Important news for Dialog OnDisc users
Jinfo Blog

17th November 2008

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Dialog http://www.dialog.com has announced that from the end of next month, it will no longer support the OnDisc product platform. The databases affected are those that are distributed via disc and via the Dialog@site delivery mechanism. Subscribers, who are due to renew their contracts in 2009, will have their subscriptions upgraded to the online service, at no additional charge. Existing services will be provided until the end of any current subscriptions but the responsibility is with the subscriber to ensure that there is no loss of service. Dialog has asked OnDisc subscribers to get in touch with them at least 30 days prior to the current contract expiry date to discuss setting up a new contract. Dialog is not providing any information on its website as to how many subscribers will be affected by the change. In fact, searching for information about OnDisc leads to a page announcing that the product is no longer available and inviting you to contact the Knowledge Center for help. However a simple search on any of the usual search engines will return a large number of hits, many of which are old or very old guides to using OnDisc files or in the case of this link http://www.caul.edu.au/datasets/DialogSiteLicensePricing.pdf provides a list of available files and their prices in 2003. This is one of the joys of using the Internet: there are always old Web pages lying around ‘lost’ on Web servers and which can be found by those with the dogged persistence that characterises the best of the research community. As for those remaining OnDisc subscribers, VIP recommends that you check your Dialog contract now!

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