An interesting development at EBSCO — is this what librarians expect when they guide students to use these databases? Does this change your perception of “authority” when it comes to subscription databases?

Researchers demanding the latest information and insight into issues have a new source of information. Blog content from premier Weblogs is being made available in online aggregated databases. Thanks to a partnership between EBSCO Publishing and NewsTex, blog content is being added to many EBSCOhost databases.

NewsTex licenses influential blog content directly from bloggers and makes the real-time content available. Blog feeds, news feeds, and historical archives will be delivered to EBSCO and added to applicable databases.

EBSCOhost is one of the most used research services with databases covering a variety of disciplines. Blog content with subject matters including art, career, economics, environment, finance, food, health, law, marketing, medical and technology will be added to nearly 100 appropriate databases.

It’s nice to know that some database vendors are taking their “citation advice” pages seriously! FACTS.com recently updated the citation examples given on their site to reflect the fact that they are a publisher rather than an aggregator (like Gale and ProQuest). This is welcome validation of the time we spent understanding this distinction with the MLA editorial staff this past summer, the results of which are now reflected in the NoodleBib version 6 subscription database wizard. Also see our knowledge base article on the subject:

http://www.noodletools.com/kb/index.php?article=136

The knowledge base article specifically dealing with the FACTS.com databases has also been updated to indicate that the citation advice given at the FACTS.com site is correct:

http://www.noodletools.com/kb/index.php?article=63

Here is the nice e-mail we received from the editor at FACTS.com:

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am an editor at Facts On File News Services, the company that provides the Reference Suite @ FACTS.com and FactsforLearning. This past summer, I undertook the task of updating our user help files and citations. I came across your site as I was conducting some research on correctly citing in MLA and APA formats.

After finishing my research and speaking with some editors at the MLA, I realized that we are indeed not a library subscription service and have corrected all our automatic citations to reflect this. In addition, all database names have been changed from “FACTS.com” to the database name where the information is coming from.

For example, one of our old citations looked like this:

“Key Event: Terrorists Attack United States; U.S. Leads War in Afghanistan.” FACTS.com. Facts On File News Services. [Name of school or library], [location], [state]. 30 Jul. 2005 .

It now looks like this:

“Key Event: Terrorists Attack United States; U.S. Leads War in Afghanistan.” Facts On File World News Digest @ FACTS.com. Facts On File News Services. 4 Nov. 2005 .

Thank you so very much for providing such a great service!

With best wishes,

[Name removed]
Curriculum Editor
Facts On File News Services
512 Seventh Ave.
New York, NY 10018