The ebb and flow of reference products

Editors of the Guide to Reference maintain a watch on reference sources to evaluate them for inclusion in the Guide. They also monitor changes in the reference publishing landscape and reference source quality in general. For many librarians and users, any loss in quality is offset by the ease of access, added functionality, and possible instant updating of online sources. Some reference sources that began as a flat presentation of the print product have evolved into easy and rewarding online tools. Ulrich's now has a useful set of indexes, easy-open (and stay-open) tabs, quick links to publishers' Web sites, and hyperlinks to WorldCat and the institution's link resolver; it has also created the best icon ever in the referee shirt to denote journals with peer-reviewed articles. SciFinder evolved from an unusable CD-ROM scan of the print Chemical Abstracts into a database that supports chemical substructure searching and linkouts to chemical suppliers, among other features.