Card catalog

I just met with a lady who offered me a new, exciting product that will help me become more effective at my job! A service that provides access to more than 400 magazines and articles focused on sustainability!

After hearing her pitch and learning more about her company's database product, I let her know that I already subscribe to several sustainability article aggregators, follow experts on twitter and generally know how to navigate the internets.

But her product, she argued, provided full-text articles! While this may be a compelling argument to an academic with loads of time on his/her hands, I have the attention span of a gnat and a growing stack of full-text articles on my desk. In fact, I prefer the editorializing and the filtering provided by my free newsletters and can't imagine how I would ever use her database. Especially at the price she charges.