Xrefer
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Xrefer offers subscription-based online reference content. It provides online versions of 169+ published reference works from over 40 publishers, including general and specialist dictionaries and encyclopedias.
Subscriptions are available to academic, government, public and company libraries. Access to Xreferplus is free to end-users provided their library is a subscriber. Rather than selling pre-configured content packages, librarians can select which titles they wish to subscribe to within xreferplus and manage the selection throughout their subscripition period by swapping titles in and out.
Between 2000 and 2003 Xrefer offered a site which was free as in beer, supported by advertising, and was one of Wikipedia's main competitors as an open access encyclopedia. When the dot com bust caused Internet advertising revenues to collapse, Xrefer sprouted a premium subscription variant, called Xreferplus. On the 17th of June, 2003, the gratuit "Xrefer showcase" service was discontinued.
External link
- The Xrefer website (http://www.xrefer.com)
- The Xreferplus subscription service (http://www.xreferplus.com)