Posted By Ken Taylor
We had an interesting talk at our IOSH London PS meeting yesterday by Sheila Pantry of Sheila Pantry Associates Ltd on 'Getting the Best out of the New Technologies'. She has evidently been looking at the various on-line and CD based OSH services and might be worth contacting (sheilapantry@compuserve.com).
In my local government days, I preferred Barbour because of the range of documents available in full text and their willingnness to add others upon request. This may not be so important for your industry but it's worth checking to see whether a database extends beyond the material provided by the HSE and legislation derived from the Health & Safety at Work, etc Act. There have been a number of articles in 'Safety & Health Practitioner' on this subject. HSEDirect has now arrived on the scene and seems worth investigating - particularly in view of the fees involved.

Posted By Mark Preston
I've used both OHSIS and Barbour CD systems - not much to diffentiate between them content wise- We're now subscribing to TI's web based system - OHSIS and a number of their other products - the interface is better - but, and its quite a big but for me - OK it's an obsession - nearly all their documents are delivered as pdfs - a format with much to recommend it if you get it right (HSE Research, please note), but the pdfs are straight image scans of the pages, which means that the file sizes are huge - up to 100x larger than they need to be - once downloaded (which can take an age - even wwith a fast link) the text isn't searchable. If they do some work to "capture" the pages they scan this problem will go away, but its a significant problem at the moment - I often find myself returning to my CD set.
I don't think Barbour are quite as far down the web access road

Posted By peter gotch
My recommendation would be for OHSIS, (and if you want easy access to case law - Redgrave)

OHSIS allows you to search by word on page though this is not possible on most of the files in the Internet version, so that we still have the CD Roms.

Example - search by keyword "auger" will bring up numerous hits including "Safety in Excavations".

Barbour will only pick up hits where the keyword is in the title.

Haven't reviewed Silver Platter recently.

p

Posted By smudge
We have used silver platter for some time and find it useful for legislation and guidence. we do not use sections B or C.

I have to state that when we recently had a problem they were not very helpful.

George smith
smudge341@yahoo.com

Posted By Ross Stirton
Many thanks to all who shared their thoughts....

Regards,
Ross Stirton

Posted By Richard Forster
Sorry folks,kind of missed the boat and started my own thread further up the main OSH chat page.Has anyone else seen the new Barbour package (health and safety,fire,food safety,trading standards and environmental management) Currently it is on CD but by the end of April it will be web based.Barbour are running a special deal,bit I do not want to sound like their sales staff-what I am after is VFM.Are you all getting it?!

Posted By claire butterfill
Although I am pretty biaised - I used to work for Barbour - I find it much more user friendly than TI. We currently run both services at present, and I often find that TI does not have the document I am looking for. I have also found the search mechanism inconsistent - and will not always bring up the same results. I have also found that when a certain ACoP was reprinted it was not updated on TI. Having said that, some of their images are excellent.

Also worth remembering is that Barbour's system does contain summaries of many of the documents, and all of the key ones, and is supported by a weekly briefing, which notifies you of all new/updated health, safety and environmental documentation and legislation, as well as case law, prosecutions and seminars, etc.

I have not looked at Silver platter for a while, but I always found that the layout/format was not user friendly - and obviously the content/range of publishers was limited.

I haven't had a look at HSE Direct yet, so can't comment on it's ease of use, although at first glance at its marketing material it sounds ideal for a SME.

However, as the other respondents have said - it does depend on your needs - if you want a comprehensive system, with good support, I'd advocate Barbour, (remembering that this also has the basic environmental info that you may initially need) but if you only need HSE documents, HSE Direct may be the best option for you. Personally I'd demo the main contenders and see which suits you best.

If you need in depth environmental information, you may require an additional system, or add-on to whichever package you select.

Hope this is of some help.

Regards.

Claire.