Online Databases and the Online DB Industry

Change, change and more change!

Search Services and DB Producers

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.

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”

Medicine Biosciences Education Science Technology Business Politics Social Sciences 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 40-48.

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

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.”

Will end users as amateur searchers prevail?

The three “components” most noticeable in this mix are: Databases Database Producers 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. In the examples above:

the National Library of Medicine, the American Chemical Society, and Mead Data Corporation

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:

Orbit, Dialog, and BRS

Started as Vendor Software OwnershipNLM SDC Orbit PergamonMaxwellQuestel

NASA Lockheed Dialog Knight Ridder

CIA BRS BRS/Search TGBMaxwellCD Plus

Growth of: 1975 2000 growth factor

Databases 301 12,417 38

Producers of DBs 200 3,674 18

Vendors of DB Services 105 2,454 23

Number of records 52 million 15 billion 231

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. 8000 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:

Category 1979 2000 ============================== Government 56% 9% Commercial 22% 81% Prof’l Society 22% 8% ==============================

Search Volume (Activity over Time):

Year Numbers of Searches ==============================

1974 750,000

1982 7,500,000 1997 86,000,000

1998 90,000,000

Revenues and Usage:

Year Connect Hours Revenues =============================== 1978 780,000 $ 40 million 1997 12,000,000 $ 1.5 billion

Top Aggregators in terms of Revenue

Lexis-Nexis Westlaw Dialog

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

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