AUTOMATED SDI SERVICE USING CDROM DATABASES Available to Purchase

Bibliographic databases on CDROM, although being updated less frequently than their online counterparts, can be used for providing an in‐house SDI (selective dissemination of information) service as it can be cheaper than the alternatives available from online database services. In a developing country like India, where setting up CDROM networks for end‐user access is beyond the budgets of most of the libraries/information centres, SDI through CDROM databases is an effective alternative. Even in a networked environment, this type of information filtering and delivery may be preferable, as the end‐users may not have the motivation or time to learn the search software of different CDROM titles. However, most of the popular CDROM search software packages do not support any facility to process SDI profiles automatically. One has to execute each saved search strategy and download the corresponding retrieved records manually. This is quite labour‐intensive and time‐consuming. This paper discusses a method of running an SDI service automatically using a pair of Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) utilities called Stackey and Batutil.