As promised, Questia launched its service in mid-January. Subscription rates are as follows:
 

48 hours	$14.95
Monthly	$19.95
Annual	$149.95

Currently, Questia's collection contains only books, with a "coming soon" note next to journal articles. The default search is by author, title and/or subject, and can be restricted by parameters of media type and subject category.

The "Power Search" allows for the inclusion of variations on a word (run, ran, running) and synonyms, as well as limiting the search by publication date. Moreover, you can specify the relationship between your keywords, such as "words close to each other" or "any of the words".

"Exploring By Topic" provides browsing by subject area. However, this feature is somewhat limited in that any given subject can only be broken down by one level, so it is difficult to obtain a very refined list. For instance, history is broken down into 8 sub-categories: 

• European History; Social and Economic History and Conditions
• World History
• United States History
• American And Caribbean History (Except US)
• Asian and Middle Eastern History
• African, Australian and Oceania History
• Military History and Military Science

As of 2/9/01, this was the breakdown of the collection by subject:
 

Anthropology - 898	Archeaology - 267	Architecture - 245
Area Studies*- 2847	Art- 953	>Classical Studies - 590
Ecology - 748	Economics - 3425	Education - 1447
Ethnic Studies - 796	Gay & Lesbian Studies - 39	Gender Studies- 459
Geography - 100	History - 9955	History & Philosophy of Science- 845
Human Communication - 223	Journalism - 202	Legal Studies - 1068
Linguistics & Language- 705	Literature- 6009	Media Studies- 328
Music- 497	Performing Arts- 572	Philosophy- 1506
Political Science- 2488	Psychology- 1433	Religious Studies- 2028
Sociology- 3859	Total- 44,532

* Area Studies includes Latin America; Middle Eastern; Soviet and East European; Asian and African 

Assuming that none of the titles are cross-listed, Questia collection falls short of the advertised 50,000 titles, with only around 44,500 items.

The titles are primarily from publishers' back- and mid-lists, as well as the public domain. For instance, the range of publication years within the first 50 sociology titles (by quasi-alphabetical order) is from 1897 to 1999, with the average being 1977. If titles are sorted alphabetically, initial articles ("a", "an" and "the") are included, which places A Search for Civilization alphabetically under "A", instead of "S". 

Various error messages are not uncommon as one searches through the Questia collection, particularly when opening a book. Strangely, some of the error messages stay on your computer screen, even after you have logged out of Questia and closed your browser. Each time you open a book, a certificate needs to be downloaded. If using Netscape, this might trigger the following Java Security Warning:

Personally, I think many users will be uneasy about granting the necessary privileges when this high risk warning is flashed onto the screen.

Questia is trying to create something more than a virtual collection and research tools- they are also creating a virtual scholarly community. For instance, on February 6th, Questia sponsored an online forum, entitled "Medieval Origins of Constitutional Government." Questia subscribers could join the forum, which took the form of an on-line chat, with noted historian Dr. Stanley Chodorow. At any given time, there were 20-30 people signed on and participating in a very lively discussion about medieval law and government. 

Questia is also creating an on-line reference service called Question Marquis. This service is not yet functional and little information about the service is currently available. However, it appears that Questia subscribers could post reference questions to the Question Marquis, who will respond with the types of answers that one would expect from a reference librarian.

Questia is doing some substantial marketing. There have been many reports of Questia reps. visiting college and university administrators to encourage on-campus promotion of Questia. Moreover, Questia is recruiting students to "help spread the word about the benefits of Questia's research service on your campus this Spring." (from a Questia emailing) The students are asked to work about 8 to 10 hours per week from Feb. 15th to May 15th distributing promotional materials, staffing a Questia info booth on campus and submitting periodic reports and market surveys about their campus. In exchange, students receive a free subscription to Questia for the spring semester and $100 for the completion of the market surveys and reports. The Questia student rep. at the college with the highest percentage of students subscribing will win an all-expense trip to Houston "to see the inner workings of an Internet startup"-- presumably Questia! 

So what does Questia have to offer its subscribers? First, students have 24x7 access to a large, although dated, collection of books. Although many libraries have a book collection that exceeds Questia's current collection of 44,500 titles, access to a library's books is limited to the hours that the library is open. Moreover, when Questia's collection begins to include journal articles, its subscribers will finally be able to do a single search and retrieve book and article citations. To retrieve similar results at a library, the patron would have to do a book search in the library's OPAC and then several article searches across the library's suite of disparate article databases. It is not hard to imagine that some students would be willing to sacrifice on the currency of their research in exchange for 24x7 access and the time saved by searching only one collection.