Statistical Universe, a new Web offering from LEXIS-NEXIS, offers a collection of abstracts that identify and access a wealth of federal, state, and private statistics. Built around established abstract services from CIS, Inc., a LEXIS-NEXIS subsidiary, the Web service premiered with U.S. federal statistics covered in American Statistics Index (ASI). In June the company will add Statistics Reference Index's (SRI) coverage of state, local, private, association, and trade organization data. In August they will add input from the Index to International Statistics (IIS).The ASI database became exclusive to LEXIS-NEXIS after removal from Dialog Corporation's collection last year. SRI and IIS will debut online coverage with the Statistical Universe. The service updates monthly.
Abstracts in Statistical Universe link directly to individual tables, figures, and charts. Searchers can access the file by subject, title, or agency, or they can scan for comparative data. Coverage of federal statistical publications extends back to 1973, including links to 800 full-text documents published from 1994 to 1997 and stored on LEXIS-NEXIS, as well as to 2,000 publications linked through federal Web sites. CIS and LEXIS-NEXIS draw the full-text documents from agency Web sites, as well as converting documents from electronic format from hard copy. CIS continues to offer microfiche images of federal statistical publications.
When added in June, SRI will cover major statistical publications of 1,000 private concerns and over 20 state governments back to 1980. Sources include professional and trade associations, business organizations, commercial publishers, independent research organizations, state governments, and universities. When added in August, IIS will add some 2,000 titles from 100 international and intergovernmental organizations with coverage back to 1983. LEXIS-NEXIS has active negotiations underway to secure copyright permission with major international/intergovernmental agencies to license their data for inclusion in the Statistical Universe.
Full-text documents from Statistical Universe are available in a variety of formats, including HTML and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Most full-text documents have charts and tables in GIF image format with selected tables available in spreadsheet and Comma Separated Value (CSV) format.
Charges for the service will vary and require negotiation. However, a corporate user with 1-10 "seats" could expect to pay around $3,000 a month ($36,000 annually) for access to the federal (ASI) module, and $2,000 a month ($24,000 annually) for the state (SRI) module. Pricing for the international (IIS) module is still being determined. Transactional pricing is also on the way.
More information is available from LEXIS-NEXIS, 800/227- 4908; newsales@lexis-nexis.com; http://www.lexis-nexis.com/business.
