In a constantly expanding world of chemical and environmental information s
ources, the need for their evaluation gains more and more importance. This
paper presents a comparative evaluation of datasources of online databases
and databases on CD-ROM (called CD-ROMs in this paper) in the field of envi
ronmental chemicals. The approach is based on research results gained in th
e years 1996/1997. The authors sue aware that changes in the database indus
try may lead to different results. Before the actual evaluation process can
be carried out, two major procedures are necessary, namely, the selection
of sets of datasources and the definition of evaluation criteria. In order
to perform the difficult task of an evaluation based on several criteria, a
general order relation has to be introduced. Methods of partially ordered
set theory are applied, and the results are visualized by the technique of
Hasse diagrams. On the basis of these evaluation results, the datasources a
re grouped and then evaluated. It will be shown that there are groups of da
tasources with quite specific property profiles, and only two groups turn o
ut to be relatively better than the others.