Content area
Full Text
On Aug. 24, 2010, a new Dialog launched. I received a demo password the next day to investigate it for this article and excitedly logged in. Dialog has at last joined the Google world. Competitors Factiva and LexisNexis have been on board for some years, but not until ProQuest acquired Dialog did the searcher world get the promise of major platform changes. In fact, ProQuest promised a massive undertaking in which it would create one platform that combines Dialog and DataStar and all other Dialog platforms together under one roof - and make it Google-compliant (if you will), but also all-powerful. Little was accomplished, save upgrading the DialogClassic.com interface in 2007. To me, that was an improvement. To others, it was as though nothing had happened.
I admit to some skepticism when ProQuest promised to turn Dialog into a 21st-century search system. The old dinosaur would be revamped, provide the same diverse content, and keep valuable search features intact, while adding the same ease-ofuse most other major systems had already made possible. I remained unsure because of promises and more promises from Dialog's various owners in the past. As some of us know, Dialog had had a long and, at times, rocky history before ProQuest arrived on the scene. Developed by Roger Summit in the late 1960s at Lockheed Aircraft, it had been acquired several times over. (For an overview, see The History of Dialog, Movie and Transcript, http://www.dialog.com/about/history and http:/ /www. dialog.com/about/history/transcript.shtml). Summit's vision was remarkable and holds a revered place in the history of online technology, but later owners were not always particularly kind to Dialog.
When Knight Ridder, Dialog's then owner, acquired DataStar in the early 1990s, searchers hoped Dialog and DataStar would be integrated into one system, but it wasn't to be. Into the new 21st century a few years later, it became glaringly apparent that students in M.L.I.S. programs were cutting their teeth on Google - no learning curve, no cost - and didn't have the slightest idea that professional search systems were necessary for serious, indepth, and complex research in the real world. How could they know unless they were taught? Library science and information schools had their work cut out for them. Further, librarians and info pros everywhere...