(Spring 1997)
I have spent many hours on the Electric Library. -- good news. It is well worth the $5/month which is what the annual charge of $60 works out to be. That is half the $10 per month price -- and you still get 1st 30 days free and the next 30 days to change your mind.
The interface is good, the links from the articles are very limited so they load much faster and you move between the search page and the article and back again swiftly.
The articles are more varied than on Newstracker, but still useful. There is also a purpose built software package you can download that speeds up the process.
You cannot store search parameters - but you can get up to 150 references at a time. See the extensive help sheets for further information.
If you ever get 150 sources, limit the search by time and try again until you get fewer than 150. This is beause the search algorithm arbitrarily selects any 150 when that number is exceeded -- so successive searches using the same keywords, each hitting the 150 barrier will probably generate many of the same but some different sources. You will never know whether you missed a key source. The only way to get an exhaustive search within a particular block of time is to narrow the search to generate fewer than 150 hits. (You can search only magazines or only newspapers, or try by year or if still too many hits, months or weeks.)
For those stuck out in foreigh lands with limited English language library support, $5 per month is very little to have access to many magazines and newspapers and articles on about any subject you want to ask about (BTW - your ask your question in natural English sentence form.)
Tracking the source for citation purposes appears easier here too.
Try it out free of charge.
Useful URLs / Links | email me
Revised 13 December 1998