ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, the online database and information retrieval services industry has served the needs of researchers, students, professionals, and everyday information seekers for scholarly, scientific/technical, medical, business, legal, and consumer information. The industry is a mix of players, including for-profit companies, government agencies, and not-for-profit organizations. The industry's major functions include collecting and organizing information into databases, making the databases available online, and marketing the online services to libraries and end users. The U.S. government has had much influence in supporting this industry through grants and service contracts. Libraries have been important partners in promoting online retrieval services and teaching users to search databases. The industry has grown enormously in the past 35 years, but its earlier growth rates of 10–20% per year have slowed to about 3% per year. Today, this industry is characterized by constant mergers and acquisitions and competition from new players such as Web search engine companies. Certain issues remain as challenges for the industry, including legal matters, globalization, indexing and quality control, searching and retrieving in multiple formats and platforms, neglected research, and changing user expectations and attitudes. Not only is the industry in a tremendous state of flux, but its future is also being threatened, as people who search for information are using alternative free sources for same or similar information on the Internet.
