InfoTrac

InfoTrac is a family of full-text databases of content from academic journals and general magazines, of which the majority are targeted to the English-speaking North American market. As is typical of online proprietary databases, various forms of authentication are used to verify affiliation with subscribing academic, public, and school libraries. InfoTrac databases are published by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning.

InfoTrac was first publicly presented in January 1985 by Information Access Company (IAC) to library professionals at the American Library Association's annual conference in Washington, D.C. IAC began to roll out the system to subscribing libraries in the spring of 1985.

As of June 1987, the first-generation InfoTrac system cost about $20,000 and its database came on a 12-inch LaserDisc which was supposed to be updated every month. The original InfoTrac system was an immediate success at most of the libraries that tried it. One notable exception was the University of Wyoming, which tried the system for a few months and then returned it. Apart from frequent hardware and software crashes, the original InfoTrac software could only search Library of Congress subject headings (that is, it could not run a global search for keywords across all text on the disc), and the lack of a standard LaserDisc digital data format meant that the system would be rendered obsolete by the creation of such a format. By January 1988, the second-generation InfoTrac II system cost only $4,000 (for optical disc equipment, computer, monitor, and printer) and its database came on a CD-ROM.

As of 1994, InfoTrac databases continued to be published on CD-ROMs which were mailed to subscribing libraries at regular intervals. In that era, when personal computers were still relatively new, many publishers were not yet licensing full text of their articles, so most publications were represented only by article abstracts.