When academic libraries first made their research journals available to their campus community via the web, they did so by listing them alphabetically on a webpage. When these lists grew too long, libraries responded by acquiring software that managed these resources, breaking down the journals into subjects and allowing to search the titles using one search box.
When academic libraries first made their periodical indexes available to their campus community via the web, they did so by listing them alphabetically on a webpage. When these lists of indexes grew too long, libraries responded by breaking down the links into lists of indexes by subject. When those lists started becoming longer and more intimidating, libraries started offering federated search, which allows the user to search multiple indexes -- and their online journal collection -- all at once using one search box.
Academic libraries are now making their encyclopedias available to their campus community via the web. Most libraries list them alphabetically on a webpage while others make them available through subject specific lists. Access to the entire contents of a library's encyclopedias via the one search box seems inevitable to me.
At this stage there are some companies that offer access to a number of reference tools at once. Oxford Reference Online provides access to over 100 general and specialized dictionaries - all published by Oxford Press. Xrefer also offers general and specialized dictionaries and other research tools from a number of publishers, but not including Oxford Press.
I can't help but think that there will be, one day, a new -- for lack of a better word -- space where libraries will dump all their factual information from the encyclopedias and other resources that they have in their collections, that their users can then search and cross-reference. And yet, I realize that the notion sounds fanciful and downright goofy.
In the future, will libraries grow their own Wikipedias?
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