I live in a small town in East Tennessee. Most of the time I live and work
right on its streets. Every so often, I go up on the hill above town to
look at the whole town at once. That way I see areas I've never explored
on the ground, places I check out later.
  
In the same way, I like to get a higher level view of GEnie research
resources. You may not realize everything you can get out of GEnie unless
you come up here and look at the whole panorama.
  
Go to the Research and Reference Services page (enter M302 or the keyword
RESEARCH at any GEnie page prompt), and you'll get a panoramic view of the
landscape. That menu looks like this:
  
GEnie                           RESEARCH                       Page  302
                   GEnie Research & Reference Services
  
 1. About Research & Ref. Serv.       2. Bibliographic Citations Center
 3. GEnie BookShelf                   4. Canadian Business Center
 5. Commerce Business Daily           6. Computer & Electronics Center
 7. Consumer Medicine                 8. Corporate Affiliates Center
 9. Dialog Database Center           10. Dow Jones News/Retrieval
11. Dun & Bradstreet Databases       12. Educator's Center
13. Grolier's Encyclopedia           14. Investment ANALY$T
15. Investment Reports               16. Law Center
17. Medical Professional's Center    18. GEnie NewsStand
19. Worldwide Patent Center          20. Public Opinion Online
21. GEnie Reference Center           22. Quotations Online
23. TRW Business Credit Profiles     24. Thomas Register
25. Trademark Center                 26. Tradenames Database
27. U.S. Federal Center
28. Business Resource Directory      29. Genealogy KB
30. Microsoft KB                     31. Newsbytes KB
32. Space and Science KB
  
  
Whoa! Imagine having all that to choose from! Imagine NOT having to spend
hours in the library or on the phone, or big bucks paying someone to find
the information you need.
  
You probably won't remember everything on this page. When you have a
question, though, at least remember the keyword RESEARCH; it's your
starting point for an amazing amount of information.
  
The upper portion of the menu shows commercially available database
services compiled and offered by third-party information providers. You
get access to most of these services by means of a "telecommunications
gateway." Some of these services are Dow Jones News/Retrieval(R) from Dow
Jones & Company, NewsStand and Reference Center from Advanced Research
Technologies, and Public Opinion Online and the Investment ANALY$T from
Telebase Systems.
  
Since they come from third-parties, search methodology will likely vary
between them, and there is usually a special rate charged in addition to
GEnie connect time charges. All charges are fully explained within each
individual service's menu, so you never have to wonder.
  
The lower portion of the RESEARCH menu (items 28 through 32) leads to
KnowledgeBases (KB), GEnie's own full-text search and retrieval mechanism.
Some KnowledgeBases are compiled by third-parties, while others are
managed by GEnie sysops. Access to KBs is usually billed at standard GEnie
connect rates.
  
Menus for Organization
  
You can get at an amazing amount of information, usually in several ways.
For instance, if you want to get an article from the Washington Post,
you'll find it in several places on GEnie, including the U.S. Federal
Center (a GEnie$Premium Service) which has the full text of the Federal
Register, the Federal News Service, Tax Notes Today, and the Washington
Post. You can search through these and other sources, all at the same
time.
  
You'll find a lot of specialized sources for your particular interest,
such as Commerce Business Daily, Computer & Electronics Center, and
Educator's Center. You also have general resources for those topics that
demand a widespread search, resources as general as Grolier's Encyclopedia
and as wide-ranging as Dialog Database Center, an enormous library of
information. Dialog Database Center includes hundreds of U.S. and overseas
newspapers, dozens of company directories, hundreds of newsletters, and
thousand s of magazines and journals. Everything's all broken down into a
simple set of menus covering topics in business, education, law,
computers, medicine, investing, patents, trademarks, and the Bible, as
well as a Quotations dictionary.
  
There IS a downside, though. No longer will you be able to use "I didn't
know where to look" as an excuse. Your teacher or boss will KNOW you just
didn't try.
