AtoZdatabases | eReviews
By Cheryl LaGuardia Aug 15, 2011CONTENT AtoZdatabases contains information on 30 million businesses, 33 million business executives (with five million to be added this month), two million new businesses, 220 million residents, and 90 million home owners. Fifty thousand new home owners and 200,000 new movers are added weekly.
Sources for the business information include yellow- and white-page directories, national directory-assistance data, annual reports, SEC filings, corporate registers, public records, new business phone numbers, online information, government registrations, legal filings, telephone verification, self-reported business information, and business directories. The database includes some elusive listings, such as non-storefront and seasonal businesses, those without listed phone numbers (new ventures), Doing Business As (DBA) and Also Known As (AKA) businesses, LLCs, true franchise ownership, shell/holding companies, and other legal entities. The residential information is compiled from national directory assistance data, real-estate deed and tax information, voter registrations, warranty cards, and other sources. Up to 250 records can be emailed, downloaded, or printed at a time. The New Movers and New Homeowners sections of the database are updated weekly, and the business and residential sections, bimonthly.
USABILITY The opening screen asks, “How would you like to search?” and provides 12 options: Quick Lookup, Sales Leads and Mailing Lists, Business Profiles, Job Interview Preparation, Friends/Relatives/People, Other Important Uses (Family Reunions, Genealogy, and More), Universal (Search All Databases), Businesses, New Businesses, Residents, New Movers, and New Homeowners. A toolbar links to FAQs, Contact Us, My Account, and Quick Lookup.
My first search was a Friends/Relatives/People search for myself. I was prompted to check off Geography, Name, Phone, or Household Information to start. Checking Name opened a box prompting me to type in First Name, Middle Name, and Last Name. I typed in my first name and my last name and hit the confusingly titled View Results search button at screen right. The system searched for 12 seconds but found no results. I tried again, capitalizing my first and last names but still got nothing. Then I clicked on the Home tab (which is nicely omnipresent on the screen) and did a Quick Lookup. This time a helpful box directed me to “Fill out the applicable criteria and click View Results to search our Universal database.” However, there were still no results, and after the system processed for two minutes (an upgrade this month will address speed issues), I canceled the search.
In an Other Important Uses query, the screen is automatically populated with Address, Name, and Phone as search criteria. I unchecked Address and Phone and searched by Last Name only. That located 965 results, and I was listed by my first initial. I went back and did a Quick Lookup search (which was indeed quick) for C. LaGuardia and found that I was listed there, too; there were 49 results, with the first 30 displayed on-screen. But when I hit the right arrow button to display the other 19 records, the system processed for over three minutes, and I finally closed the window, only to find the next screen displayed. My queries showed that using this database, just as when using others, results are based on the quality of search terms, and multiple forms of names are often necessary. Certainly for family reunions, this feature is a boon.
A search of New Businesses in Attleboro, MA, retrieved 36 hits. The full record for the first one, Ademola Babalola And Associates Llc, showed minimal information: name, address, phone, county, metro area, latitude/longitude, and AtoZID, but no indication of business type. Returning to the results list, I unchecked the Ademola listing and clicked on Billy’s Flying Pigs, Inc., but the record for Ademola came up again. I finally figured out I had to uncheck the boxin the entry for a listing for it to take.
A search of Residents by Radius Around a Zip Code was fast and easy, resulting in a list of individuals and basic information about them. My attempts at using the Job Interview Preparation section were frustrating, however: the system is set to search by State and Executive Title (information that many job seekers don’t have), and when I finally got a result for libraries in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the database listed little more than basic information—name, address, name of director, number of employees—about each. With many of the fields listed as “N/A,” this feature is not very helpful.
The database is a large one. The search interface is not my favorite; I was eager to try the 12 kinds of searches, but they aren’t set up in a way that’s particularly effective for use. Pricing is intriguing; see below. Several searches took too long. I don’t like the fact that many search windows have predetermined access points selected. This may be personal preference, but users who don’t notice the preselections will find bewilderingly skewed results.
PRICING Libraries that subscribe to the database’s main competitor, ReferenceUSA (www.referenceusa.com), will be charged 40 percent less for AtoZdatabases than they pay for ReferenceUSA. For others, the annual cost will typically start at six cents per head of local population.
BOTTOM LINE Overall, this file gets seven out of ten in its present incarnation for content, usability, and cost. I strongly recommend you try this one out with your patrons and staff, doing head-to-head searches with ReferenceUSA if you have access to it. For a free trial please go to www.atozdatabases.com/landing/freetrial?mediacode=AtoZHome.
| Author Information |
| Cheryl LaGuardia is a Research Librarian for the Widener Library at Harvard University and author of Becoming a Library Teacher (Neal-Schuman, 2000). Readers and producers can contact her at claguard@fas.harvard.edu |
