The Promise of Xrefer

By Savannah Schroll Guz -- Library Journal, 1/15/2007

Without question, Google is the undisputed king of casual inquiry. Gone are the days of students pacing before long shelves of Encyclopaedia Britannica, looking for the pertinent volume. Sometimes, however, the magnet in the Google compass doesn’t work as efficiently as one would hope. The sheer amount of information it returns can be dizzying, and it is only as accurate as the (often anonymously composed) web sites appearing in the results display. Still, Google does offer a high level of return for a low effort investment. And expedience is a keenly desired characteristic of any research tool. Time saved not pursuing dead ends or awaiting the arrival of books is time that can be spent winnowing larger informational morsels from irrelevant chaff.

If you are looking for a tool that answers some of the concerns that Google raises, look no further than Xrefer. This online platform provides both Google’s swift, electronic convenience and an accuracy and focus that the search engine’s web-scouring mechanisms cannot deliver. It is a portal to a multitude of highly regarded reference sources, drawing on 244 titles by 55 publishers and providing access to tens of thousands of images and audio clips.

Xrefer supplies subscribers with what it calls a “seamless interface,” i.e., a single results list culled from multiple reference volumes, whose terms and topics are interconnected. A user, however, is not required to sign in and out of various reference sources, as they must do with other electronic systems. This one-stop information shopping center makes the service a destination rather than the beginning of a lengthy and circuitous journey.

Conceived in 2000, Xrefer developed on the standard dot-com era business plan, which called for an operating budget based entirely on advertising revenue. It was originally intended to be a resource free to the general public. “The founders quickly realized that only those with both very deep pockets and an appetite for very big commercial success could survive with that model,” says Jenny Walker, Xrefer’s executive vice president of marketing.

Béla Hatvany, who started the profitable Computer Library Services Inc. in the 1970s and SilverPlatter International in the 1980s, became Xrefer’s primary investor in 2002. Hatvany also installed much of Xrefer’s management team. CEO John Dove, who was president of Silverplatter in the mid-1990s, brought a great deal of knowledge with him from Wall Street. “His mother was a research librarian at Encyclopaedia Britannica,” adds Walker, “so he has some of this in his blood.”

With the basic Xreferplus100 membership, libraries can tailor a list of 100 titles to the needs of their user base. So, if the extensive title survey offered by Xreferplus Unlimited is not all relevant to a subscribing library, only a germane titles list—chosen by the library itself—will be offered through the search interface. Selected titles can be added, changed, or dropped at any time. Libraries may also download MARC records, a feature that allows terms entered into Xrefer’s search engine to find relevant hits within the library’s own collection.

Xrefer’s yearlong subscriptions are not based on seats, and there is no cap on simultaneous user numbers. Anyone working from a subscriber-affiliated computer can tap Xrefer’s resources 24/7. Libraries can also offer access-based user name and password combinations, or researchers working off library or campus premises can submit library card identification.

Xrefer’s visual design lacks embellishment, sporting few graphics save miniaturized images of illustrations already part of the digital reference collection. And while libraries can further customize the interface to include their own logo and institutional hyperlinks, other extraneous graphics would only slow response time.

The service is currently available in almost 50 percent of the United Kingdom’s public libraries and is extending its reach toward the United States. Its user base has also begun to expand into the private sector, especially the corporate and legal fields, where immediate access to a wide variety of reference material furnishes an intellectual edge. Both the Associated Press and the BBC have also signed on as member users.

While Xrefer has not made a point of focusing on the K-12 audience, it is being implemented in both U.S. and U.K. secondary schools, principally for the service’s interface with Excel, which has proved useful for enhancing students’ computer proficiency. The practicality of the Excel-Xrefer interface will only increase Xrefer’s value as statistical data are added to the informational reservoir.

Xrefer seeks to broaden its reference core continuously. Philip’s Atlas of the Universe, MacMillan’s Dictionary of Diplomacy, and United Nations Statistical Data and Demographic Yearbook are just a small number of new titles slated for integration into its rich reference mines. Got to www.xrefer.com and see for yourself why Xrefer is on the verge of becoming the reference librarian’s new best friend.