The Running Librarian

This is the title of an interesting piece in the latest edition of Information World Review. The article follows up a previous piece on the Financial Times introducing changes to its online subscription model.

In it the author finds that news aggregators like Factiva and LexisNexis are still on top when it comes to providing news stories, this is despite moves by the FT and also the New York Times to make their content freely available. There is obviously some relectuance by Information Professional to use sites that offer free content with, yet issues remain with the products that are available;

"One info pro at a European bank is highly critical of LexisNexis, describing it as slow, badly indexed and cumbersome: “The partners hated it.” He thinks a major flaw in the site is its geographic index, which starts with Antarctica. “Where is there any business activity there?” he asks. Many highlight the speed of Factiva and its good design."