The online database industry is entering its fourth decade. They have become valuable resources because of their ability to produce fast, quality, full-text academic information. Vendors offer a variety of databases for a fee. The user must subscribe to the database or access it through an agency that pays the subscription fees. Database searching is appealing to users because of the ability to search all the vendor s databases at one time, making searching less time consuming.
Many online databases use controlled vocabulary, which as shown above, can benefit the user.
Index are examples of databases that include a controlled vocabulary index. However, learning the language can be difficult for some users. Some online databases allow for free-text natural language searching. Knowing which to use depends on the database. Like the Internet directories, the person doing the indexing can have a big impact on a user s search results.