[WEB4LIB] New free database from Gale

[Thomas Dowling]

> ...Following in the footsteps of Britannica.com's
> putting its encyclopedia and full text of some 70 magazines
> online, this service is the first traditional periodical
> aggregator to release its material on the Web with ad
> revenues as the sole funding mechanism. LookSmart will
> categorize the Gale Group content and target specific
> advertisements to complement the article content. - cl
> Subjects: Periodicals | Full-text
>

It will be interesting to see how sites like this maintain revenue.
I've seen several articles showing that click-through rates for ads just
keep dropping; in addition, browsers are getting increasingly flexible
about letting users decide who can and can't drop cookies on their
PCs--I've managed to ban doubleclick.com cookies in IE, Opera, and
Mozilla, for example.  And as Jakob Nielsen points out, we have a great
facility for mentally tuning out the ads we see.  Won't advertisers
eventually stop putting serious money into a format that doesn't give
appreciable results?  And if so, how do Britannica, Gale, et al.
re-convince researchers that the value of their resources might be worth
a little cash out of their (or their libraries') pockets?

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu