Online articles from July 2007

Online archives from July 2007

Silos, us, them, and user-generated content.(home page)(effects of information silos and problems faced by information professionals)(Editorial)
July 1, 2007... I've never been a fan of information silos. The opposite--looking in one place for everything I need--is compelling but appallingly lacking in many libraries. It's frequently the case, certainly in my local public library, that users can't find...

Thomson divests.(industry news)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... As previously announced 7 months ago, The Thomson Corp. finally followed through on its plans to divest itself of its Learning Division. Funds advised by Apax Partners (co-founded by legendary venture capitalist and financier Alan Patricof) and...

Thomson acquires.(industry news)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... In the middle of announcements of Thomson divestitures came the news of its planned acquisition of Reuters Group, plc for $17.2 billion. If approved by regulators, the deal will close at the end of 3Q 2007. Reuters will be merged with Thomson...

Trusting Wikipedia.(industry news)(Survey)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... According to a poll released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, more than a third of American adult Internet users (36 percent) regularly consult the citizen-generated online encyclopedia Wikipedia. On a typical day in winter 2007, 8...

Donate to Iraqi libraries.(industry news)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... InterDok Corp., publisher of the Directory of Published Proceedings and The Meetings Index databases, is sending donations of books and CD-ROMs to several libraries in Iraq to assist with the rebuilding of their collections. If your library has...

Thomson Business Intelligence.(Business & Finance)(Market Research.com)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Thomson Business Intelligence (TBI) sold Profound to Market Research.com for an undisclosed amount. The new name is Market Research.com Profound. In a letter to customers, MarketResearch.com said that, although nothing changes in regard to the...

Factiva Companies & Executives and Factiva SalesWorks added Zacks Research Reports, which provide analyst reports for more than 7,000 U.S. and Canadian public companies from more than 50 brokerage firms as well as industry reports.(Business & Finance)(Zacks Research)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Factiva Companies & Executives and Factiva SalesWorks added Zacks Research Reports, which provide analyst reports for more than 7,000 U.S. and Canadian public companies from more than 50 brokerage firms as well as industry reports. Factiva will...

Elite Business Intelligence.(Business & Finance)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... The latest release of Elite Business Intelligence, Version 2.2, is available from The Thomson Corp. It is the first software to achieve compliance with the Unicode character standard, a protocol for the interchange, processing, and display of...

BioMed Central announced the first three journals to be launched by PhysMath Central, BioMed Central's open access publishing platform for the fields of physics, mathematics, and computer science.(Sci-Tech)
July 1, 2007... BioMed Central announced the first three journals to be launched by PhysMath Central, BioMed Central's open access publishing platform for the fields of physics, mathematics, and computer science. PMC Physics A covers particle, high-energy and...

scitopia.org.(Sci-Tech)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Thirteen leading science and technology societies launched scitopia.org, a free, federated, vertical search portal covering the most cited in scholarly work and patents. More than 3 million documents, including peer-reviewed journal content and...

STN International added INPADOCDB, the world's largest online patent database, containing more than 63 million patents.(Sci-Tech)
July 1, 2007... STN International added INPADOCDB, the world's largest online patent database, containing more than 63 million patents and utility models from 80 patent organizations (www.fiz-karlsruhe.de; www.stn-international.de).

Thomson Carswell (Canadian provider of information and electronic research to the legal, tax, finance, accounting, and human resources markets) and Lexpert (Canadian publisher of news and information about the business of law) announced the launch of Deal Monitor.(Legal)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Thomson Carswell (Canadian provider of information and electronic research to the legal, tax, finance, accounting, and human resources markets) and Lexpert (Canadian publisher of news and information about the business of law) announced the...

CCH Hedge Funds and Private Equity: Regulatory & Risk Management Update.(Legal)
July 1, 2007... CCH Hedge Funds and Private Equity: Regulatory & Risk Management Update is a new monthly newsletter covering developments on the regulation of hedge funds and related financial vehicles. It is available in print or through the CCH Internet...

MuseGlobal and ABC-CLIO announced the release of an XML Gateway Source Package for ABCCLIO's America: History and Life and its Historical Abstracts databases.(Social Sciences & Humanities)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... MuseGlobal and ABC-CLIO announced the release of an XML Gateway Source Package for ABCCLIO's America: History and Life and its Historical Abstracts databases. Public, academic, and school library customers licensing these databases from...

