Dow Jones/Factiva Database

[Carole Richter <Carole.J.Richter.8@nd.edu>]

Colleagues,

Have any of you been struggling with the prospect of change from Dow Jones
Interactive to Factiva? We are quite concerned about a number of
developments, and hope someone may have more reassuring news to offer. Not
too long ago we were told that the move to Factiva would take place in
early September, but the most recent information from our rep is December.

That's good, because we found that our trial version required IE 5.1 or
higher (no access to Netscape browsers or Macintosh platform). The new
contract specifies that Factiva can cancel content at any time without
notice. In response to some reports of removed content from our users, I
asked for a list of content changes. The spreadsheet I got listed 4,000 of
12,000 titles as being discontinued! Worse, some titles that we've lost
access to (Chicago Tribune, LA Times, Baltimore Sun) are listed as
'Active' on the Factiva list I received, so clearly 4,000 isn't even a
reliable figure. We can get citations to those sources, but not text. I
hoped this was an access error, but our rep confirmed that they are no
longer available in full text from DJ/Factiva. As disappointing as that
is, my real concern is that the discontinued list, however lengthy, seems
to be incomplete.

I was surprised that we had gotten a renewal invoice this summer *before*
getting a copy of the new license agreement. Presumably if we can't
negotiate any desired changes to the terms we could lose access to content
we have paid for already too.

Thanks for your ideas or experience with this provider,

Carole Richter Pilkinton

Electronic Resources Librarian
University of Notre Dame Libraries
(574) 631-8405
richter.8@nd.edu