ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, May 19, 1996 TAG: 9605200005
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: ROBERT FREIS STAFF WRITER
Owners of small businesses or industries have their hands full with day-to-day operations, and often lack the time or the expertise to deal with research and development.
The Virginia Technical Information Center helps fill the void. "We act like their library," said director Beth Hanson.
For a fee, specialists at the center scour printed resources and electronic databases to answer questions involving scientific and technical information or economic development.
It's a relatively new service, yet one that is catching on. Currently, the center has 450 clients in a global network stretching across the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Australia.
Hanson and the other employees of the center - four full-time and five part-time, including some Tech students - aren't experts on any specific topic. They're detectives who know where to look.
Appropriately, the center is located within Virginia Tech's Carol M. Newman library.
Data on engineering, agriculture, architecture, business and marketing, veterinary medicine is available from Newman Library holdings, or from the thousands of journals the library receives by subscription.
The electronic revolution has also made a world of external information readily available.
Generally, Hanson said, the data that employees research for clients is detailed and complicated - copyright status, product research, overseas markets, for example.
Occasionally, however, the center helps out the lay person. Hanson tells of a client from Richmond who noticed the abundance of a particular type of clay soil on their property.
The client sought information from a local economic development official about the soil and its potential uses. The official contacted the center, and the information its employees assembled was part of a process that will culminate this week with a ground breaking for a new plant, Hanson said.
Regional economic development was the original mission of the Virginia Technical Information Center when the organization was created in 1988 as an affiliate of the Center for Innovative Technology.
Economic development issues continue to be a primary focus of the center, which retains its connection with the Center for Innovative Technology. But its mission has expanded along with the list of clients that work for businesses and government agencies, a number of whom are Virginia Tech graduates.
Also, larger industries and agencies that are being downsized are increasingly "outsourcing" business to the Virginia Technical Information Center, Hanson said.
The center's staff can turn around requests for help rapidly, offering prorated short-term service that can be delivered by mail, fax or e-mail.
Fees are $70 per hour for computer database or customized research, $13 per article for the first 20 pages of on-campus materials (25 cents per page above 20) and $13 for book loan, including student theses and dissertations. Rush requests are $26.
It's all part of Tech's basic mission as a land-grant institution, extending information to the community, updated for 21st century demands.
To contact the Virginia Technical Information Center, call 231-5589 or e-mail vtic@vt.edu
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. (From left) The Virginia Technicalby CNBInformation Center's Beth Hanson, John Cosgriff, and Ginette Aley.
On the wall are U.S. maps with their
clients represented by yellow stickers. color.