WilsonWeb now delivers 120 fulltext Springer journals.(Social Sciences & Humanities)
July 1, 2007... WilsonWeb now delivers 120 fulltext Springer journals. The new additions join more than 2,100 journals in WilsonWeb art, science, business, education, humanities, law, and social science databases, as well as on Wilson's OmniFile...

Thomson Learning announced the release of Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center Critical Thinking.(Social Sciences & Humanities)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Thomson Learning announced the release of Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center Critical Thinking. The new module offers activities, assessments, and tools that encourage students to interact with, argue about, and analyze issues and concepts,...

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) joined with Southern Methodist University (SMU) Central University Libraries, which are part of GPO's Federal Depository Library Program, to provide a digital collection of more than 300 U.S. government publications distributed during the course of World War II.(Social Sciences & Humanities)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) joined with Southern Methodist University (SMU) Central University Libraries, which are part of GPO's Federal Depository Library Program, to provide a digital collection of more than 300 U.S. government...

OCLC Asia Pacific.(Peopleware)(appointment of Andrew H. Wang)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Andrew H. Wang was promoted to vice president of OCLC Asia Pacific. He has worked for 31 years for OCLC, most recently as executive director of OCLC Asia Pacific Services.

Karen Calhoun.(Peopleware)(appointment of Karen Calhoun)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Karen Calhoun, senior associate university librarian for information technology and technical services at Cornell University Library, joined the OCLC leadership team as vice president of OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services.

RLG Programs.(Peopleware)(appointment of Roy Tennant at OCLC)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Roy Tennant left the University of California to accept a position with OCLC in the RLG Programs group.

SirsiDynix International.(Peopleware)(appointment of Keith Sturges)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Keith Sturges was named president of SirsiDynix International, a new division with oversight of operations outside North America. SirsiDynix customer support, sales, and administrative operations in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East & Africa,...

Swets.(Peopleware)(appointment of Johan van Campen)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Swets announced the appointment of Johan van Campen as its new chief operations officer/chief information officer.

ProQuest CSA.(Peopleware)(appointment of Simon Beale)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... ProQuest CSA named Simon Beale senior vice president of global sales, Mark Hyer vice president of sales for North America, and Terry Robinson vice president of sales for EMEA and Latin America.

Thomson Elite.(Peopleware)(Bruce Wilson promoted)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Thomson Elite promoted Bruce Wilson to vice president of Business Intelligence Solutions to lead the company's recently established Business Intelligence segment.

Publishing Technology, PLC.(Peopleware)(appointment of Leigh Dodds and Gary Bowman)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Publishing Technology, PLC, formed through the merger of Ingenta and VISTA, appointed two key technology leaders to oversee the company's technical activities: Leigh Dodds (CTO of Ingenta) and Gary Bowman (product engineering director of...

Michael Platt.(Peopleware)(appointment of Michael Platt)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Michael Platt joined Serials Solutions as director of library support.

Inference Data.(Peopleware)(appointment of Lou Andreozzi)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Inference Data announced that former LexisNexis North American CEO Lou Andreozzi has joined the company as chief executive officer.

Wolters Kluwer Health.(Peopleware)(appointment of Mark Spiers)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Wolters Kluwer Health announced the appointment of Mark Spiers as president and CEO of its Healthcare Analytics business unit.

Factiva.(Current Awareness)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Factiva announced content additions featuring newspapers and news services from Australia, India, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the U.K., and the U.S.; inline images from six Russian newspapers; newspapers and news services from Georgia and...

MuseGlobal and Newstex announced the availability of BlogAlerts, a new product that delivers blog content to information providers and enterprise customers.(Current Awareness)
July 1, 2007... MuseGlobal and Newstex announced the availability of BlogAlerts, a new product that delivers blog content to information providers and enterprise customers. BlogAlerts complements the existing Newstex Blogs On Demand (www.museglobal.com;...

Serials Solutions.(Enterprise Search)
July 1, 2007... Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest CSA, introduced an e-resource access and management service for the library technology market. Serials Solutions 360 combines discovery, management, and consulting services into an integrated...

ArianeSoft, Inc. announced the release of DataMite, a software tool for data extraction and conversion.(Enterprise Search)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... ArianeSoft, Inc. announced the release of DataMite, a software tool for data extraction and conversion. It allows users to build visual SQL queries as a way to filter and modify data (www.arianesoft.ca).

