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It's a rare database that appeals to both academic experts and regular folks. The database must have broadly appealing content and a presentation that serves both professional and personal interests. [...]

The examples in the boxes on the left illustrate the information-intensive environment of today's enterprise knowledge workers. The workplace has been redefined as a rich data universe, from which customized […]

You would have had to be doing a Rip Van Winkle over the past year to have missed the biggest story in the information world: the spread of the Web. […]

Remember when you first discovered online information? You can probably recall it with clarity, as you can for other turning points. If your experience goes back to the beginnings of [...]

Newspapers On Disc: A Survey And Critique Of Metropolitan Daily Newspapers On CD-ROM Print newspapers have played a major part in the information dissemination process almost since their inception 500 […]

Word of Dialog Information Service's suit against the American Chemical Society sent a shock wave through the online community. After the initial surprise, reaction turned to dismay that the longstanding [...]

This month I'll review a multidisciplinary database that contains the full text of dozens of short-entry reference books from British publishers. If this seems familiar, it's because in the June […]

The conventional wisdom is that it takes older and well-established organizations longer to make the transition from one technology to another than their younger and more flexible counterparts. This has […]

It's tough being an aggregator. But then, it's always been tough to be an aggregator. It's tougher than being the other two sides of the information triangle: the buyers and […]

So you want to do some company research? There are lots of company databases around, but do you know just what you need? Company names, addresses, URLs, and telephone numbers […]

Last issue's column gave good marks to Healthfinder, a new Web service for consumer medical information, produced by the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention & Health Promotion, Health and Human [...]

DIALOG has a rich history of end-user products. Starting over a decade ago with the well-crafted, but premature Business Connection, it moved along through the elaborate DIALOG Menus, the KR [...]

It is impossible to describe Medscape by assigning it to a category, since it occupies a place at the front of several online trends. It is a publisher's Web site, […]

Just when you think things are all getting settled, somebody throws in a monkey wrench. It seemed like Microsoft had everything neatly organized. Windows 95 would soon become the dominant […]

In the history of consumer online, 1996 may be second in importance only to 1979, when CompuServe and The Source created consumer online service. 1996 (and beyond) will be a [...]

This year may go down as the 'Year of the Makeover' for online services, with several leading online providers undergoing major renovations. NewsNet, DataTimes, and M.A.I.D. (with its Profound service) […]

You are going online to research current U.S. politics. First, you download the text of a piece of significant legislation, and then monitor its progress with daily reports. You check [...]

M.A.I.D (Market Analysis and Information Database) has long had a low profile among its peer group of business information services. There are several reasons. It is a British company that […]

It's time for the BUDDIE award for the Best Unknown Database. This year's winner is a potent counterforce at a time when the work of the public seems increasingly less [...]

Some of our best and most innovative online services have been produced by some of our oldest and best established print publishers - Dow Jones and News/Retrieval, Bureau of National […]

You would like to attend a movie, but which one? Even the local mall cinema has six films. You would like to rent a video, but which one? Even the [...]

Genius (genius.com), the song lyric annotation site, lacks neither self-regard nor ambition. It describes itself as the 'world's largest public knowledge project,' wants to 'annotate the world,' and expects to [...]

Over the last year or so, Database Review has been tracking new publishing models for news, as both legacy and emergent news properties reshape how news is gathered, interpreted, and [...]

As your diligent database reviewer, I am always on the lookout for potential topics. I'm particularly on the alert for 'Google-alts,' or search engines that work differently from the dominant [...]

Online databases are a great achievement of the information age and the essential tools of our profession. But let's face it: most of them are dull and boring. Nevertheless, amidst [...]

Most of us struggle to do well in one career, but Nate Silver has done very well in two. Silver, an economist by training, first succeeded as a sports analyst, [...]

SYNOPSIS BuzzFeed's mission is to capture everything that's viral on the web, using member-submitted, staff-curated content that very often is genuinely funny, clever, and creative. BuzzFeed also has a serious [...]

O'LEARY ONLINE columns are usually systematic affairs. They start with a discrete topic, move steadily through the research, and finish with a tightly written column. This one is different. It [...]

This service aims to distribute an enterprise's information where it's needed It used to be that information professionals dealt with things like Boolean connectors, field searching, nesting, and proximity operators. […]

These science news and reference sites can bring nonexperts up to speed It seems like everything we encounter these days is somehow a science lesson. Energy production, climate change, missile-defense […]

The winner of this year's Best Unknown Database Award is finally revealed In recent years, we've had to deal with monetary inflation and grade inflation, but these are minor annoyances […]

This new government portal suffers a bit from its hurried development Who says it takes the government forever to do anything? For example, consider FirstGov (http://www.firstgov.gov), the new portal to […]

This site offers comprehensive, consumer-oriented health information It seems that every month some new medical/health Web site appears--Dr.com this, Medical.com that, or something of the sort. It's nice to have […]

Old-media publishers can be successful in a new-media world During the (recently battered) honeymoon period of e-commerce, it seemed possible that new, Web-based businesses and retailers might take over from […]

So you think you're an expert researcher, armed with your high-powered, expensive research services? You think you can find anything, do you? Well, can you find how to remove wallpaper, […]

Of course, you've heard of Dow Jones. Not the Index, but the leading business information service. Dow Jones Interactive (recently renamed Factiva) is one of the largest and most powerful […]

Turning its vast cataloging expertise to taming the Web, OCLC recently announced that it will open participation in its Web cataloging pilot project, the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC), to […]

This site has info about all of the major--and minor--political parties Well, the presidential election year is upon us. New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, caucuses, primaries--we'll hear of little else until […]

Dowjones.com, SmartMoney.com offer a piece of the DJI action--for free Once the Dow Jones online presence was simple. For a long time there was Dow Jones News/Retrieval, one of the […]

A longtime online trend is the repackaging of government data by commercial publishers. It happens for many subjects, but the dynamic is the same: a federal agency gathers valuable data, […]

Mick O'Leary has been using and writing about online information for over 15 years. He is the director of the library at Frederick, Maryland, and a principal in The Data […]

Investment data has always been popular online, but lately it has ascended to new heights of importance. It's even been credited with bringing about major changes in the economy. An [...]

Mick O'Leary has been using and writing about online information for over 15 years. He is director of the library at Frederick, Maryland, and is a principal in The Data […]

Mick O'Leary has been using and writing about online information for over 15 years. He is the director of the library at Frederick, Maryland, and a principal in The Data […]

As I write this, it's early October and I'm studying serious, information-rich databases for this column. It's really hard to concentrate on these databases because the country is falling apart. [...]

Last year, Google closed Google Labs, which was a development area for dozens of search and utility apps. It was a high-tech petting zoo where you could observe tech tools [...]

This won't surprise anyone, but Google continues to dominate web search. Google has a commanding market share that hovers around 65%. What's more, the next two general web search engines--Yahoo! [...]

These are highly contentious times, when everybody argues with everybody about everything. So in order to appease the loudmouth at work or the ignorant person who may live next door, [...]

The old way to make reference books was to gather a select group of experts, who then labored for years to write encyclopedias, dictionaries, and indexes. Today, the internet has [...]

I've had a casual interest in the mysterious world of semantic search for a long time. Semantic search engines follow a completely different principle than Google and its followers. Whereas [...]