ABSTRACT
Many database vendors group social sciences and the humanities together when categorizing database offerings for directories or for training sessions. New humanities files are appearing, CD-ROM subscriptions have offered a fixed-price method of information access which is also suitable to the individual nature of humanities research, and files are getting larger as time passes. Successful implementation of online searching in the humanities requires an understanding of the information needs and research habits of humanities scholars. Personal, institutional and geographic names and other proper nouns play an important role in humanities research, and are often the principal point of access in a search. Any growth in offerings, humanities and otherwise, underscores the point that online searchers in the humanities must be specialists as well as generalists. They must be familiar with the content, coverage, structure and indexing practices of humanities files, and they must also be able to retrieve humanities information in a wide range of databases targeted to other fields.
