1997/98 brought turmoil, uncertainty, and change to the direction of the ECC. The Distance Learning Initiative's purchase of OCLC's FirstSearch for statewide availability had a great impact on the electronic collection of the SUS libraries. In September, the library directors canceled several LUIS databases which were duplicated on FirstSearch, and reduced the number of simultaneous users for Wilson databases which were retained. In addition, RLG's Handbook for Latin American Studies was canceled and replaced with free Internet access from the Library of Congress.

While the original focus of the ECC was to mount a common set of databases, this past year the libraries cooperated in smaller groups to purchase databases which may not fit the needs or budgets of all the institutions. Thus some libraries share subscriptions to Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Engineering Village, the ISI Web of Science, Compendex Web, Francis, IAC Legal Trac, and most recently, Galenet. All institutions share Congressional Universe and Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe. In the realm of full text electronic journals, several of the libraries aare cooperating in the purchase of the Elsevier Electronic Journals project.

Speculation about the DLLI-funded FirstSearch subscription still engages the committee's attention. In January a subcommittee evaluated the FirstSearch service for the SUS. One of the conclusions was that only a handful of the 60+ databases dominated usage, so that dropping titles from the package would result in no savings. The Committee would like to add additional subscription-only databases to the FirstSearch offering, including the purchase of more ports. Once the re-funding of FirstSearch is a certainty, the Committee will pursue this. However, FirstSearch as an all-purpose aggregator of databases has become essential to library services.

The Committee has also revised its database selection process, and has submitted this document to the library directors for their June meeting. The members are still very interested in other search engines, such as OVID and ERL. This April we ran a trial of several OVID databases as well as a full text health collections database from UMI.

Coincidentally, there is new ERL software, which the committee has asked FCLA to investigate.

Plans for the coming year (not in priority order):

1. Put individual library database evaluations up on the FCLA homepage

2. Pursue full text electronic journal subscriptions

3. Work with PSPC to develop guidelines/methodology for indexing free urls on the libraries' menus

4. Continue search engine evaluations (OVID, ERL, etc.)

5. Work with digitization group to expand definition of the "electronic collection"

6. Hold a workshop displaying the products of full text electronic journal vendors and publishers

7. Continue evaluation and purchasing of electronic databases

- Kathy Cohen