Jane,
you have raised a couple of interesting points, the first being the
amount of duplication one should be prepared to receive if they were to
subscribe to every free service in addition to a fee-based service. A
good point to consider for those evaluating what services they might use.
The other point is faculty perception of funding availability. I'll bet
we've all seen attitudes ranging from "You mean somebody would give me
money to do this?" to the "funding trough" you referenced to "I'm really
not interested in research, please remove me from your mailing list."
With a diverse level of faculty interest, providing a service that
everyone is happy with can be a challenge!
--
Gardner Congdon
Assistant Director, Program Development
Office of Research Administration
Boston College
(617)552-2248
xxxxxx@bc.edu

Jane Prudhomme wrote:
>
> I agree with Charlie Hathaway's comments (btw, what institution are
> you with?).
>
> There are now many high quality,  FREE sources for the types of
> electronic notification systems which have been discussed of late, and
> I believe those have mostly been mentioned.  Additionally there are
> several commercial vendors that most of us subscribe to which include
> this service in the basic package they sell us.  If it has not already
> been mentioned, add IRIS (at University of Illinois) to that  list.
> You pay for basic database useage of the funding source data which
> they compile and maintain, and they include things like Faculty
> Expertise Profile systems, and "Alert" services to dump e-mail
> announcements in everyone's mailbox.  Services like these are
> excellent (compared to the way we used to secure and distribute the
> info!)
>
> Unavailability of those systems (free, commercial, customized, or
> otherwise)  is not the issue.  What we should be focusing on is not
> re-inventing the wheel, but the "result", the "bottom line", the most
> "effective" ways to achieve those results, etc etc.........To use the
> cliche', you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them
> drink...........................Thus, we have to figure out not
> necessarily the quickest way to teach faculty  where  the "funding
> trough" is, but rather introduce reasons they would want to go there.
> My experience has been that's not always a given.
>
> ***************************************
>     Jane E. Prudhomme, M.A., M.S.
>      Director, Research and Sponsored Programs
>        University of New Orleans
>        2000 Lakeshore Drive
>        New Orleans, LA 70148
>  Phone: 504 - 280-7154
>  FAX:       504-280- 3896
>        E-Mail: xxxxxx@uno.edu
>        http://www.uno.edu/~orsp
> *****************************************
>

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