Online articles from March 2002

Online archives from March 2002

Living with ambiguity. (The Homepage).(command language syntax of online services)(Brief Article)(Column)
March 1, 2002... My first year at university I took an English literature course from the award-winning novelist, John Hawkes. It was one of the most invigorating and frustrating courses I've ever experienced. In hindsight, I was much too young to appreciate...

Indexing remains at consumer reports. (Letters to the Editor).
March 1, 2002... To the Editor: When Ernest Perez interviewed me for his article, "HTML Indexer Aims to Index the Web" (ONLINE, November/December 2001, p. 52-56), I explained to him that I used the software to create the index for Consumerreports.org...

Perez clarifies indexing. (Letters to the Editor).
March 1, 2002... Dear Bob: You are correct that I used the phrase "...which he will not be able to index going forward." I understand your point that the reader might possibly infer that the site would not be indexed. I was writing here in the context of...

Alacra, Inc., not books. (Letters to the Editor).(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... To the Editor: In Barbie Keiser's article "Tips for Enhancing the Value of your Web Site" (ONLINE November/December 2001, pp. 40-51), she mentions, under "Negotiate New Services," introducing information from Alacra Book (formerly Data...

What the newsroom wants. (Letters to the Editor).(Letter to the Editor)
March 1, 2002... To the Editor: I just read the article by Barbie Keiser, "Tips for Enhancing the Value of your Web Site," (ONLINE, November/December 2001, pp. 40-51) and wanted to offer access to a survey we did of journalists to find out what they wanted...

Northern Light acquired by divine. (Industry News).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Days after announcing it was embracing the enterprise and turning its back on searching the free Web, Northern Light was acquired by Chicago-based divine inc. in an all stock transaction with no financial details revealed. Northern Light is the...

Ask Jeeves about Octopus. (Industry News).(Ask Jeeves acquires technology assets of Octopus Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Search engine developer Ask Jeeves has acquired the technology assets of Octopus Inc. and plans to use the new products to extend the search capabilities of its enterprise software, JeevesOne, to let users find information stored in back-end...

All the news that's fit to put on NewsEdge. (Industry News).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... With so many people interested in reading The New York Times, NewsEdge should be pleased that it can now offer the paper electronically on a daily basis across its product lines. Content will come from New York Times Digital and will be full...

Search engines. (Industry News).(Corbis adds new filter)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Corbis, a photography and fine art image provider, has added a new search filter to its search engine to help users search Corbis' licensed content for images created for commercial or editorial use, or both. The service also now offers the...

Finding tci.edu. (Industry News).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... In Barbie Keiser's "Tips for Enhancing the Value of Your Web Site" (ONLINE, November/December 2001), there are numerous examples of Web sites ending with tci.edu. St. John's University has purchased the College of Insurance and the tci.edu...

Ingram Library Services. (Online Services).(agreement with OCLC)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Under an agreement with OCLC, Ingram Library Services is adding evaluative content and bibliographic records to WorldCat (OCLC Online Union Catalog). As part of the agreement, Ingram is supplying descriptive content to enhance WorldCat records...

The MLA directory of periodicals. (Online Services).(Medical Library Association)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The MLA Directory of Periodicals is now available at no additional charge to subscribers of the OCLC FirstSearch service's MLA International Bibliography database. The directory is updated every six months and provides a listing for many of the...

LexisNexis and Knight Ridder. (Online Services).(form interactive-content alliance)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... LexisNexis and Knight Ridder have formed an interactive-content alliance, under which Knight Ridder Digital is syndicating its content available to LexisNexis users, and LexisNexis is powering access to 17 Knight Ridder newspapers in 28...

Factiva learning programs. (Online Services).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Factiva Learning Programs (Factiva, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company) include industry-leading etraining, online tutorials and product demos, Web-based seminars, reference material, and classroom training for corporate users. The programs come in...

Federal business opportunities. (Online Services).(online public access to government-wide federal procurement opportunities)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) has designated Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) as the single point of online public access to government-wide federal procurement opportunities exceeding $25,000. Effective January 4, 2002,...

ADISNEWS. (Biomedical).(FIZ Karlsruhe adds to STN Network)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... FIZ Karlsruhe has added ADISNEWS (Adis Newsletters) to its STN Network, providing access to global biomedical and healthcare issues. ADISNEWS offers information on all aspects of developments in drugs and drug therapy from 1983 to the present....

