Expansion and Diversification:

Diversification was the most important trend for databases during 1975-80. The early success of the Government-funded online experiments and the acceptance of online databases by the information community established the legitimacy of the medium. More and more non-profit as well as for-profit organisations undertook to produce databases. No longer the databases covered only scientific/technical contents, but they started covering the social sciences, humanities, and general interest or popular topics as well. Types of databases other than bibliographic began to emerge and directory and referral databases appeared on the scene. Full-text databases also increased in number. The number of online databases available at present is estimated to be over 3000. The era of computerised literature search has truly arrived.