Kudos to Forbes for reminding readers about the many wonderful databases available at no cost to researchers from their public libraries. The author writes:
[Public libraries] offer Net access to an increasingly wide range of databases that don’t exist on the open Web and, because they reside behind a fee-based gate, don’t get indexed by the likes of Google. . . Since libraries license the info in bulk, it typically costs individual users not a penny. Which is a lot less than it can go for on the open Web.
In fact, the availability of this very article serves to illustrate that point. Although this article is available on the Forbes Web site, you must register to become a member of Forbes.com first. While membership is free, registration raises privacy and efficiency concerns.
Fortunately, Forbes is one of the many titles available full text via BadgerLink, a collection of subscription databases containing articles from thousands of newspaper and periodical titles, image files, and other reference materials. BadgerLink is freely available to all state residents via Wisconsin’s libraries through funding from the DPI.
Besides access to known articles, the subscription databases in BadgerLink offer advanced search capabilities for locating authoritative information, alert services which inform you of new articles, and access to an archives of older articles, including Forbes back to 1985. Try finding all that on Google!