DATABASE Magazine

Internet Ready Reference Resources

The wealth and depth of Internet information resources grow even as the Internet user base continues to expand. Given the relative ease of writing HTML documents and publishing Web pages, fifth graders, college students, nonprofit organizations, and small businesses can create information resources and make them available to an international audience. Large companies establish Web sites and search for ways to attract the Internet masses. The Internet is ripe for online databases of all kinds. A number of factual database providers are offering their products on the Net, and these ready reference resources can be of great use to both the information professional and the general public.

BUSINESS DIRECTORIES

Directories of all shapes and sizes have been staples of reference collections for years. Business directories of public companies, private companies, and specific industries receive heavy use. While they replace neither standard print business directories nor the commercial online business databases, a couple of very useful business directories are freely accessible on the Net.

Central Source, Inc. provides the largest of these databases, with data from American Business Information, Inc. a producer of statewide business directories and the American Business Directory database (File 531 on Dialog and database 16 on EPIC). The full commercial version of the database includes SIC codes, sales volume, ultimate parent company, and employee size, along with the basic address and phone number. The Central Source Yellow Pages, on the Internet at http://www.telephonebook.com/, features selected fields from that database of more than ten million listings. The Internet version of the database includes only company name, address, phone number, and yellow page category, but it is freely available on the Net (Figure 1). This is an incredible resource of value to both professional searchers and the general public for looking up businesses and researching industries in specific geographic regions. The Web page even proclaims that coverage of Canada and Europe is "coming soon."

Like so many other Internet resources, this database uses a form for query input (Figure 2). It can be searched by company name, yellow page category, and phone number. Each of the search options also requires the user to specify a state, although only one state at a time can be searched. Searching across state lines can be a tedious process, but for a few states it is not too annoying. Truncation is automatic in most fields, which can lead to some unusual results. For large retrieval sets, the search can be narrowed further by adding city, state, ZIP Code, or area code. All of these options, coupled with the size of the database, make this a valuable resource for a number of different searches. New business start-ups can check to see if there are any similarly named businesses in a specific state. Researchers can compare communities based on the number of listings under specific categories. Travelers can search for specialty stores before they arrive at their destinations.

As with the printed yellow pages, finding the appropriate yellow page category can be difficult at times. In addition, the results of a category search are unusual in that all of the matching categories in the database will be displayed, even if many of them result in a "no companies" message. On a search for "Book," unused categories (at least in the specified state) such as "Book Back Imitation" and "Race Books" appear next to the headings with results. An option to browse the complete list of subject headings would be a welcome addition to the category search option.

The database itself is compiled from yellow page directories from all over the United States, but American Business Information, Inc. also independently verifies the information for each entry. While the Central Source version of the database lacks some of the very useful elements of its online counterparts--such as sales, employee size, and SIC codes--the basic address and phone number information is useful for a wide variety of information needs. Central Source makes the database available for free, but as with print yellow page directories, companies can pay for various special services. Links to a business' home page are even free, but for additional listings in other categories, bold listings, display advertisements, or even a Web page, an annual fee is required. One worthy competitor to the Central Source Yellow Pages is the NYNEX Interactive Yellow Pages at http://www.niyp.com/. Despite the regional nature of NYNEX, this resource covers the entire country. Claiming over 16 million entries, it boasts an even larger database than the American Business Information database of ten-plus million listings. The search interface is quite different with only two options available: business name and business type. It lacks the phone number search and the brand name/ keyword search available at Central Source. On the other hand, it allows the selection of up to five states and up to five different business categories. If the retrieval set is large, search results can be further narrowed by adding a city name, street address, area code, or ZIP Code. Neither database duplicates the entire coverage of the other. Unique records can be found in each, so a comprehensive search requires searching both databases.

Other freely accessible business directories can be found on Hoover's Online. Just to add to the confusion often inherent with Net resources, there is more than one Hoover's Online. At Hoover's own site, http:// www.hoovers.com/, free access is provided to the Hoover's MasterList database, with over 9,000 companies listed. Hoover's site also features a subscription access plan at $9.95 per month to the more detailed, but less comprehensive, Hoover's Company Profiles database, with about 1,700 listings. Yet while Hoover is charging for online access, a subset of the Hoover's Company Profiles database is freely available at Time-Warner's Pathfinder site at the much more unwieldy URL of http://pathfinder.com/money/invest/hoover/Hoovers_Home.html (or start at http://pathfinder.com/ and look under the Money and Business section). Here, the documentation only claims about 400 companies, but at the bottom of the page is a notice stating that "the entire Hoover's database will soon be available."

None of the Hoover's databases approach the size of the Central Source Yellow Pages database, but they make up for that by including more information than just the address and phone number. The MasterList database contains address, phone, fax, CEO, CFO, annual sales, number of employees, and a description of the company's business. Hoover's Company Profiles database has much more detailed entries, including an overview of the company, a brief history, chief administrators, address, a list of major competitors, and more detailed recent and historical financial statistics. The databases are updated annually, but there are discrepancies between them. For example, at the time of this writing, the MasterList database gave a different name than the Company Profiles database for the CEO of Ace Hardware. Since neither entry included a date for the last update, the more recent information could not be readily discerned.

