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.

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.

[4] 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.

Thus, well-funded U.S. public libraries in the 1980s and 1990s typically had several InfoTrac database terminals, several carousels of IAC cartridges, and several microfilm readers.

A rotating InfoTrac carousel
At the center of each InfoTrac cartridge was a reel of microfilm containing images of full magazine pages. The cartridges could be inserted in proprietary readers for automatic threading and rewinding.