TOXCENTER. (Biomedical).(bibliographic toxicology information database)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... TOXCENTER (Chemical Abstracts Service)--a new database of bibliographic toxicology information from pharmacological, biomedical, and chemical literature published worldwide--is now available STN International, STN on the Web, and STN Easy....

Social Sciences & Humanities. (Industry News).(Internet Database Service from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Users searching the Internet Database Service (IDS) from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts can now link search results to full-text documents available through Project MUSE from Johns Hopkins University Press, PsycARTICLES from the American...

The Association for Computer Machinery. (Sci-Tech).(retrieval of technical content improvement)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) has improved organization and retrieval of the technical content in its ACM Portal. Response time with searches is reduced, and users can execute complex queries across both the full texts from the...

Chemical Abstract Service. (Sci-Tech).(chemical abstract collection)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Bibliographic and abstract information from Chemical Abstract Service's entire Chemical Abstracts (CA) collection back to 1907 is now available for searching through STN, SciFinder, and SciFinder Scholar. The CA and CAplus files now include 3.8...

ProQuest Company. (Alliances & Deals).(ProQuest Information and Learning acquires SoftLine Information)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... ProQuest Company's Information and Learning unit has acquired SoftLine Information, an online database producer for libraries and educational institutions. SoftLine's databases are now available from ProQuest and offer more than 500 newspapers...

LexisNexis. (Alliances & Deals).(forms alliance with WhizBang! Labs)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... LexisNexis has formed an alliance with WhizBang! Labs, an information extraction products and services provider. LexisNexis will use WhizBang!'s Extraction Framework to deliver current information to LexisNexis Advertising Red Books and...

LexisNexis and DolphinSearch, Inc. (Alliances & Deals).(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... LexisNexis and DolphinSearch, Inc. have announced an alliance whereby LexisNexis will market DolphinSearch technology to its customers as a standalone knowledge-management solution and as an optional add-on component of the LexisNexis Portal....

A.D.A.M. Inc. (Alliances & Deals).(acquires Integrative Medicine Communications Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Interactive consumer health information developer, A.D.A.M., Inc., has acquired Integrative Medicine Communications, Inc., a privately-held provider of science-based information on wellness and alternative medicine. Under terms of the...

Access Innovations, Inc. (Alliances & Deals).(partners with RedDot Solutions Corp.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Access Innovations, Inc. has partnered with RedDot Solutions Corporation to offer its specialized Data Harmony software suite with RedDot's Web-templating interface and thus provide a tool for enterprise-wide content management. The tool will...

SkyMinder. (Business & Finance).(announces partnerships with ORT and Global Securities Information)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... SkyMinder has announced new partnerships with ORT and Global Securities Information (GSI). GSI provides legal and financial securities information to law and accounting firms, investment banks, corporations, and the business press. It provides...

FT Pro. (Business & Finance).(Financial Times' personalized global news search and monitoring service)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... FT.com (Financial Times) has launched FT Pro as a personalized global news search and monitoring service for North American executives and corporations. It provides tailored news, commentary and analysis, as well as information on customers,...

Canadian Business and Current Affairs. (Business & Finance).(managed changes by Micromedia Ltd.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... After evaluating the Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA) product family over the past year, Micromedia has instituted several changes and enhancements. Indexing of all regional newspapers was discontinued in January of this year. At...

Business Monitor International and Economist Intelligence Unit. (Business & Finance).(sign agreement with Gale Group tp have content available on databases)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Business Monitor International and Economist Intelligence Unit have signed agreements to have their content available through Gale Group's InfoTrac databases and online Resource Centers, increasing coverage in Gale's Business & Company Resource...

Lycos Small Business. (Business & Finance).(users to receive Terra Lycos S.A. feature of NewsEDGE Corp. daily news services)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The NewsEdge Corporation's Editor's Picks daily news service will be featured on the Lycos Small Business destination of Terra Lycos. Lycos Small Business users will now receive news and information from more than 150 varied topics for small...

Peopleware.(various appointments in the computer industry)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... The Dialog Corporation has appointed Chris Naylor chief financial officer, where she will serve as Dialog's senior financial officer, managing all the company's financial activities worldwide. Prior to joining Dialog, Naylor was a vice...

ScreamingMedia Inc. (Portals).(alliance with Documentum Inc.)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... ScreamingMedia Inc. announced an alliance with Documentum to offer enterprises an end-to-end content integration and management solution. Using ScreamingMedia's SiteWare software, companies will be able to integrate customized, real-time...