KNOW THE CODE

Business directories can provide addresses, but another ready reference source provides even more detailed addressing information: the United States Postal Service (USPS) Address and ZIP Code Information page (http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/). In addition to basic information, such as the official USPS abbreviations list, this page features a ZIP+4 Lookup database. The five-digit ZIP Code Directory is a standard reference tool, but the sheer bulk of the ZIP+4 directories for the entire U.S. has precluded their addition to many a reference collection. With the ZIP+4 Lookup page, a company or individual name, street address or post office box, and city and state can be input on the search form, as in Figure 3. The database then spits back the standardized address including the full ZIP Code, as in Figure 4. The standardized address includes the preferred abbreviations, but it does no verification on the company or individual name.

The database is updated monthly, and information on how to correct any errors in the database is easily accessible. The full ZIP Code four-digit extensions are not completely reliable. On a nonscientific random sampling (I checked a number of return addresses with the full nine-digit ZIP Codes from recent mail I had received), this ZIP+4 database was not always consistent with the nine-digit ZIP Code used by companies in their return addresses. While it seems to be as reliable as the print or microfiche ZIP+4 directories, which are output from the same database, there are errors and inconsistencies in both. Another drawback to the product is that the database interface is designed for a single address search at a time. It is not designed for batch look-up operations or interfaces with an address database.

Another option on the ZIP Code Information page is the City State/ZIP Code Associations database. Two kinds of searches are offered by this database. Input a city name and two-digit state abbreviation, and the database responds with a range of five-digit ZIP Codes for the city and preferred and acceptable city names. Input a ZIP Code, and preferred and acceptable city names, state, and ZIP Code ranges are in the result.

As with so many Internet resources, the USPS is not the only server with an interface to a ZIP Code database. Another frequently cited source is the National Address Server at http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/adserv.html. The input form is a single text box, rather than the separate entry points for different fields on the USPS server. After submitting the request, the National Address Server "will attempt to rewrite the address in the proper format along with the ZIP+4 code." The added bonus on this resource is that it also generates a PostScript file with both the generated address and a barcode. For those with a PostScript printer, the address and barcode can then be printed directly on an envelope.

While the National Address Server offers a useful additional feature, it has some of its own peculiarities. Since the experiment grew out of work with optical character recognition (OCR) software, it will sometimes rewrite the address in strange ways, adding extra characters or changing ones entered in a fashion that has nothing to do with preferred postal abbreviations. An even more serious defect is that the primary database for the ZIP Codes is a November 1994 edition of the USPS ZIP+4 database. Compared with the monthly updates to the database available on the official USPS ZIP+4 lookup page, this is rather out of date.

THE VENERABLE FACTBOOK

One of the most commonly cited Internet resources is the CIA's World Factbook. An online version of this venerable geographic handbook has been available on the Net for years. ASCII versions were, and are, a popular addition to many gopher servers. The World Factbook is an annual publication. Unfortunately, many of those that loaded, linked, or referenced one of these online versions were unaware of this annual publication cycle. A search in one of the keyword indexes quickly demonstrates that many older versions are still floating around on the Net. The first ten hits on an InfoSeek search of "cia world factbook" include links to several editions of the work, from 1991 through the present. The formats of the online versions vary as much as the date of publication. The World Factbook is available in a variety of ASCII text arrangements on gopher servers, searchable as a WAIS database directly from WAIS, gopher, and Web clients, and marked up in HTML.

The Factbook makes access to basic country information easy, with its alphabetical listing of countries and a standard format for presenting the information on each country. The difficulty on the Internet may be in finding the appropriate edition. With the establishment of the CIA World Wide Web site and its HTML version of the Factbook, the definitive edition arrived on the Net. Unlike the earlier ASCII editions, the CIA Web version includes black and white maps of each of the countries and more than a dozen full color reference maps. All of the front matter and appendices are included. Access to the country information is easy to navigate, whether using a vt100 browser or the latest in GUI Web clients. The 1995 edition is at http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/95fact/. If it is later than July 1996 when you are reading this, look for a new edition. Presumably, the URL could simply be modified to read 96fact rather than 95fact. If that does not work, start from the top of the CIA site at http://www.odci.gov/cia/ and look in the publications category. Check on your organization's Web site and gopher menus. Are there links to older editions? If so, alert the maintainer to the newer version.

OTHER SOURCES

There are plenty of other collections of quick facts and ready reference databases. Check out one of the numerous "virtual reference desks" or browse Yahoo's Reference category (http://www.yahoo.com/Reference/).

AT&T has an 800-Number directory at http://www.tollfree.att.net/dir800/, which only includes toll-free numbers run by AT&T, and not by their competitors.
Search for quotations in *Bartlett's Familiar Quotations*, the ninth edition. It's from 1901 but a standard nonetheless. It is located at http://www.cc.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/bartlett/.
Another more eclectic and modern collection of quotations gathered on the Internet can be found at http://www.xmission.com/~mgm/quotes/.
Computer acronyms and network jargon may well be found more quickly in the jargon file (http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/ is a searchable version) than in print dictionaries.

Many of these ready reference databases have limitations in scope or inaccuracies in data. On the other hand, they may be no more inaccurate and no more comprehensive than standard print reference works. Just be aware of the sources, their scope, and the sources for data. At least some Internet resources are beginning to improve their documentation so users can answer these questions for themselves.

Communications to the author should be addressed to Greg R. Notess, Montana State University Libraries, Bozeman, MT 59717-0332; 406/994-6563; Internet--greg@notess.com ; http://www.notess.com.