Comments on EBSCOhost 2.0

EBSCO has a working preview of their 2.0 interface (in "Beta") available under "New Features" when you use a EBSCO database, like Library Lit or LISTA. I tried it out, including creating a new MyEBSCOhost account since there are social networking features.

The starting search page looks "off" since the search boxes are so close to the top, but you get used to it. Basic and Advanced searching get you to results that use facets on the left side (though in a slightly different way from other databases, since added facets appear at the top and new ones come up on the left, but it is hard to tell) You can save items to a folder, which come in preset types but you can customize AND share (with an invite). There are oddly large buttons and little text for "email" and "print" and similar actions for articles.

The "visual search" is a pretty cool way to see results that you narrow and sort visually (does not really map them or allow custom grouping) and is a Flash application. I'm not sure it works completely yet (Beta) since I can't seem to add articles from it to my folders... or print... or anything.