Black Friday the Library Way

It's getting to be one of the times of year when people make big purchases. Whether you're buying a gift for a loved one or just taking advantage of the sales, it's possible to spend a lot of money and later regret it. One way to avoid that is to put the turkey-flavored sodas back on the shelf before you go to the register. Another is to do product research before you shop.

The library subscribes to Consumer Reports, which is a magazine of expert product reviews and ratings. They evaluate everything from tires to baby bottles to computer games.

To get to Consumer Reports (and to any other journal, magazine, or newspaper) go to the library website and click the “Journals” tab. Type in the name of the journal and search. This will give you a list of the databases that have issues of the journal.  Pick the database with the best date coverage, which in this case is LexisNexis.

 

Once you are in the LexisNexis database, you can search for a type of product, like “digital camera” or the trademarked name of a specific product like Kinect.  The quotation marks around “digital camera” tell the database that it must search for the two words together, rather than searching for the keyword camera and the keyword digital. 

So before you buy something expensive, first use Consumer Reports to make sure that the product is and does what you want, won't fall apart on you, and is the best value for your money.  

Photo Credit: Black Friday © tshein 
Announcement used with permission.


Published 11/27/13