Dialog had to pull Aerospace Database off its services at the end of September 2002 when CSA withdrew all its databases from Dialog. Originally, the file came from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and incorporated unclassified citations from both AIAA's International Aerospace Abstracts and NASA's STAR databases. However, after 30 years producing the database, AIAA lost its contract with NASA and sold off the Aerospace Database to CSA in August 2000.

At launch, AeroBase coverage included only around 21,000 documents dating back to 1999. In contrast, Aerospace Database carries around 2.5 million records and dates back to 1962. CSA makes Aerospace Database available through its Internet Database Service (IDS), which uses institutional subscription pricing, except for an unpromoted but still in place 36-hour fixed fee access. STN International also carries the Aerospace Database.

AeroBase updates monthly. Searching the file on Dialog costs $4.95 per DialUnit or 83 cents per connect-minute ($49.80 per connect-hour) plus $1.50 per record. Dialog also offers flat-fee, enterprise-wide access to AeroBase as part of the Dialog Choice pricing options.

In launching the new file, Viji Krishnan, Dialog's vice president of publisher management, said: "We expect that our new AeroBase file will be an important resource for researchers and professionals in the aeronautics, astronautics, and space sciences, as well as such related fields as chemistry, geosciences, physics, communications, electronics, and numerous others. Our subscribers around the world look to us for the most comprehensive and deepest array of STM content possible. The AeroBase database is the latest in a series of new and improved STM research that we will be offering in the months ahead."

But how new is this file? Conversations with Dialog managers elicited that the source of the file was a federal agency, the name of which could not be revealed due to "terms of the contract initiated by the government agency." AeroBase is not the only file on Dialog that comes from federal agencies, but carries Dialog's name as the file publisher. So do U.S. Patents Fulltext, File 654 (Source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, augmented with information from IFI Claims service) and U.S. Copyrights, File 120 (Source: U.S. Copyright Office and Library of Congress Catalog Distribution Service). However, the BlueSheet documentation for these files clearly points to the true agency of origin. AeroBase file documentation carries no such indication and, in fact, states the file is "provided by Dialog" and claims "AeroBase contains copyrighted information. For The Dialog Corporation's Redistribution and Archive Policy, enter Help ERA."

Further investigation disclosed that NASA has begun supplying Dialog with an XML metadata subset of its Scientific and Technical Aerospace Reports (STAR) service. The subset covers only NASA-based information, i.e., studies produced by or for NASA. Dialog is charged "a small fee" for the service, according to a NASA representative. The same representative indicated that this file is identical to what Web users can get for free at the NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS), an experimental program that links different abstracting-and-indexing services based at NASA sites. (For more information, see http://ntrs.nasa.gov.) A NASA FAQ on NTRS also indicates that most of the data on the service are government produced and therefore not copyrighted.

As to Dialog's non-disclosure of the NASA connection, discussion with NASA representatives indicated the confusion might have derived from a standard sales disclaimer used by the agency. The standard boilerplate statement includes a clause stating that the acquirer of NASA products may not use NASA's name, initials, or logo without permission. One NASA representative considered that Dialog may have over-reacted to that clause in not revealing the connection, but definitely thought that permission to reveal the NASA connection would certainly have been granted if requested.

Dialog representatives indicated that the company planned to expand the AeroBase file with more information from the same source, including additional journal and conference proceedings coverage. It also plans to evaluate adding more retrospective information to the file. In this regard, it might take advice from the NASA representatives, one of whom told us that older material had seen a rise in usage recently in response to presidential space initiatives.