MuseGlobal announced its participation in the Blackboard Building Blocks Program, created in 2001 by Blackboard to foster development of sharable, repurposeable Web applications.(Enterprise Search)
July 1, 2007... MuseGlobal announced its participation in the Blackboard Building Blocks Program, created in 2001 by Blackboard to foster development of sharable, repurposeable Web applications. More than 400 academic institutions and thousands of developers...

MuseGlobal and Swets announced the implementation of MuseGlobal's Content Mining tool into SwetsWise Searcher.(Enterprise Search)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... MuseGlobal and Swets announced the implementation of MuseGlobal's Content Mining tool into SwetsWise Searcher. It allows users to drill down to the most applicable information by "mining" the returned search results on each query, identifying...

Prenax, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of global subscription agency Prenax Global, announced the acquisition of the shares of Basch Subscriptions, Inc. in March.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Prenax, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of global subscription agency Prenax Global, announced the acquisition of the shares of Basch Subscriptions, Inc. in March. Going forward, both Basch Subscriptions and Prenax, Inc. will continue as...

LexisNexis, as part of its Total Practice Solutions, announced an alliance with Dow Jones & Co. to produce an offering law firms can use to stay current on important news affecting their practices.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... LexisNexis, as part of its Total Practice Solutions, announced an alliance with Dow Jones & Co. to produce an offering law firms can use to stay current on important news affecting their practices. LexisNexis Continuous Alerts, powered by...

Informa, which publishes Lloyd's List for the maritime industry and Scrip, a newsletter for the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Informa, which publishes Lloyd's List for the maritime industry and Scrip, a newsletter for the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, will buy market intelligence analysis firm Datamonitor, PLC for about $994 million...

Blackwell Book Services introduced a service to provide customers with the opportunity to make better-informed collection development decisions.(Alliances & Deals)(Library Dynamics)(Blackwell Book Services)(Houtschild International Booksellers)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Blackwell Book Services introduced a service to provide customers with the opportunity to make better-informed collection development decisions. Through a partnership with Library Dynamics, Blackwell will incorporate into its collection...

Experian announced its acquisition of Hitwise, an Internet marketing intelligence company that helps clients monitor Web site performance and target online advertising spending.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Experian announced its acquisition of Hitwise, an Internet marketing intelligence company that helps clients monitor Web site performance and target online advertising spending. Founded in 1998, Hitwise collects and aggregates information from...

EBSCO Publishing and Newstex announced an alliance to deliver Newstex Content On Demand and Newstex Blogs On Demand via nearly 100 EBSCO databases.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... EBSCO Publishing and Newstex announced an alliance to deliver Newstex Content On Demand and Newstex Blogs On Demand via nearly 100 EBSCO databases. As part of the distribution agreement, full-text blog content from premier Weblogs, with...

Copyright Renewal Database.(Online Services)(Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources )(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) launched an online database to search copyright-renewal records for books published in the U.S. between 1923 and 1963. SULAIR developed the Copyright Renewal Database with...

Inmagic, Inc.(Online Services)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Inmagic, Inc. announced the release of a bilingual French/English version of its Inmagic Genie Web-based integrated library system. Genie customers will have the option of using the application in either French or English on a...

Amazon.(search engine update)(A9.com)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Amazon has redesigned its A9.com search engine and Web site. The A9.com site now looks more like a search technology corporate site, even though it still has a search box. The search box has two choices: OpenSearch and Product Search. The...

Ask.com.(search engine update)(www.sitemaps.org)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Ask.com has joined the other major search engines in supporting the Sitemap protocol (a Web site owner-created XML file that includes descriptive information for each page on a site). In addition, Ask.com and the main search engines all now...

Exalead.(search engine update)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Exalead has launched more international versions of its search engine--for Germany, Spain, and the U.K. It has updated its image searching with a larger database and a new limit option for finding pictures of human faces. The "face" limit...

Google.(search engine update)(Google Scholar)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Google has added Google Scholar to its "more" databases drop-down list for many more users, even those not located at a .edu domain. A few Google services have been renamed. Google Personalized Homepage is now iGoogle; Froogle, Google's...

