I've just written a blog post entitled "Every university library
should have one of these, but so far, only one does" - which could
equally apply to college libraries:
http://roddymacleod.wordpress.com/2010/06/06/every-university-library-should-have-one-of-these-but-so-far-only-one-does/

Towards the middle of the post is featured the first (and so far only)
example of a new low cost alternative to expensive A&I database search
services, and is called WattJournals http://www.hw.ac.uk/library/wattjournals.php

This is an example of a customisable search service with a local
interface. It searches only journals to which a library (in this
particular case, Heriot-Watt) subscribes (plus some OA journals). Full
text availability is guaranteed for members of the university
concerned, it has a simple easy-to-use interface, etc. WattJournals
essentially provides access to the content of those Heriot-Watt
University subscribed journals which have Table of Contents (TOC) RSS
feeds. There are now over 14,000 journals with TOC RSS feeds.
WattJournals also enables searches to be saved for later use, and the
export of citations to EndNote.

As libraries are faced with financial cutbacks, many may be forced to
cancel subscriptions to expensive database search services. What will
replace them? Google? A low-cost alternative similar to WattJournals
may be an alternative.

The details are contained in my blog post, and I think this may be of
great interest to some libraries.

Thanks for your time,

Roddy MacLeod