The Crafty, Ingenious World of Subscription Databases, Part Six: EBSCO MegaFILE

After the film "Supersize Me", a lot of people may be thinking twice about ordering up to the largest item on the menu, but you may want to reconsider that with the EBSCO MegaFILE. The MegaFILE is one big heaping helping of publication gold that contains no unhealthy trans fats (when used properly).

What is the MegaFILE? Admittedly, the name is a bit vague, but if you're doing research for a school paper, it may be your very best friend (sorry, Fido, back to you when the grades have been posted). If you look up "teachers" on Wikipedia, you will see them defined as "those people who don't accept Wikipedia as a source on school papers." MegaFILE to the rescue.

The MegaFILE gives you access to thousands of newspaper, magazine, and academic journal articles and allows you to read (and print) them from your computer.

All of the resources available in the treasure trove that is the MegaFILE are from paper publications that exist in real space, not just in cyberspace. In many cases, you can even print out either the full text of these articles (HTML Full text) or even a reproduction of the actual pages from the publication (PDF). Just make sure that the default "full text" box is checked and you'll be able read the articles.

Want to e-mail the articles to yourself? Can do.

Hate writing official citations for your articles? (And, really, who doesn't?) Let the MegaFILE do it for you. Once you have selected your article, and are set to e-mail it to yourself, go to the right side of the page and select "Citation Format" and select APA, ALA, Chicago or MLA formats and the citation will be delivered to you in email format.

Need to limit your search to scholarly journals? How about magazine articles only? Check and check.

Need to find an article in a particular publication? You can search within a particular publication (or look to see what coverage the library has for it) in a simple publication search.

Can you select a topic and be alerted in your RSS reader when a new article is printed on you topic? Well, we would hardly ask that question if the answer was anything but a huge affirmative, would we?

Can you access this database at three in the morning the night before your paper is due? We're not advising you to wait that long, but you can do it. You can access MegaFILE from any internet connection as long as you have a Rochester Public Library card in good standing (i.e. keeping your overdue fees under $10.00 and making sure to keep your user privilege current).

Probably the biggest drawback to the MegaFILE, is that it cannot write your paper for you. Perhaps in the next update.