Researchers, professors and students at university libraries that subscribe to our databases often have a facility that allows the library to provide access the databases without requiring endusers to go to the library, or even leaving their home. That facility is a proxy server, which has access to the databases. Contact your university library for […]
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Stable Citations & Reproducible Searches
For centuries careful researchers and scholars have trusted in the stability of citations. Once a work was cited it was always, in principle, available to be checked and verified. Those centuries of reliance on the stability of citations is at an end. Two decades of academic literature now relies on dead links and vanished sources […]
Continue readingConfident Searching
One fundamental difference between Google, for example, and database searching is the question of privacy and confidentiality. Every keystroke entered into search engines whose business model is based on surveillance of its users is harvested and stored and disseminated for commercial, electoral and political purposes. Every discovery you make belongs to them. Even users’ medical […]
Continue readingMissing Information: Absolute Dates
One troubling loss from much of the internet is absolute dates, like March 15, 2019. Today’s date, actually. Instead, we are being given relative dates: 3 hours ago, 4 days ago, a month ago, a year ago. The obvious problem with this is that if a article or document is passed on, exactly when it […]
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