Daily Archives: 27 Jun 06

Cool Tool: Digital Library Cards

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Free/Cheap Access to the Invisible Web: Kevin Kelly clues readers in to the fact that you can access numerous online fee-based databases by logging on to your public library’s website with your library card (you do have a library card, right?).

“This vast store of knowledge is found on the Invisible Web — that part of the WWW that hides behind passwords and subscription fees, and is beyond the grasp of Google (although Google Scholar is working on this). This part of the web holds the databases that professionals and librarians pay to search, and includes the scholarly and scientific journals I crave, as well as marketing and business information, digitized magazines and newspapers, and several hundred of specialized databases built up over the years by fees — but formerly only available to users at high prices. Very little of this material is available on the free web yet.”

Coverages vary tremendously by region and residency requirements do apply, although in many states you can get a library card for any library system in the state. Even non-residents can get a library card for a fee; Kelly opted for a free San Francisco card in his native state of California, and a New York Public Librarycard for $100. I just logged onto the Brookline (MA) library site and discovered I have free searchable access to the full text of all New York Times and Boston Globe articles, for starters. I have paid, oh I don’t know, $3 or $5 to the Times or the Globe when I have needed to download an article in the past. Alas, my library system doesn’t give me access to JSTOR (of which Kelly writes), an online depository of the full text of most major scholarly and scientific journals you can download in PDF format.

How is the Dems’ Troop Withdrawal Plan Different from Casey’s?

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Tony Snow offers a crystal clear explanation: “Well, actually, he has one, and it — you know, again, this is not, I believe the way, at least it was reported, is you’ve got two brigades by the end of the year, September being short of the end of the year. But I may be misreading it. In any event, you’ve got to keep in mind that this is not a statement of policy. Again, Gen. Casey keeps in mind a number of scenarios. You’re talking about scenarios here … And so I would caution very strongly against everybody thinking, well, they’re going to pull two brigades out. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. That really does depend upon a whole series of things that we cannot, at this juncture, predict. But Gen. Casey — again, I would characterize this more in terms of scenario building, and we’ll see how it proceeds.” (Salon via Carpetbagger)