Search results

A specter is getting fat and sassy in the United States, and he's planning a trip to your homeland soon, maybe tomorrow.

A proliferation of optical products has resulted from the need to find a replacement for microfilm for storing images, to improve mass data storage technologies and to gain control over the distribution of commercial databases. Developers of CD‐ROM products need to follow a strategy that includes the following principles: (1) Focus on innovation rather than the technology; (2) Determine customers' needs; (3) Become expert in the available technologies; (4) Make a commitment to excellence; (5) Prepare a strategic plan; (6) Get a head‐start on the competition. Companies that have already been successful in CD‐ROM product development include R.R. Bowker, Disclosure and General Motors. The chances for success are greater for companies that can introduce new products and services frequently. Several companies have developed families of CD‐ROMs with a common interface, giving multiple users access to the information at the same time.

In the early days of the electronic publishing business, when a customer called a database producer, the person who answered the telephone probably invented and used the product. Believers and zealots were they. The first online searchers also had an evangelical spirit. It was a heavenly time: online was service. It was adventure. People cared.

‘Marketing information’ is one of the litanies of electronic publishing in the 1990s. But who really knows how to market electronic information?

The purpose of this paper is to track the uses of humans for document search and retrieval into the now increasing problem of accessing electronic information.

Search has evolved into a top priority for internet users and will continue to expand as the new application platform. In the last year, Google has become the superstar of finding and accessing digital information. Information fracture, the multiplying effect of information processing, continues to send shock waves across computing environments.

Computing has shifted to distributed systems delivering from the network, not the local storage device. Locating a particular digital item is difficult. Google and other search engine companies are becoming application platforms. Google provides applications on different devices at different price points, including free of charge, with a variety of technology infrastructure. Innovations will be driven by user behavior.

Electronic information is doubling every 12 to 18 months. Search will drive the future of next‐generation applications. Publishing is already feeling the impact of this new shock wave. What is next may not be known yet, but Google already has 60 products and services out.

This paper shows the evolution of information in search and retrieval methods, and how search will drive next‐generation applications. Google is the primary market maker, with more patents applied for in the first six months of 2005 than all of its previous history, going back to 1998.

Describes how libraries have created boundaries with increasing specialization. Argues that rethinking services and constituencies are key strategic tasks facing libraries wanting to reduce marginalization.

Producers of scientific and technical databases received a survey questionnaire early in March 1990. The packet contained a cover letter, an envelope with postage stamps affixed, and a nine‐page survey instrument. What made this survey interesting was the penetrating, almost blunt nature of the questions. Database surveys usually toss powder puffs at the respondent. This survey fires fastballs. An organization answering the ten questions gives the analyst a glimpse of the family jewels and the dirty laundry. One other point: the survey's sponsor was the Japanese government.

In the US, winning is something of an obsession. Al Neuharth, a modern Machiavelli, built USA Today in the face of the skepticism of fellow publishers, money men, and consultancy slickies. His ‘I told you so’ is a book of secrets called Confessions of an SOB. The SOB, purchasers soon discover, is Mr Neuharth.