Examines growth in the number and size of exhibitors' booths at Online conferences from 1979 to 1986 to support notion that information has progressed from intrinsic knowledge to a commodity that is produced, marketed, and sold. Discussion covers downloading and specific successes and failures in the information marketplace. (EM)

Although it is becoming easier to share materials via the Internet, the process is still not transparent, especially when cross-platform transfers are involved. This article reviews common protocols and discusses several utilities and strategies for exchanging information online. Includes a table listing transfer and compression protocols, common…

U.S. federal and state legislative and regulatory information is increasingly available electronically. This article provides descriptions of source providers and lists all major commercial dial-in services and Internet sources, providing alphabetical tables of 55 information categories and noting the names of each file covering a category and…

Online copyright problems may be resolvable by a simple permission method. Describes Project Xanadu, a system of hypermedia publishing servers, designed to preserve integrity, copyright, and royalty for digital materials, yet allow reuse. Discusses permission doctrine; aspects of supporting software; legal status of transcopyright; variations not…

The first of four articles describes the move by the European Space Agency to eliminate connect time charges on its online retrieval system. The remaining articles describe the pricing structure of DIALOG, compare the two pricing schemes, and discuss online pricing from the user's point of view. (CLB)

Discusses the liability of online information services and presents a study of case law in Europe and in the United States that deals with liability for the provision of inaccurate, incomplete, or out-of-date information. Liability in tort, contractual liability, and strict liability are examined. (18 references) (LRW)

Presents guidelines for effective online searching developed over the last 20 years. Areas covered by the guidelines include preplanning, database selection, cost-effective search techniques, searching for names, awareness of differences between databases and systems, matching search strategies to databases, postsearch routines, and the…

Discusses special problems that the symbols for sharps and flats in music notation present for the retrieval of music materials in online catalogs, and describes the results of a survey of vendors of online systems that was conducted to determine how vendors deal with this notation. (nine references) (LRW)

Discusses netiquette, which refers to etiquette on computer networks. Highlights include ethical or moral issues as well as standards of politeness; specific examples and suggestions; netiquette rules for advertising; influence of online service providers, including acceptable use policies; influence of employers; and influence of governments.…

Integrating news services into an intranet can be tricky. Even within related organizations, slight differences in subscriptions and end-user needs can necessitate different integration approaches. This article examines how the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund took separate approaches to tackle the same integration challenge in…

Since 1982, the Quality Assurance Committee of the New England Online Users Group (NENON) has focused on communicating online searchers' problems to system vendors and database producers, primarily by distributing check-off and fill-in-the-blank forms to NENON members, collecting and tabulating the forms, and forwarding them to the vendors and…

A reference guide for online bibliographic searchers introduces and explains the major computer-searchable fields of the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database, presents field access labels or commands of three online ERIC database vendors--BRS, DIALOG, and ORBIT--and lists the codes necessary for searching particular ERIC…

This description and comparison of the major economic statistical database services discusses such factors as public and proprietary data, value-added services, user training and support, data specialties, and pricing. (CLB)

Describes two types of online vendor gateways--front-end buffers and host-to-host links. The potential threats and opportunities of gateways to database owners, online vendors, and users are identified, and a code of practice developed by the National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services is presented. (CLB)

Discusses search and retrieval software for use with CD-ROM. Background trends, how data are made usable, supply and demand, data preparation services, and capabilities of search software are described. Vendors of significant information retrieval products are identified, and the characteristics of 12 packages are compared. (Author/EM)