Today I popped into the Palo Alto main library. Was looking to dip my face and paws into their collection of Readers' Guides, like I've done in the past. Only, oopsie, they ain't there no more. And when I asked the reference librarian she didn't know what they were. At one point questioning me, 'which Readers' Digest were you looking for?' No, no, miss, Readers' GUIDE. I was tempted to say, "C'mon! You're not THAT much younger than me!" They've only been a mainstay of library research as I've known it for years. I'm wondering if Rip Van Winkle ran into this.

For them who don't know, there's a pic of them at this site:

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature | HW Wilson

Official name:

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature

One could find magazine and newspaper articles about this and that stretching way back. At the UW library in the 80s I used to search for magazine articles from the 50s and 60s about various events of those days. Can find some real gems. They had bound volumes of most of the big magazines right there.

The PA library has an open airy look now. Thank goodness they don't have all of the library type material cluttering things up.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I know what you mean!

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..I also have a 427 Cobra replica with an aluminum chassis.

Oh hell yeah!

And I miss the serendipity of looking-up stuff in the card catalog.

Interesting. To be honest I'd never heard of these things either. But then, I've not bee in a public library for years either.
- Peter.

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2021 Chevrolet Spark
Formerly...
2000 GMC Sonoma
1981 240D 4spd stick. 347000 miles. Deceased Feb 14 2021
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1981 240D 4spd stick. 389000 miles.
1984 123 200
1979 116 280S
1972 Cadillac Sedan DeVille
1971 108 280S

Remember when books used paper?

It's getting down to that. Weird thing is, the PA library still has a large collection of hard copy and microfishe (sp) of old magazines and newspapers in the basement. You submit a request and it's brought up. But w/o the Readers' Guides, knowing which ones to ask for is way sketchy. I'm going to try to find the right office to send a letter. They still have a hard copy reference section, smaller than before, and the Readers' Guides really ought to be there.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

The Reader's Guide is still published. My local jr. college has them.
https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/readers-guide-to-periodical-literature

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You're a daisy if you do.
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84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
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1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

I've been finding that around here as well. Two CCs nearby have them, word is Stanford has them as well but using their libraries if not a student requires hoop jumping. I could try the U Cal next time I'm in Berkeley.

The whole thing weirds me out. The Palo Alto library is not hurting for space. The place looks half empty. They had the hard copies on site already. The other city libraries in the vicinity also have gotten rid of them.

It's not like it's all on line. It's not.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I got nothing.

I'm 51 and cannot recall ever seeing one of those. I do remember the days before PC and going to the card catalog, looking through them for the title I want. I forgot what the process was to find the book title in the first place. It has been a long long time since I have stepped foot in a library.

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- With out god, life is everything.
- God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting smaller and smaller as time moves on..." Neil DeGrasse Tyson
- You can pray for me, I'll think for you.
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I think for nearly every paper I wrote for 100 and 200 level courses the RGPL was the very first research stop.

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You're a daisy if you do.
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84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

The subscription to the paper edition is almost $500 a year, I can see where any publicly funded library might not see the value in that if they detect a lack of users among the population they serve.

The RGPL is also available online, one would have to find a subscribed client and from that client obtain an authorized password. Looks like more than a few academic institutions are subscribers.

If you go to this page you might be able to finagle a free trial or maybe get your local library to investigate the free trail EBSCO offers interested parties.

https://www.ebsco.com/products/research-databases/readers-guide-to-periodical-literature

Looks like there are a couple sub-versions but the MasterFILEComplete looks to be almost everything they have since 1917.

Are you saying it's $500 for each year's new volume or do they need to pay an ongoing fee to display the decades of past volumes?

From the EBSCO page:

Not sure what's up with that. RGPL has been around a lot longer than that.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

I'm not certain with EBSCO or RGPL but my experience with subscriptions to trade type publications is that an annual fee delivers printed volumes that you own and no further cost is involved so the ones bought and paid for are yours to do whatever you like. My experience is that libraries would shelve them with perpetual access.

As far as what EBSCO offers today if you look further down on that "free trial" page it appears they offer a couple products, Print through its original publisher about $500 a year, one volume every three months and an additional combined full year volume at the end of the subscription period. Then they offer an online product that goes back to 1983 I think, I suspect that is because they probably started originating it in digital tech about then so they have that vintage digital from its creative inception to offer on the web. And then if you look to the right hand side they have a product titled MasterFILEComplete that if you follow that link describes the product as going back all the way to 1913 I think, but it looks like it exists at least in great part as pdfs, I suspect that is because they have gone back and digitized the paper archived material they'd originally published. Data in that format is usually sort of "clunkier" to make use of and is not nearly as seamlessly integrated as information produced in a digital format originally. pdfs can be basically a scan or picture at their minimum or they can be ORC'd and therefore their text itself exist as a separate file inside a pdf, that makes the text searchable, it can be cut and pasted and stuff like that.

If you've ever seen or used the original official Mercedes Workshop Manuals available od CD they are an example of basic primitive pdfs which are just 300 DPI scans and not ORCd and therefore neither text searchable or cut and paste-able. pdfs you can find online are very often made up of components/content originally produced as digital files and are therefore text searchable and, cut and past and otherwise more manipulable.

That all makes sense, I would have looked for the info myself but it was late. I guess it would be a bit odd to discontinue getting the new editions of the hard copy RGPL while keeping the older ones. OTOH, newer stories are going be much easier to search online w/o paying for a database than older.

I've seen some of the Pdf files of older books online. Better than nothin I guess but it can be slow going. I'm reluctant to do w/o hard copies of that stuff forever but I may not have a choice with much of it.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

True for arts and humanities. The science equivalents were Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, etc. Good god I hated using those things!

The library associated with where I was formerly employed went all digital while I was there. From my desktop I could search reference libraries over a huge network. My simple searches done on paper would often provide a half-dozen or so results. With the network I could easily get dozens or more! Over the passage of time I got much better any Boolean logic and was able to refine searches a lot better.

However, this is where the reference librarians truly excelled. For extensive searches I relied on them. I would od an initial simple search then print the articles most closely aligned with my inquiry and discuss them with a reference librarian. The librarians just had a consistent knack for getting material more quickly and better parametrized than I could.

My advice after getting close to what you want is to seek the reference librarian. Bring him/her some chocolate. Be very nice.