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Perhaps one of the most useful information resources is your own network of friends and colleagues within the institution and in the profession. You can phone a colleague at another institution and get information quickly. Or you can post your question in two Internet newsletters publishedby the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) and the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP). [For the AIR electronic newsletter, contact air@mailer.fsu.edu; for SCUP, contact scup_office@um.cc.umich.]
Using electronic databases. There are a number of electronic databases that contain up-to-date descriptions of articles (by title, and many times by abstract) available on a subscription basis. ABI Inform, ERIC, PAIS,Dialogue, and BRS, contain hundreds of databases specializing in all areas. Undoubtedly, your library already subscribes to these databases and database services. These resources are amenable to monitoring (that is, to retrieving information about critical trends and potential events that you and the planning team have identified earlier in the scanning process). In addition, there are a number of listservs on the Internet that contain discussions about potential events and emerging trends (see Exhibit 2).
Scanning files are usually both electronic and hard
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