Original inquiry posted by Suzanne Hayes, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute, on January 5, 2000

My organization is interested in tracking media coverage (general interest/trade/business publications and news releases) related to lighting --(specifically topics such as lighting and health, safety, security, quality of life etc.) I am trying to compile a list of fee-based and "free" type electronic current awareness services to evaluate.  I am especially interested in knowing what other "solos" are using to provide this type of service to their customers.  

New

Just yesterday Mind-It announced it is going out of business. However there are two or three other services you can try. Some are fee based, but very moderate - and some allow a maximum of 10 or so free alerts. ChangeDetection.com is one of them. You can get more information by going to my web site on "keeping up." Look on the section called Mind-It. I list some of the other change detection services there.

--Steven Bell

New

Noticed your BUSLIB-L request for alerting services. I have done years of extensive research into this area and you may download a free chapter titled "Current Awareness Resources" of one of my professional Internet MiniGuides.

-- Marcus Zillman

We also do client and issue tracking, which is basically current awareness on certain companies or people and issues. We do this in a variety of ways. 

First, we do a search in the Nexis or Westlaw news file and refine the search to get only the information that we want about that company or issue. Next we save it as an Eclipse or WestClip (automatic search) and set it to run every week. Next, we review the results every week and print or e-mail the relevant, non-duplicative articles to the requestor. Occasionally, we will set up a WestClip and have the results go unedited straight to the attorney. We often do this if the attorney is in another office. This process is similar to searching on Dow Jones.

Second, we set up URL Minder (Netmind) to monitor relevant web pages. If it is a company, then we decide which pages on their web site are relevant and set URL Minder to notify us when they change. If it is an issue then we look at associations that might have an interest in the issue and monitor those pages. Often you have to dig around in the web site to find the most relevant page. URL Minder is very easy and free. Go to set up your 'minding' service. This is great for me, because I don't have to remember to go and look at pages all the time. A notification shows up in my e-mail box or in the e-mail box of my client and that is the reminder.

Next we look up the Special Editions on Northern Light and print anything that might be useful to the topics that interest our attorneys.

Nobody really comes running to us for anything except for traditional type reference and I think it is important to tell them what we can do and how it can help them.  Thus, we confront our clients with this service and ask them if they want it. If they keep asking about a particular topic, then we tell them that we can track that client or issue for them.

In terms of costs, this is mostly charged to client development, which is a firm charge. Sometimes short term tracking will be charged out to a client. Basically, the library eats the charges, but it is great for public relations. In one case, an attorney knew about something happening in a case of his because of our client tracking reports.

In terms of time, it takes a lot of time; probably about 3 hours a week. We have had to stop doing other things, and shift tasks to different people in order to do this. I do most of the tracking tasks, because I have talked to the people and, presumably, I understand what they really want. I can farm the clerical stuff (collating, stapling, faxing, phone calls etc.) out to other people.

I don't really believe that there is one source that will do everything for all of our clients (the attorneys) and, thus, I try to strategize to find ways to make it as easy for us as possible and as useful to our clients as they need. We don't want to be giving them a bunch of paper every week that will clutter up their desk and irritate them.

-- Jaye Lapachet, McKenna & Cuneo, on January 5, 2000

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