Course exercise: Explore the services offered by the following online vendors. Keeping in mind such factors as type/level of library, demographic characteristics of your patrons, budgetary limits, etc., identify those companies which you would consider subscribing to. Briefly explain the reasons behind your choices.

American Library Association. Government Documents Round Table. Government Information Technology Committee (GITCO). <www.library.unt.edu/gpo/template/index.html>

Developed the Web Page Template for Government Information to help professionals at small- and medium-sized libraries add a government information component to their web pages.

CARL Corporation www.carl.org

Offers, among other services, Web access to the full text of nearly 115 DIALOG newspaper and newswire databases, most of which are updated daily. Its UnCover provides periodical information indexed in over 17,000 multidisciplinary titles.

Congressional Information Service, Inc. www.cispubs.com

CIS, long dedicated to providing access to governmental information, now offers a Web-based application concerned with the dissemination of congressional information, the Congressional Universe, as well as Statistical Universe, a broad-based reference service built around three statistical databases--linked to full texts--American Statistics Index, Statistical Reference Index, and Index to International Statistics.

Follett Library. www.flr.follett.com

Its Electric Library provides a large database comprised of the complete text of thousands of wire service reports, magazine and newspaper articles, radio and television transcripts, books, anf thousands of images.

NewsBank, Inc. www.newsbank.com

Offers Curriculum Resource by NewsBank, a learning program that creates a resource-based school--a school with access to information from sources around the world. It helps teachers integrate these resources into the daily curriculum through staff develoment to promote resource-based instruction.

Nichols Advanced Technologies, Inc. www.nicholsinc.com

Athena markets the following Internet technologies: Athena Webserver puts a library on the Internet, Athena Weblink gives library patrons access to the Internet, and Athena zMARC provides the means to search hundreds of the world's leading libraries in a single search enabling you to automatically download MARC records found on the Internet into your Athena collections.

WLN www.info@wln.com

Provides a broad range of services to all types of libraries and other institutions around the world. Products include a full-service online bibliographic database, Internet services, LaserCat, FastCat, and LaserPac CD-ROM catalogs, a database preparations and authority control service (the WLN MARC Record Service) and a variety of collection assessment programs.