If you're a librarian, you certainly know that your patrons want access to full-text article databases. Library users are no longer content with article citations, and they surely don’t want to make photocopies from the periodicals you have in-house.
Many library patrons don't realize that most of the full-text electronic databases we have in our libraries are paid for by subscription. To the average public library patron who walks into the library and sits down and starts searching for articles, these databases appear to have no cost. They look like they are "on the Web", i.e. sitting there available for anyone to use, whether from the library or from their home PC. But in order to provide patrons access to these full-text articles the library has paid a hefty subscription fee to the database publisher. The publishers can demand and get high prices because the articles indexed in these subscription databases are peer-reviewed and authoritative research articles. You can trust the content.
Which brings us to the problem with much of what is published “freely” on the Web. Since anyone with an Internet connection and space on a server can publish virtually anything, much of what the average Web user will find for free on the Web is inappropriate for serious research. Any Web user knows it is easy to find tons of information on virtually any topic in a split second using the Web. But who published this information? How do you know you can trust what you've found? Do you want just any information, or do you want the right information?
While it is much more difficult to find trustworthy, high quality, no cost, research sites and full-text article databases on the Web, it can be done. But researchers and students should know that even today, with more and more quality resources going online, a lot of what’s out there for free is not as good as what you’ll find at the local library.
Having said all that, here are eleven great research sites that offer access to full-text articles for free on the Web. When you can't get to the library, or you want to supplement the information you've found there, the following quality databases are accessible anywhere you have a WWW connection.
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