North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Rodney Eveland" <reveland@collinscom.net>]

I came across the following info posted at coldclimategardening .com
in their archives of 2003. It looks like very useful information.
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http://weblog.coldclimategardening.com/archives/2003_03.html

I just discovered this . . . Google is scanning mail order catalogs
and making them available for the general public, including a whole
bunch of gardening catalogs! The selection is good--I've seen many
catalogs just clicking through the website briefly that I haven't
heard of before and want to check out. Not only that, it can save you
money (be still my frugal heart!) because you can look through a
catalog online instead of paying for the print version, when you're
not even sure if you want to order from them. But wait--it gets
better. You can type in the name of a plant and it will search all the
catalogs in its database and find every instance of it for you. How's
that for convenient shopping? I wouldn't use it to search for
something really common--you'd get too many hits. I just did a search
on "hepatica," and it turned up 23 catalogs in .07 seconds, plus
opened each catalog to the right page.

Those of you on dial-up connections might find it more aggravation
than it's worth, because it is so image intensive. Also, this is a
beta service of Google's, which means it's a little rough around the
edges. For example, some of the pages were scanned in crooked, and one
price couldn't be read because of that. Beta also means it could
disappear at any time, if the folks at Google decide it's not working
out. So try it while you can, and if you like it, let Google know.

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A lady named Kathleen posted the above info. Once again you need only
go to www.google.com , click on more and then click on catalogs, then
on Home and Garden (there are lots of other catalogs too). It has a
learning curve, but not too difficult with a bit of practice.