Nor is the market limited to the United States. There are over a hundred nations where libraries have these same databases.

If the same articles were available on Google, for “free”, these libraries would not have to offer this service, but that’s not likely to happen since the current market represents billions of dollars in revenue.

While most of the millions of articles in these archives are legally licensed, some are not. This was what the Tasini case was about. There are hundreds of freelance writers such as myself whose work and copyrights are being infringed. Apparently there is no way short of a lawsuit to stop such abuse.

With my own work, I do offer an alternative through online bookstores where dozens of my previously published articles are available either singlely or in thematic bundles. They can be found on Amazon.com, Powells.com Elibron, Diesel e-books,Fictionwise and many affiliated sites.
These do sell.

The entire database industry is predicated on availability. Millions of articles are available, but very few are actually downloaded or read. I base this upon usage reports obtained from my local library. The cost per year is four cents for every person in the county or $1.65 for every article actually used.

The idea of archives is wonderful. They are a great research tool. But, without getting into the entire copyright issue (see my blog if you want that)the idea that any of them are or will be free is simply not in agreement with the facts.
It costs money to create articles and to format them for electronic distribution in any form. Like it or not, someone, somewhere, pays for them.

The entire growth of public library online databses during the 1990s in the U.S.A.was heavily subsidized by the Federal Government which also paid for the computers installed in every library branch to lessen the “digital divide” between those who could afford to buy one and those who could not.

The San Francisco Public Library and THOUSANDS of other libraries are offering even more databases REMOTELY. In other words, available 24x7x365 WITHOUT leaving your home or office. It’s ALL FREE. In fact, the SF PL now offers every page ever published (FULL IMAGE, delivered in PDF) of the NY Times back to Vol. 1, No.1.

Via a library here in the DC area, I not only have access to the Historical NY Times but also the Washington Post and Wall St Journal.

These databases are just the tip of the iceberg of the fee-based content is available via site licenses to the public WITHOUT having to leave their home or office. Full text, images, etc. from new and old publications, full text reference books, and other databases too!

What every library offers varies all you need is a library card. In Michigan, they have a statewide program where you don’t even need to have a card.

Example: Here’s what San Fran Public offers for FREE to anyone with a SF PL card.
http://www.sfpl.org/sfplonline/dbcategories.htm

All others need to do is check the web site of the library or libraries they have access to (http://www.libdex.com) or just give them a call.

Finally, more and more libraries are offering what’s referred to as federated search technology. The SF PL offers this type of service. Using it you can search multiple databases simultaneously, take advantage of advanced search options, remove, dupes, etc. Perfect, no. But this type of technology is improving on a very rapidly.

Most of these tools can be searched via a “Google” like interface but also offer powerful searching capabilities and use controlled vocabularies to assist in bringing like things together.

The more you dump into Google (and others) the more difficult it will become for the typical searcher to find what they’re looking for.
Only a few things can get onto the first page of results. Plus, time (how long people have to search), the fact that the typical searcher
only looks at the first few results, and outside influences can also make a difference on what makes it to the top of a results page.

Robust federated search technology allows content to be kept in individual databases until search time and merged together as needed. It also allows for a SINGLE interface to various databases (very little learning curve) while at the same time allowing the searcher to use the structure that the database might offer. As you know many of these databases offer controlled vocabularies to assist in brining like things together.

But not so fast. You need access to a library that participates in OpenURL because they are the ones who provide you with the computer access to the databases. If you’re affiliated w. a research library you’re in like Flynn. If not, you’re out in the cold. Though I live in Seattle where you’d think libraries would be hip to these sorts of developments, the Seattle Public Library doesn’t seem to participate in OpenURL (at least that’s what one reference librarian told me–but I am trying to confirm this info).

Also, if I understand OpenURL correctly, it will provide the researcher access to the text of an article in the database, but it will not allow you to link to it in your post in such a way that your blog readers can read the text as well. So OpenURL is great for quoting text, but not for linking to it.

This is all based on what may be imperfect understanding of OpenURL since I’m not technically up to speed on it. I’d love for this thing to develop further so that it’s incredibly useful & easy to implement. As far as bloggers are concerned, I’m not sure it’s there yet.

I’m 100% in favour of newspapers charging for physical copies, and publicly archiving all articles for free online – but I don’t think this is the right argument to prove it – and certainly not to newspaper owners.

It is, however, good business sense to establish yourself as a market leader, a paper of record and a reliable source for researchers of all kinds… and that will inevitably drive your hard copy sales.

I don’t understand why the NYT doesn’t see that.

When a online newspaper article moves off the free Web and into an archive, the passed PageRank value of the link from newspaper to the referenced Web site disappears. Since newspaper sites tend to enjoy high PR value, the loss of links from them can be significant to smaller Web sites that get a lot of traditional press coverage. With newspapers out of the game, that leaves to the blogosphere and, unfortunately, link spammers the job of determining which Web sites will place most highly in Google’s search results.

Skeptical news publishers might respond: why should I care? Well, for starters, isolating oneself makes the Web (and society) a less rich place. And if publishers care only for the money, let’s remember that if newspapers did a better job of linking *to each other* and keeping those links alive, they’d do even better in search results, creating an opportunity to further expand their audience among typically younger readers for whom Google and Yahoo, not newspapers, are the gatekeepers to modern thought.

It is illuminating to me to see the number of professionals who are using Google for searches that in the past would have been done on Nexis. If the search engines are conditioning a generation of information seekers to come to *them* for news, then the revenue from paid archives might die off with its current generation of users.