Online Databases and the Online DB Industry Change, change and more change!

Search Services and DB Producers n Many of the world’s leading information publishers have developed computer searchable versions of their traditional print products and have made them available through various search services. n These search services and database producers work in tandem to structure and format approximately 15 billion records so that they might be searched by information professionals and end users. Most services offer online access to information in subject disciplines such as:

Subject disciplines or “literatures” n Medicine BiosciencesEducation n Science TechnologyBusiness n Politics Social Sciences n Interdisciplinary areas

Forging Links in the Chain of Publishing Extracted from: “Data Dealers Forging Links” by Carol Tenopir and Jeff Barry Library Journal May 15, 1999 pages

The “publishing chain” begins with authors and ends with readers. Traditional connections require a series of intervening links, including:  Primary publishers  Secondary publishers  Database distributors  Libraries  Document delivery services

Each link provides some value-added service:  Editing  Indexing  Distribution  Archiving

On the Role of Intermediaries n In the traditional model the roles of each of these links are being tested against the model of the Web, where authors and readers can more easily connect directly without all the intervening “intermediaries.” n Will end users as amateur searchers prevail?

The three “components” most noticeable in this mix are: n Databases n Database Producers n Database Vendors or “Aggregators”

Database – a collection of records about or pertaining to a particular subject or subject literature. Can be bibliographic in nature, or full text, numeric, image, sound/audio. Examples include:  Medline  Chemical Abstracts  Lexis

Database Producer – that agency which creates and/or owns the DB in question. Generally a government, not- for-profit, or commercial company. n In the examples above: n n the National Library of Medicine, the American Chemical Society, and Mead Data Corporation n n where the original developers of Medline, Chem Abstracts and Lexis-Nexis.

DB Search Services (“Vendors” or “Aggregators”) provide access to numerous databases, created by different DB Producers, directly to information professionals and end users alike. The “Big Three” supermarket search services are: n Orbit, n Dialog, n and BRS

Database “Classes” :  66% word oriented (bibliographic, full text, directory, etc.)  17% number oriented  12% image or picture oriented  3% audio or sound oriented  2% other (e.g., software)

Full Text DBs Of those 66% that are word oriented (approx DBs): More than half are full text databases. Just 15 years ago, that percentage was 28%. Some 5398 DBs are now full text DBs (2000).

Database Sources and Producer Status: “The digitized information world is a single universe with databases produced on all continents” (Williams 1999) 60% of DBs are produced in the U.S. 40% are International produced

Producer Status: n Category n ============================== n Government 56% 9% n Commercial22%81% n Prof’l Society22% 8% n ==============================

Search Volume (Activity over Time): n YearNumbers of Searches n ============================== n ,000 n ,500,000 n ,000,000 n ,000,000

Revenues and Usage: n YearConnect HoursRevenues n =============================== n ,000$ 40 million n ,000,000 $ 1.5 billion

Top Aggregators in terms of Revenue n Lexis-Nexis n Westlaw n Dialog n Collectively these 3 account for 92% of the overall $1.5 billion in revenues. In a market where thousands of aggregators and tens of thousands of DBs thrive, we see that only a few account for a significant portion of both use and revenue (add FirstSearch for “use”)

Future Considerations n Growth of the marketplace n Rise of end user searching n Continued licensing developments n Complex array of resources and variations n Multiple “views” in terms of access n Development of unified user interfaces? n Blend with other tools (e.g., OPACs)?