A view of the exhibition hall. Photo from The Photo Group.
There were so many exhibitors at the conference that I just decided to pay more attention to those with smaller booths. I reasoned that whatever I might learn from the bigger ones would probably already be known by the people I wanted to share the information with. The following are the ones I thought worth recommending to fellow librarians. (By the way, if you're not a librarian or information professional, you may want to suggest that your librarian visit these sites.)Evidence Matters will be useful for busy medical professionals. Instead of resorting to keywords, they can use drop-down menus to "assemble" questions such as, "For breast cancer, what is the effect of chemotherapy compared by the outcome rate of survival?" Users can opt to see just the top results, or even a graph synthesis of all search results. Try the basic free version.
ISI Emerging Markets was the only one of the research companies that I visited that had information on the smaller, developing countries in Asia, like Kyrgyzstan and the Philippines. And not just in EMIS, its flagship product, but also in its CEIC databases and its Islamic Finance Information Service. There are free trial subscriptions/online demonstrations available.
Robert A. Schless & Co.'s products were interesting because of how they're accessed by users. NOTEbookS is a library automation system that allows Lotus Notes users to access their library's catalog without leaving Notes. And, of course, the librarian can manage cataloging, research, serials management and acquisitions from Lotus Notes. NORMA, similarly Notes-based, is a series of databases for records management and archiving. View the demos for NOTEbookS and NORMA.
Tag: SLA2005
