Cengage

I didn't want to give this site anything less than a "cool", because of the scope of it and the fact that it's free, and that it accesses more than 30 million articles from magazines, news services, newspapers and "top publications" available through your local library. And you don't even need a library account, just an email address and a postcode or zip code (USA and Canada only). Outstanding value. But. The top publications include titles such as "CRANIO: The Journal of Craniomandibular Practice", "Behavioral Research in Accounting", the "Journal of the American Taxation Association" and "Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly". I guess they're someone's top publications, just not mine. So I looked for something more in my field, using "internet" as a key word. For 2009, they only accessed three articles including the word "internet", in the entire year. I am now not impressed. Over the last decade, they access less than 300 articles including the word "internet", far less than one a week. I'd have expected better results from Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, alone. I also found that the latest issues of some magazines dated back as far as 2003, so this is a site for archival research, more than anything else. There's nothing more recent than 2009, that I could find. But by far the daftest thing, is that they access an archive of many arts and architecture journals and magazines, some of which, by their very nature, are heavy on images and photographs for their content. Totally reliant, in some cases. So it comes as more than an irritation to discover that they don't show you a single picture. All illustrations are removed, from everything, so you only get the text. In the case of an arts magazine, this produces a large amount of [illlustration removed] placeholders and text describing the illustrations that are no more. What a completely pointless thing to do, I hear you say, and to be honest, I'd have to agree. I can only assume that there are arts researchers out there keen only to read the words. So I ended up with a MEH for this one, which probably deserves more, from someone who can explain just how cool it is. I'm sorry I can't, despite all its good intentions.