A rant, not necessarily coherent: Thompson Gale

Thompson Gale are the tricksiest publisher's of databases I know. It's one thing to market a subset of a database as a separate database. It's another to sell two databases with different names and the exact same contents.

I couldn't believe it when I pulled up the title lists for Business & Company ASAP and General Business ASAP and the title lists were EXACTLY THE FREAKING SAME.

I emailed the company rep earlier this week asking what the differences were. I haven't heard back yet. I wonder what they're going to tell me. Maybe there's something different, but when I searched one and then the other they returned EXACTLY THE SAME FREAKING RESULTS. ARRRGH. SOoo frustrating.


The other piece about marketing a subset? Well when the state rebid the contract there was a big list of databases that were very subject specific which looked nifty. We looked at them and they were great. Come to find out each one is just a subset of full-text journals that are indexed in the larger Academic OneFile. My guess is that they were and are in the Expanded Academic database (Also searched by OneFile). When you search OneFile, you are searching most of the Gale databases that the state purchased. That's cool as long as the databases have different contents. OneFile searches both of those business databases that are EXACTLY THE FREAKING SAME.

Here's a list of those subset full-text databases

InfoTrac Agriculture Collection
InfoTrac Business Economics and Theory
InfoTrac Communication & Mass Media
InfoTrac Criminal Justice
InfoTrac Diversity Studies
InfoTrac Educators
InfoTrac Environmental Issues & Policy
InfoTrac Garden, Landscape & Horticulture
InfoTrac General Science
InfoTrac GLBT Life and Issues
InfoTrac Information Science & Library Issues
InfoTrac Insurance & Liability Collection
InfoTrac Nursing and Allied Health Collection
Infotrac Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine Collection
InfoTrac Pop Culture Collection
InfoTrac Psychology Collection
InfoTrac Religion & Philosophy
InfoTrac Tourism, Hospitality & Leisure
InfoTrac US History
InfoTrac Vocation, Careers & Technical Education
InfoTrac War & Terrorism
InfoTrac World History

It is nifty to be able to search a subset of full text journals on a specific topic. I actually LIKE this feature. BUT, when I was evaluating the package as proposed by Gale to the state, I did not know that they were subsets of a larger database. It is the marketing tactic of making us think there was more content, more databases, more access that I despise. Misleading, complicated rant, rant, rant, rant.

I should say that it was clear that they were all searched using Academic Onefile. But that is true of many other diverse databases such as Informe a Spanish language collection and LegalTrac a premier legal research database. What was not clear was the fact that they (the little fulltext dbases) were subsets of stuff already indexed.

Academic Onefile is a supersearch engine that will eventually (hopefully) search any and all Thompson Gale products purchased. Although, now that I look at the website, it does say that

"Academic OneFile is the premier source for peer-reviewed, full-text articles from the world's leading journals and reference sources. With extensive coverage of the physical sciences, technology, medicine, social sciences, the arts, theology, literature and other subjects, Academic OneFile is both authoritative and comprehensive. With millions of articles available in both PDF and HTML full-text with no restrictions, researchers are able to find accurate information quickly. Includes full-text coverage of the New York Times back to 1995. Updated daily."

Does this mean it has it's own content or is it just describing the affiliated content found in Expanded Academic and other databases.

See what I mean about misleading marketing. I can't trust them that there is original content. Not after looking at the title lists for both Business and Company ASAP and General Business File ASAP.

I sure hope the state dumps this group and goes with someone else next time around.

Jenny

LiLI Training: Gale: Part 2

Gale Virtual Reference Library
(Ebooks)

We own the content and is maintained by Idaho Commission of Libraries, if contract ends, we'd continue to own the content.

Title list of books that the state has purchased or what we have purchased (based on authentication)

The State List Includes:
Beacham's Guide to the Endangered Species of North America , 6v, 2000
Biology , 4v, 2002
Encyclopedia of Small Business , 2nd Ed., 2v, 2002
Gale Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine , 2nd Ed., 4v, 2005
Gale Encyclopedia of Cancer , 2nd Ed., 2v, 2006
Gale Encyclopedia of Genetic Disorders , 2nd Ed., 2v, 2005
Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine , 3rd Ed., 5v, 2006
Gale Encyclopedia of Multicultural America , 2nd Ed., 3v, 2000
Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History , 2v, 1999
St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture , 5v, 2000
World of Earth Science , 2v, 2003

Browse the books by clicking on the "Show All" link at the bottom left of the search
screen.

Click on the title of the book to browse the book.

The Idaho Commission for Libraries may be purchasing a few more books for this
collection.

Marc records can be added to your catalog.
Health & Wellness Resource Center, includes books, journals, pamphlets (not archived, but
replaced as newer is released) ... Has Alternative Health Encyclopedia. Created for consumer use.

Business and Company Resource Center
Search by Company using name or ticker symbol
Search by Industry using word, NAICS or SIC code
Search articles by keyword

In a company search result:
There are links to articles on the left bar after a search is executed
There are tabs above with links to history, short financials, industry and more

In an industry search results in datamonitor reports

The company search from the tiny greenish bar allows narrowing of the search to industry code, product, and/or location

lots more to look at...

LiLI Training: Gale: Part 1

Interesting...

http://www.gale.com (database title lists available, training info, usermanuals)

The path for help
-> technical & training
-> browse by product tab
-> technical & training resources
-> product name
---->

Fun thing: Searching for California Crops in Yahoo. Check out the link about
California's Velcro Crop

Why is the link to the gale databases from the alpha list going into power search, instead
of the list of databases?

Gale Power Search option
Right now this is the default from our "Gale Databases" on the Alphabetical list. Use
the "Change Databases" link on the upper right to get to the list.

It should be noted that Academic Onefile and/or Infotrac Onefile include these
"powerpack" databases in toto:
InfoTrac Environmental Issues & Policy
InfoTrac Criminal Justice
InfoTrac General Science
InfoTrac GLBT Life & Issues
InfoTrac Information Science & Library Issues
InfoTrac Insurance & Liability Collection
InfoTrac Tourism, Hospitality & Leisure
InfoTrac Careers & Technical Edition
InfoTrac Communication & Mass Media
InfoTrac US History
InfoTrac World History
InfoTrac Educators
InfoTrac War & Terrorism
InfoTrac Diversity Studies
InfoTrac Pop Culture Collection
InfoTrac Psychology Collection
InfoTrac Religion & Philosophy
InfoTrac Garden, Landscape & Horticulture
Military & Intelligence Databases
InfoTrac Business Economics and Theory
InfoTrac Agriculture Colection
InfoTrac Physical Therapy & Sports Medicine Collection
InfoTrac Nursing and Allied Health Collection

Use the subject search option to narrow by subject and sub subject

From a list of results you can click on the mid blue bar and link Expand/Limit which will
open a list of options that you can limit or expand the current search.

Bookmarking a marked list of citations (or storing the url in some other way) will
retrieve the exact result list in useable form.

Bookmarking from the search screen (not from a marked list) will retrieve and self update
the search. (Do not set a date range or an end date. The begin date can be set.)

Use InfoMark to email the stable URL