Had a nice chat with Gary Price yesterday. Here’s a librarian who’s written the book on the Invisible Web, and who has a mission to educate us about the resources – beyond the open web of Google et al – that are freely available to the public. Price took me on a tour of the databases that are available to anyone with a public library card. Among them, the Arlington library, which has the same Thompson/Gale databases for free as Highbeam has for $20 a month. Others, like the SF library, have huge databases of magazines and other business resources available. All you need is a library card (and access to the web – many resources are available over the net). This it does kind of make you wonder how Keepmedia and Highbeam intend to make money in the long run. Wait a minute…they intend to make money by intermediating libraries, who are notoriously terrible at marketing themselves.
As I’ve pointed out in a few other posts, Price maintains Resourceshelf and writes and lectures prolifically about search and research.
Talking With Gary Price
Had a nice chat with Gary Price yesterday. Here's a librarian who's written the book on the Invisible Web, and who has a mission to educate us about the resources – beyond the open web of Google et al – that are freely available to the public. Price took me…
John,
You don’t even have to go to the local library to find the Thomson/Gale info for free. Instead of paying a monthly subscription on some sites as you state, you can go to Looksmart Articles on the Web and find the Gale articles for no fee.
See my write-up in my weblog last week where I address the mixed-up world of pricing models on the Web:
http://shore.com/commentary/weblogs/premium/ecommerce/2004_01_01_archive.html#107516326314840462
John, thanks for the post.
Janice:
I saw that you commented on John’s article about me.
Two quick comments.
1) The databases I showed John and available to most people are ACCESSIBLE WITHOUT having to visit the library. They are on via the web. In some areas you don’t even need a library card.
2) FindArticles provides access to about 700 pubs.
Several of the resources I showed John have access to thousands of publications. For example, between
Academic Academic Index and InfoTrac OneFile a user would have access to over 4000 publications, many with archives back to the early 1990’s.
I also mentioned NetLibrary to John. This resource, available remotely is from many libraries, provides access to several thousand, in print, books.