Availability
- Several database vendors dominate
the public, K-12, and academic markets for
general databases of periodical articles.
- These companies package and
repackage various configurations and portions of their databases
in ways appropriate to the specific markets.
The 3 Leading
Database vendors and their most popular products:
- Gale
Group
- InfoTrac
databases, including:
- General Reference Center
(Magazine Index)
- Business Reference
Center (Business Index)
- Academic ASAP, Academic
Index
- Health Reference
Center
- Gale Group
databases
- Biography Resource
Center
- Gale Literary
Databases, which integrate:
- Contemporary
Authors
- Contemporary Literary
Criticism
- Dictionary of
Literary Biography
- ProQuest
- ProQuest
- This is a reconfigurable
collection of several databases with up to 8000+ different
titles.
- The company also offers a
number of subject-specific databases.
- EBSCO
- MasterFILE
FullTEXT
- This is a reconfigurable
database, subsets of which can be tailored to the various
markets.
- The company also offers a
number of subject-specific databases.
Notes
- All of these bibliographic
database vendors provide free trials to
libraries.
- Some vendors offer subsets of
their database for a fee to end users.
- Example:
Electric
Library offers the
ELibrary
to end-users for a $79.95
annual fee.
- Several companies are beginning
to license content from these and other bibliographic database
vendors and provide free
access to that content
over the Internet.
- Example: The Internet
Index LookSmart
provides access to the content of about 300 different
periodical titles through its FindArticles.com
service.
