An Interview with Baldomero G. Garcia, Jr. - Director
Texas A&M International University
Office for the Study of U.S.- Mexico Trade Relations / NAFTA Information Center
Reprinted with Permission
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askSam: Tell us about your organization and your role within it?
BALDOMERO GARCIA: Currently, our department maintains several full-text databases relating to the North American Free Trade Agreement, trade and commerce in Central and South America. These databases are maintained for educational research both internally and externally via our WWW site.
askSam: What is your work environment like?
BALDOMERO GARCIA: Our office is constantly processing clipped articles from newspapers and magazines which are scanned, exported to text files, proofread and added to existing askSam databases.
askSam: Which of our product(s) do you use and what applications have you found for them?
BALDOMERO GARCIA: We are using askSam 3.0 Professional version along with the askSam Electronic Publisher / Viewer and the askSam Web Publisher.
At this time, askSam is the only software we use for full-text data because we feel that askSam is the right tool for our current work. The Office for the Study of U.S.-Mexico Trade Relations has a Pentium 120 running WindowNT 4.0 that is used as a Web server. We run the askSam Web Publisher and the askSam databases from this server
The askSam Electronic Publisher and its' Viewer is also used to provide access to askSam text databases that we have archived on the University's Sun Microsystems SPARC Server 1000E. Faculty and students can access the archived information directly from a reference PC workstation in the University's Library without Internet slowdowns which is particularly beneficial during peek hours.
askSam: Why did you select askSam over other products?
BALDOMERO GARCIA: We decided that the similarity of askSam's interface to current Windows word processors would reduce the learning curves for our staff. Also, askSam's unlimited capacity to handle large amounts of text information effortlessly was a plus. Furthermore, we had been using the askSam DOS version since the inception of our department and most of our data was in the askSam format. This made the transition from the DOS to Windows version almost effortless.
askSam: How has askSam saved you time or money?
BALDOMERO GARCIA: Time and money has been saved by the use of the Web Publisher. It makes posting our askSam databases on-line a breeze. There was no need to convert our askSam databases to any other format and no HTML training was required. Kudos to the developers of the Web Publisher!
askSam: In what ways has askSam helped you in your daily routine?
BALDOMERO GARCIA: askSam helps in maintaining our databases with out much effort and headaches.
askSam: Can you describe the implementation of our education licensing program within your organization and was pricing a factor in deciding to use our products?
BALDOMERO GARCIA: The askSam Educational Licensing has permitted our College of Business Administration to develop several types of databases. These projects are still in development so not much details are available.
Yes, pricing was a factor and as these other databases are completed, there will be more demand from our other departments in the College of Business Administration.
askSam: What applications do you plan for askSam in the future?
BALDOMERO GARCIA: At the moment, we are just trying to keep our heads above water with the current applications. But, we are sure other there will be other applications using askSam.
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Baldomero G. Garcia
Texas A&M International University
Office for the Study of U.S.-Mexico Trade Relations
5201 University Boulevard
Laredo TX 78041-1999
Phone: 956-326-2550
Email: nafta@tamiu.edu
http://www.tamiu.edu/coba/usmtr/
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http://e3-5b.tamiu.edu/search.htm
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