Portable Databases: Bridging the Gap Between Online and Local Databases.

This article focuses on portable databases, which refers to the databases that are available on CD-ROM, diskette, Bernoulli cartridge, magnetic tape and other media that are easily transportable. Portable database products are growing faster than online databases. Aside from the media involved, and the method of pricing, there are four obvious differences between online and portable databases: content, type of data, frequency of updating and presentation. The familiar portable database products are the bibliographic databases that libraries have used for years online.