Library offers online Consumer Reports

infoTECH News

[September 06, 2010]

Library offers online Consumer Reports

Sep 06, 2010 (Post-Bulletin - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- In the realm of library services, this one comes highly rated.

Consumer Reports, that venerable reviewer of products ranging from cars to coffee-makers, is being made available for free through the Rochester Public Library website.

"There's not a day when somebody doesn't ask where the Consumer Reports (magazines) are," said reference librarian Brian Lind.

The new service, online for about two weeks, includes not only all of the product ratings published in the magazine, but also video reviews, a shopping guide and readers' comments.

"It's a bit expanded from just the magazine," Lind said. "It's more interactive, there's more dialogue." Consumer Reports is widely regarded as a trusted and unbiased source of product information and comparisons, Lind said. The magazine has a laboratory and a staff of product testers, and it does not accept advertising.

"People love it," he said.

The new service replaces a previous incarnation of Consumer Reports that the library hosted among the other publication databases it subscribes to.

"It was not nearly as nice of an interface," Lind said. "This is a very intuitive experience, compared to what we had before." The service is available from any Internet-connected computer, and requires a library card number and password. (A user's password is set by default to the last four digits of the cardholder's phone number.) If it were not available through the library, a year's subscription to Consumer Reports online, at consumerreports.org, would cost $21.

The library's full collection of online databases is hosted under the Reference section, and includes things ranging from genealogical information to auto-repair guides.

Some of the resources are provided by the state, and some -- including Consumer Reports -- are specially added using local tax dollars.

The library monitors the use of the online services to decide which ones to keep, Lind said.

To see more of the Post-Bulletin, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.postbulletin.com. Copyright (c) 2010, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For more information about the content services offered by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services (MCT), visit www.mctinfoservices.com, e-mail services@mctinfoservices.com, or call 866-280-5210 (outside the United States, call +1 312-222-4544).

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