Reference books may conjure up images of the rows of dusty volumes down at the local library awaiting an expert's touch to guide you to arcane facts and figures. For engineers in scientific and technology oriented industries, though, reference books are becoming highly searchable and interactive sources that make their users' lives much easier. Providing an effective transition into the online realm for long-trusted reference books takes a lot of deep insights into how an audience uses reference content to solve critical problems - research that database publishers have engaged in for years. Now that book publishers are getting the hang of online reference tools, where will we see their business models move next?

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