Intelliseek. (Portals).(announces release of new computer software)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Intelliseek announced the release of its Enterprise Search Server (ESS) version 3.5, an SML-based, intelligent agent platform. ESS provides a platform for unified access to thousands of information sources and databases across the corporate...

LexisNexis Academic & Library Solutions. (Portals).(announces two new products)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Two new products from LexisNexis Academic & Library Solutions (formerly Congressional Information Service) are available to the academic community. LexisNexis Media Analyzer, produced in association with CARMA imMEDIAte, allows students and...

Delphion and PATOLIS Corp. (Legal).(agreement)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Delphion and PATOLIS Corp., a spin-off of the Japan Patent Information Organization (JAPIO) and the first privatized company of a Japanese public organization, have announced an agreement under which PATOLIS will use Delphion's solutions to...

The Dialog Corporation. (Legal).(TRADEMARKSCAN Japan now available)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... TRADEMARKSCAN Japan (The Dialog Corporation) is now available for online searching and document retrieval through the Dialog service (File 669). The database is produced by Thomson & Thomson, and currently contains more than 2.5 million active...

LexisONE. (Legal).(adding five sections to lexisONE -- Business Litigation & Bankruptcy; Criminal Law; Estates, Trust and Tax Law; Family Law; and Intellectual Property Law)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Five practice-area-specific sections are being added to lexisONE, LexisNexis' Web-based resource for solo and small firm attorneys. The new sections are Business Litigation & Bankruptcy; Criminal Law; Estates, Trust and Tax Law; Family Law; and...

Thomson Corp. (Legal).(acquires Sintese; strengthens Brazilian position)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Thomson Corp. recently solidified its position in Brazil by buying the country's largest electronic publisher, Sintese, for an undisclosed amount. Sintese publishes summaries and full-text cases, legislation pieces, and doctrines on CD-ROM. It...

AltaVista. (Internet Search Engine Update).(listing enhancements)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... AltaVista has introduced several listing enhancements that are available for a fee but do not change ranking. These include logos, descriptive icons, custom tag lines, and text links. These are like enhanced yellow page listings, providing more...

Ask Jeeves. (Internet Search Engine Update).(includes Teoma-powered results)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Ask Jeeves, which purchased new search engine Teoma several months ago, now includes Teoma results after its question and answer matches. The Teoma-powered results are not labeled as such, but they are the hits that appear under the heading...

Inktomi. (Internet Search Engine Update).(Excite search engine results are Overture items followed by Inktomi hits)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Excite is no longer a separately built search engine. The site remains, and its personalization capabilities remain, but the search engine is gone. Now all the results on Excite are the Overture (formerly GoTo) paid-positioning items followed...

Google. (Internet Search Engine Update).(google groups, searching stopwords, catalog database in beta)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Google continues to be very active with many changes. Google Groups is not only out of beta, but has expanded its coverage of Usenet news postings all the way back to May 1981. It also enlarged its Web database to include over 1.5 billion fully...

Inktomi. (Internet Search Engine Update).(new technologies put into search engine)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Inktomi has incorporated new regional identification and blending technologies, as well as enhanced language analysis, into its Web search engine. This can have different results at each partner search engine but provides the ability for the...

Lycos. (Internet Search Engine Update).(changes advanced search layout)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Lycos has made a major change to the layout of its advanced search page. Beyond the layout, the new design makes it easier to combine various field searches and to specify which database to search. These databases include the Fast Search...

Northern Light. (Internet Search Engine Update).(shutters web search engine)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Northern Light has abandoned its Web search engine. It no longer offers any Web searching for the public at its site. While it has shut down the Web side of its search engine, the Special Collection is still available for free searching. News...

Teoma. (Internet Search Engine Update).(coming out of beta in second quarter 2002)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Teoma, in addition te having its search results displayed on Ask Jeeves' site, is scheduled to come out of beta in the second quarter of 2002. The Teoma search engine site remains the only one that offers separate links to metasites that match...

WiseNut. (Internet Search Engine Update).(licensing deal with Lycos Japan)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... WiseNut has a new licensing deal with Lycos Japan to be its search engine. Lycos Japan will include WiseNut's WiseGuide folders, as well as their "Sneak-a-Peek" feature that allows Internet Explorer users to see a portion of the results page...

