LISNews: Librarian News

Infotoday cleared up the May 23 announcement from Web directory service LookSmart who said they signed an exclusive agreement with Gale Group. According to the release, they are going to make business and premium magazine and periodical content available for free. You may find the quantity of material actually delivered through the service to be, at least initially, a lot less than the press release leads one to believe. Actually, when the service (http://www.findarticles.com) goes live, they will offer access to articles published over the last couple of years from some 300 publications. A few of the publications around 10, but among them Scientific American will only have abstracts. This service, however, does mark the first time that a traditional full-text aggregator has released its material through a site that uses ad revenues as the sole funding mechanism.