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>I just joined the Elibrary (http://www.elibrary.com).  For $10.95 a
>month they provide a phenomenal database of information accessible an
>unlimited number of times.  Hundreds of thousands of magazine articles,
>book excerpts, maps, etc.  Are these services seeing a profit yet?  I
>think it's the most useful thing I've found on the net (as a
>journalist).
>
>Roberto Quezada

Well, they're exploding in number, meaning fierce competition, but, yeah,
they're making profit.

There are several tiers of service and likely will continue to be, for
economic reasons: database systems like Lexis/Nexis, Dialog, Westlaw and
Ovid are continuing for information professionals and legal use. Then, at a
different level of substance, a growing number of systems that target
endusers, specifically home-computer users and comparatively "lite" info
users and seekers.

Some vendors are doing both tiers, offering endusers a system that consists
of subsets of the data available in their full service, i.e. 200 databases
versus 470 in the professional version. I believe Dialog does this.

The advantages with the growing number of end-user systems are an
easier-to-use interface and more reasonable cost structure. If the
databases serve your interests, hey, you've found nirvana!

...................................................................
Margot Emery              mle4312@tntech.edu         Public Affairs
http://www.tntech.edu/www/admin/pubaff/   Tennessee Technological U
~Without the joy of Java, life doesn't amount to a hill of beans.~


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