Northern Light Withers Further

divine, Inc. seems to be driving the nail even further into Northern Light's coffin. The once-important search engine was officially shut down at the beginning of 2001, but at least the Current News search and the pay per view Special Collection continued. (And the Web search engine also remained available via NLResearch.com.) But now, Northern Light states that "Effective January 1st 2003, divine has discontinued the sale of its special collection articles on a pay per view basis." Gary Price has also confirmed that their very useful Current News search will soon be shut down. Their Alerts have already stopped working. You can still search and get the citations for Special Collection documents, but since accounts have been shut down, there is no access to the full text. How long NLResearch.com will continue to work and offer a Web search database remains to be seen, but according to their Accounts Help page, they are not accepting any new enterprise customers either.

Northern Light offered some unique and very useful databases and services. It is a pity to see it go and to have missed the chance at having it realize its full potential.