Database Evaluation Committee
Report to the Steering Committee
April 16, 2009

The committee was charged to review all of OSL’s database subscriptions and products of other vendors to develop a recommendation for what we will purchase in the FY 2010 with the $335,200 (EBSCO $230,000; ProJo $80,000; Overdrive (not up for renewal) $25,200) allocated in the FY 2010 budget.

The committee put together a survey to determine the subject areas the membership would like to see emphasized in our choice of databases.  Seven areas of the thirty-two listed in the survey scored more than 50% from the respondents.  Those areas are:  reader’s advisory 80%; general reference 78.5%; health 76.9%; newspapers 73.8%;   literature resources 66.2%; biographies 63.1%; and auto info and repair 53.8%.  

Trials of Gale and EBSCO products were made available to the membership and feedback on those products was solicited.  Of the fifteen librarians who responded, eight preferred Gale, one preferred EBSCO, and the rest suggested a mix of both products would be the ideal situation for OSL.  The committee is very interested in federated searching and Gale’s Powersearch function does this very well.  EBSCO said they will be coming out with a federated search product, but there’s no release date at this time.

The committee’s recommendation is to keep just the basic EBSCO database products along with Novelist (which, we agreed, is EBSCO’s most superior product and Gale’s counterpart is one of their weakest)  but include Gale’s literature, biography and opposing viewpoints products.  That would be the ideal situation but that might not be financially possible given that the vendors prefer to offer their best deals on bundled packages.  Given the packages presented by EBSCO and Gale, the committee would be willing to switch to Gale if EBSCO isn’t offering a better deal.

Attached are the pricing pages from a proposal Gale put together for us.  As you can see if we went with a three year contract they would hold the pricing for those three years and give us the 25 ebook titles.  EBSCO has agreed that if we renew for another year with them there will be no pricing increase for fiscal year 2010 and they will keep increases in line with what they have been in the past for subsequent fiscal years.  The committee’s recommendation is that if Steering chooses to go with Gale, the three year pricing would be more advantageous for us.  If we renew with EBSCO, the one year renewal would be sufficient unless, in light of Gale’s offer, they plan to revisit this issue.

ProQuest has not responded to our requests for pricing or our recommendation that the price of ProJo online be cut to reflect the loss of the obituaries.  The committee feels that we should keep the subscription even with the loss of the obituaries.  The Journal now sells its obits to Legacy and they are available for a fee.   The website is clunky and not easy to use and not something we would recommend for purchase.  Newsbank offers access to many Rhode Island newspapers, ProJo included, but the obituaries are not fully available there either, and only certain articles are available, not the full paper.  Also, Newsbank only goes back two or three years for most RI papers.

I want to thank Pat LaRose, Eugene Jeffers, Amy Neilson, Becky Turnbaugh, Bri Johnson, Diane Hogan, Diane Swindlehurst, Lauri Burke, Mary Harty, Melanie Ruggieri, Patti Folsom and Victoria Antonitis for their work on the committee.  Their input and assistance is greatly appreciated!

Laura Marlane