Thing 8

I have been using online databases like the Discovery Collection and EBSCO for years. When I wrote my thesis, they were invaluable for helping me find professional journal articles.  They were and are an incredible gift. 

I am old enough to remember being in school and looking up magazines in the old readers guide.   Then I would take my list of articles to the magazine archives where I would spend  hours finding and skimming articles.  Finally I would take my chosen articles to the copy machine and pay my 5 cents a page to take the needed text home.

Now these hours of work can be done in minutes from my desk or home.  The ease and convenience is awesome.  

When searching for basic information, I usually start with the Discovery Collection part of the Gale Databases.  For journals, I prefer EBSCO.  My dad, who is not a big reader or a heavy library user thinks the ALLData automotive database is awesome.  

I will say this, when it comes to doing every day research I still tend to use Google. For ease of use, Google is hard to beat.  

That make it hard to promote databases with students.  I can talk to them about reliability until I am blue in the face, but for most of them the most important criteria in a search is speed and simplicity.