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Case Study
– Jodi Gregory, Information Professional |
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Business Background |
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Jodi Gregory has 20 years’ experience in searching for online
information and has been an independent information professional
running her own business for the last 15 years. She’s also the
President Elect of AIIP, the Association of Independent
Information Professionals. She specializes in healthcare, but
handles a wide range of information requests covering the
general business market, using a large number of professional
databases in addition to the Internet. |
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The Problems: |
1. The need to collate results from many different sources
Jodi regularly accesses a great many different databases: online
database aggregators such as Lexis-Nexis and Dialog; web portals
and subscription sites such as Hoovers and 10K Wizard; Invisible
Web databases; Usenet groups, web forums, and listserv
discussion groups; and of course websites. The data could be in
any format: plain text; web pages combining text and graphics;
PDF files; Office documents, and records from databases. Jodi
needed to combine selections from all these formats into one
professional report.
2. Writing the search report took too long
Jodi used to send her clients a written report in Word, or a PPT
presentation. She found herself spending a lot of time
formatting HTML content so that it would be readable in Word.
3. Her desktop tools weren’t flexible enough
Sometimes re-formatting just didn’t produce a good enough
result, and Jodi gave up and took screenshots instead. For
instance, one recent project involved gathering information on
fifteen of her client’s competitors. One source, obviously, was
the website of each competitor – and Jodi needed full-page
captures of several pages from each website, not just links to
the URL.
But then she was faced with the problem of huge Word files which
had to be e-mailed to her clients in RTF format, to ensure that
they would be able to open them with any version of Word.
Projects like the one just mentioned resulted in large amounts
of pictorial information or screenshots; RTF files that include
pictures quickly grow to sizes that are difficult to send by
e-mail.
4. Information was not preserved in its original context
The total context of the website in which the information was
presented often mattered to Jodi’s clients: for instance,
context-related ad banners, or surrounding graphics. “One
company I was researching (for a competitor) had a picture of a
bus covered with its advertisements on its website,” she
recalls. “You can’t just describe it – you need to include the
picture, preferably within the whole page”. |
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The Solution: Net Snippets |
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Jodi does sometimes collaborate with others, but her colleagues
didn’t have Net Snippets when she decided to buy it. She opted
for the Professional version, without a server license, while
expressing interest in a service the company is planning for the
future, when it becomes available: the option of having server
space made available for her use on Net Snippets’ remote server. |
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The Results |
1. Information selected, edited, and annotated - quickly and
painlessly
Net Snippets makes it easy to add a comment; highlight part of a
selection; and collect material from different documents (e.g.,
different searches of the same database) into one snippet. While
Jodi does still sometimes have problems editing complex html
selections, she notes that “I do think it’s better than any
other web capture product that I’ve used so far.”
2. Information from any source saved and combined easily
These days, Jodi mostly saves “snippets” from a document, or
partial screen captures. She doesn’t have to capture full
screens any more – Net Snippets lets her select the exact part
of the screenshot that she needs. And it’s so easy to merge
files from her local PC with content from the Web or remote
databases.
3. Professional, organized reports created automatically
Jodi especially likes the ability to create an automatic
bibliography of sources in a standard format, a tailored index
page of all the snippets in a folder, and the professional final
report. She spends much less time reformatting material or
creating a report manually from all her source material.
4. It’s open source and doesn’t require special software
Other products Jodi had considered needed a viewer at her
client’s end. Jodi knew better than to tell all her clients to
install custom software in order to read her reports! Net
Snippets files are in standard formats that can be viewed in any
browser, without add-ons or plug-ins. |
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Unforeseen bonuses: |
1. It’s so flexible
Compared with other programs, says Jodi, she finds Net Snippets
much more flexible. She likes the fact that it’s not intrusive:
the explorer bar doesn’t have to be open if you don’t want it,
but it’s always available if you need it. “I like the fact that
it’s always there,” Jodi says. “I can keep a running folder
open, where I put my search results together.” And there are
several different ways of performing any action, so that she can
work the way she’s used to.2. It’s so intuitive and easy
to use
Jodi singled this out as the “best part” of the program. |
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