Live Search.(search engine update)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Live Search has stopped supporting several advanced commands due to their use by rogue data miners. Any use of the link:, linkdomain:, and inurl: operators now results in a blank screen with no results. Live has posted that it hopes to bring...

Topix.(search engine update)(topix.com )(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Topix has transformed itself from being a news search engine and aggregator into more of a local news-focused site with an emphasis on users contributing news. Now available at topix.com (in addition to its previous address of topix.net), the...

Yahoo!(search engine update)(Brief article)
July 1, 2007... Yahoo! has launched a special lyrics database (http://music.yahoo.com/lyrics) for popular song lyrics. They display as image files (to ensure that they are not reproduced in violation of publishers' copyrights), and yet the text is fully...

Who's on third in Second Life? From Library 2.0 to Library 3-D.(3-D virtual world)(Cover story)(Product/service evaluation)
July 1, 2007... NO, the title of this article does not refer to baseball. Numerous articles, blog entries, workshops, and discussions about Library 2.0 extol how important it is to get our users involved--creating, participating, and interacting with us...

Simplifying complexity through a single federated search box.(Fox hunt)
July 1, 2007... THE beginning of the 21st century saw dramatic changes in the college information landscape. The numerical limits imposed by CD-ROM databases were rendered obsolete by high-speed Internet, and they largely disappeared from libraries to be...

Making sense of users: one person's experience.(2007 Buying & Selling eContent conference)(Viewpoint essay)
July 1, 2007... THE invitation was an intriguing one. I would have a chance, at the 2007 Buying & Selling eContent (BSeC) conference (www.buy-sell-econtent.com), "to experience a cutting-edge technique for gaining a cognitive edge in their own enterprise....

Outsourcing specialized publishing jobs.
July 1, 2007... IN less than 2 years, ThomasNet's Industrial Newsroom (www.thomasnet.com) has tripled--from 700 to 2,300--the number of online product information news articles it publishes monthly. How did the company skyrocket its production without busting...

Keeping track of European Union developments.(Organization overview)
July 1, 2007... This March (2007) marked the 50th anniversary of the European Union (EU), established under the Treaty of Rome. Today, there are 27 member countries with three candidate countries waiting to join. These member countries have set up common...

Building vertical search engines.(on the net)(Column)
July 1, 2007... I explored subset search techniques for using the major Web search engines to limit searches to a particular set of domains in my September/October 2005 column. While the techniques are still valid, the compiling of a large list of domains for...

Finding and using the magic words: keywords, thesauri, and free text search.(the dollar sign)
July 1, 2007... A major characteristic that distinguishes information professionals from casual Web searchers is our determination to find the best, most appropriate search terms. We sometimes construct elaborate search strategies to obtain highly relevant,...

Blind co-browsing, teachable moments, and the power of gaming.(infolit land)(online searching methods)(Viewpoint essay)
July 1, 2007... IT was near Christmas, so my university library's virtual reference service, with online push and co-browse technology, was on hiatus. That left us with blind co-browsing by telephone. On the other end of the telephone line was a senior...

Tweaking your Web site.(intranet librarian)
July 1, 2007... AS intranet sites grow larger and more complex, the task of undertaking a complete redesign becomes more daunting--not only is it costly to undertake, but by the time you are done, it may be too late for many of your users. A great intranet...

SpringerLink, Blackwell Synergy, Wiley InterScience.(peter's pick & pans)
July 1, 2007... Academic libraries with digital versions of the thousands of scholarly journals to which they subscribe too often find these are underused because the library does not have a federated search engine. Even with one, there is no "connector" for...

Recommended reading on change, creativity, search, XHTML, and CSS.(hard copy)(Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything)(The Imagination Challenge: Strategic Foresight and Innovation in the Global Economy)(The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher, 2d ed.)(HTML Dog: The Best-Practice Guide to XHTML and CSS)(Book review)
July 1, 2007... This month I look at two books to help you change your business or product development methods, a guide to Web searching, and a reference for creating standards-based Web pages with CSS. ***[A] Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration...

Blog searching with Technorati.(online spotlight)(Technorati Inc.)
July 1, 2007... I remember when I first encountered blogs; I had the same reaction as I had to early Web pages: "Interesting, but who cares about the thoughts of some dweeb in a dorm room with Web access? Show me the content!" For an early adopter, I certainly...