus is too thin to
really accurately describe our researcher's interests.  If someone is
interested in educating Native American Nursing students and we ran a
search based on their profile, they get EVERYTHING related to
nursing, higher education, and Native Americans.

At any rate, keep in mind that I've decided to go with IRIS at this
point.  I like their pricing policies and love their web site.  I
thought that it was a little squirrely of SPIN to advertise a WEB
site in the NCURA newsletter that DOESN"T have a Web interface to
their database.

Jacquie Krones
Arizona STate University

> Peter R. Barcher, Ph.D.
> Associate Dean for Research
> School of Business
> University of Wisconsin - Madison
> 975 University Ave.
> Madison, WI  53706
> (608) 263-2085
> xxxxxx@bus.wisc.edu
>