The Library has two valauble resources for making decisions as a consumer. You are probably familiar with the magazine Consumer Reports. The Library owns the actual print magazine back to 2006.  But good news!  The Library now has access to PDF copies of every issue since the mid-1980s thanks to MasterFILE Premier.  There are 1,700 magazines and other resources in this database, and doing a specific search for articles in Consumer Reports is tricky.* 

But more good news!  On either of these pages, Web Resources by Title or Web Resources by Subject, you can locate a box that will search only Consumer Reports in MasterFILE Premier. Thus you can get all the Consumer Reports articles about that refrigerator you are tempted to buy.

The other review source is Chicago Consumers' Checkbook (for use only in the Library). We also get this in print, and you can find them in the Business Reference area. This resource specializes in evaluations of local servcies including medical, home, automotive and retail.  The evaulations are based on consumer surveys, filed complaints, and Checkbook's own price surveys.  Though there are reviews for businesses, they won't appear in the database until the business has accumulated 10 reviews.  Chicago Consumers' Checkbook is also a great place to go to get specialized reviews:

• Top Doctors – both peer reviewed and public reviewed
• Hospital reviews with government data and physician surveys
• Auto and homeowners insurance

Coming soon to our Reference site will be a comprehensive list of review sites, most which you can access from home, but all available in the Library. 

 *  If you want to search for a specific magazine in MasterFILE Premier, we have a shortcut to that.  On our Library's specialized e-journals search page, you can locate the resource for many magazines and newspapers.    Just type the name of the journal you want in the search box, and hit enter.  The results will show you the start and end date for them as well as links into that magazine's research page.  Here you can browse through all the issues or do a specific search.

And one more thing!  While writing this post, a project I was working on early - a list of 40 consumer resource sites – has been put onto the Library webpage.  You can find it here.