Car Talk

My partner and I are considering buying a car. We've found a few that *seem* to meet our criteria, but we didn't really know much about them beyond the advertisements.

So, how do people typically do car research? They go to Consumer Reports, right? And just like most people, we don't have a subscription to Consumer Reports.

So, as we were lamenting the cost of a subscription and how we really just want to browse the archives anyway, since none of the cars we're interested in are brand new, it occurred to me that we should try the library. (Go fig, huh?)

We went to the library's homepage, clicked on the "Online Journals" link (first column, under Research Tools), and typed in the title of the magazine. We were surprised to find not one, but four versions available in full-text through six different databases--all of them accessible for free.

My partner's response to our online library experience:

"Databases are awesome."

Yep, we're nerds--but, at least, we're well-informed nerds who are gonna get a hot car.