British Library Launches British Library Direct

The British Library has announced British Library Direct, which is a pay-as-you-go service that offers nine million articles from 20,000 international research journals. These articles go back five years, and about 150,000 new entries are added a month. You can try it out at http://direct.bl.uk .

The search is simple keyword, with the option to restrict your search to items available for immediate download. There's also an advanced search which allows you to search in several different fields and do a date-restricted search.

I did a search for Aspergers Syndrome and got 142 results, with the most recent ones first. Search results contain citation information -- title, author, journal, date, etc. Sometimes abstracts are available. Click on the title and you'll get additional information, including ISSN/ISBN, publisher, and copyright fee (the ones I looked at ranged between £5.00 and £18.00.)

Of course to download any of this information you'll need to register and pay. Registration is fairly extensive. Articles can be purchased with a credit card. About 20% of the articles can be downloaded immediately after payment. The others can be delivered to users "within as little as 2 hours" according to the announcement.

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