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Library managers are often concerned to assess the most cost effective means of access to bibliographic data. This article considers comparative prices for bibliographic data on CDROM and in print form. In many instances, CDROM offers added value and easier access to data, but the relative cost is important. Library managers need not only to compare prices but to consider cost effectiveness. Differences between the nature of bibliographic data on CDROM and in a printed bibliography or abstracting and indexing service, and the relative complexities of pricing structures for bibliographic data in both CDROM and print form, both hinder comparisons. Varying policies on network pricing are an added complication when assessing a CDROM service. Some standardisation of aspects of the licensing arrangements would be welcome.

This paper describes the availability of databases held on DIALOG, ESA‐IRS and DATA‐STAR. In Section 2 particular attention will be paid to database overlap between hosts. Section 3 will consider the differences between prices and will analyse the relation between prices and database contents. Section 4 analyses the fixed costs of local investments and the variable added costs of online transmission.

Support sought for changes to copyright law EIIA members have been asked to support a change in the copyright laws to permit some ‘fair use’ copying of software. A proposal is likely to go to the European Commission this month. Meanwhile, Memoranda of Mutal Understanding have been signed with the United States' HA and Japan's JICOA, to co‐operate in activities such as supporting the free flow of information.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Saztec Europe forms new division. Saztec Europe has formed a new division which will specifically concentrate on marketing its services to European libraries. Chris Dowd and Glenda Rousseau, who have 30 years of bibliographic services experience between them, head a team of 10 specialists in London and Scotland. Detailed knowledge and experience in multilingual database creation are claimed. Talks are currently taking place with European national libraries on the prospects for further work of this kind. Conrad Lealand, Managing Director of Saztec Europe, said he believed a number of major catalogue conversions would take place during the next four years.

Stephen McClelland reviews the latest Japanese robot research and development and unearths a few surprises.

Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes are a type of controlled vocabulary used by business searchers when searching for corporate and industry data. Two four‐digit versions of the SIC coding scheme are used on business databases available through Dialog. Some Dialog database producers have opted to create a variation of the codes for use in their products. With the impending eight‐digit SIC coding scheme from Dun and Bradstreet, it will become increasingly difficult for the Dialog searcher to know which version of the codes to use when searching a particular database. A survey of the use of SIC codes in business databases on Dialog was undertaken. This paper presents the findings of this survey.

Only 1% of the presently available 5000 database titles are relevant to marine biology and biotechnology. Nearly 60% of these are bibliographic in nature. There are almost no textual and numeric databases, which are the prime need of researchers. This paper presents a review of the major databases related to marine biology and biotechnology, with a discussion on the scope for textual and numeric databases.

These specialists in marketing and customer intelligence challenge Don Peppers' and Martha Rogers' reliance on past customer behavior, as suggested in their recent article “A Marketing Paradigm: Share of Customer, Not Market Share” in the March/April 1995 issue of Planning Review.

This is the eighth article on science, technology and medicine (STM) databases in a continuing series of articles summarising and commenting on new database products. Two companion articles will appear in the next two issues of this journal, one covering social sciences, humanities, news and general (SSH) (Online & CDROM Review, vol. 20, no. 5) and the other covering business and law (BSL) (Online & CDROM Review, vol. 20, no. 6). These articles are based on the newly appearing database products in the Gale Directory of Databases. The Gale Directory of Databases (GDD) was created in January 1993 by merging Computer‐Readable Databases: A Directory and Data Sourcebook (CRD) together with the Directory of Online Databases (DOD) and the Directory of Portable Databases (DPD).