Post by zeroI just stumbled upon this Computer Chronicles episode https://youtu.be/
10b6RYxt2pg?t=800 that demos the Dialog service, a database that was
accessible online with broad subjects of information.
Seems like an ancestor to Wikipedia to me. Has anyone used it? How was it
like?
Yup. It was a compendium of hundreds of proprietary databases. Dialog
was owned IIRC by Lockheed, accessed through one of those dialup
access services (I forget the name). For example, a typical database
might be that of an organic chemistry journal. Think "Google Scholar"
for the type of content. When signing up, you got a carton full of
binders and pages, with a few pages on each database, describing the
content and coverage, price, and giving the search syntax (every one
was different). The per-minute charge was IIRC anywhere from a few
cents to a few dollars, plus Dialog's standard charge for access. They
regularly mailed you update pages for your binders.
For serious searches, it was nice, though you had to search each
database separately. Each database specified precisely what the
content was (e.g. "all articles published in this collection of
journals since 1950") and search syntax with precise options (e.g.
"word X within 5 words of word Y, but nothing that contains word Z,
between these dates").
It could suck money fast if you didn't pay attention. Apparently most
users had large budgets and didn't care, but my operation didn't. We'd
go through the binder pages, log on for a prelim search, and
immediately log off to figure whether there were hits we wanted to
follow up on. Then log on again. I recall seeing discussion somewhere
noting that (I think it was) Chinese researchers also used this
technique, but I guess it wasn't common.
I tossed all the database pages decades ago, but still have a few of
the binders in recycled service.