Yahoo! (Internet Search Engine Update).(annual fee for sites within commercial hierarchies)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2002... Yahoo! is now charging an annual fee for sites within the commercial hierarchies. Formerly, Yahoo! only charged once for submission within those areas. The sections under the Business and Economy heading are now labeled as the "Yahoo!...

Web search agents: One-stop shopping" for researchers.(Column)
March 1, 2002... It's not an unusual scenario: You know the information you need is somewhere out there on the Web. Now, you're expected to get it-- absolutely, positively, and quickly. What to do? Where to start, how to do it, for a power searcher, quality...

Cataloging's comeback: Classifying and organizing corporate documents.(corporate portal solutions)(Column)
March 1, 2002... Thousands of corporations are in the midst of implementing corporate portal solutions. While these portals come in all shapes and sizes, they have a fundamental goal: to increase company productivity by serving employees with accurate, timely,...

Searching the PCT patent files: Another instance of faux full text.(Patent Cooperation Treaty)(Column)
March 1, 2002... Over the last few years, there has been an explosion in access to online files containing the complete texts of patents. These types of files present some unique advantages to both regular and infrequent searchers, but they also have some...

eStat database; eFficient eFfective eFfordable eSsential: You can never get enough of a good thing: Godiva chocolate, MASH reruns, and yes, indexing (or as it's cool to now call it-- taxonomies).(EMarketer Inc.)(Column)
March 1, 2002... Remember those days when full-text online article access was just a dream? When we were dependent on the thoroughness, the consistency, the intelligence of abstracting and indexing? Remember PTS PROMT (when it really was PTS PROMT)? When...

A traditional library goes virtual: Planning the virtual library requires a vision that brings changes to all aspects of the library's operations. The following is an account of one library's experience.(Column)
March 1, 2002... Library tours at my organization are not what they used to be. As head librarian at Bell Canada's Information Resource Centre (IRC) in Montreal, I used to take pride in showing groups of users and graduate library school students around our...

Financial information: For public companies. (Researching).(top business portals)(Column)
March 1, 2002... Since we are creatures of habit, I imagine that most researchers automatically go to one favorite Internet site for financial information on U.S. publicly traded companies. Dozens of business portals are providing financial data in order to...

Lessons for working with web designers.(Column)
March 1, 2002... The Yale University Library's Web site (www.library.yale.edu) had the same design in place for four years--a lifetime in Web terms. Like the house that Jack built, it had accreted new bits and pieces and additions over the years and lacked...

History lesson: CAB International.(Column)
March 1, 2002... What connection do two British entomologists sent to Africa in the first decade of the 1900s have with a modem electronic database that is branching out into creating futuristic Web communities? Without them, there would be no insect collection...

The Wayback Machine: The Web's Archive. (On the Net).(Alexa Internet, Internet Archive)(Column)
March 1, 2002... now that the Internet is established in the public information space, it has become a new publishing medium. The Web in particular has proved an incredible repository of all kinds of information content. But it has also proven to be a very...

Profiling Companies. (The Dollar Sign).(Column)
March 1, 2002... Company profiles are becoming a hot commodity. I use the word commodity intentionally, since I've noticed a trend towards packaging company information into a nice neat little container that includes a wide (or, in some cases, not so wide)...

Corporate portals post dot com. (O'leary Online).(consolidation of Internet industry evaluated)(Column)
March 1, 2002... We're now in the post dot com age, as the great dot com contraction of the past year and a half continues. Once high-flying sites are being bought out, reducing staff, scrambling to come up with alternative revenue streams, or simply...

The changing person within the information profession. (Industry Insights).(Column)
March 1, 2002... I spent much of the last quarter of 2001 working on strategic planning for 2002 and beyond with corporate information managers and their teams. In almost every case, in order to deliver on its strategic imperative, the information function...

Section 508 and your Web site. (Web Site Management).(Column)
March 1, 2002... Whether your Web site is large, small, or somewhere in between, you may be confused by recent Web site accessibility standards, and how these guidelines and the associated U.S. federal legislation will affect the current and future development...

Just in time training: Creating viewlets for intranet applications. (Intranet Librarian).(Column)
March 1, 2002... If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a short demonstration worth? Who knows? There are many instances where being able to show the actual steps to carry out a specific task for an intranet application is far more effective than...

FOS newsletter archive FindArticles.com Wikipedia. (Peter's Picks & Pans).(evaluations of Free Online Scholarship Newsletter, FindArticles.com and Wikipedia)(Column)
March 1, 2002... My first pick is the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter archive edited by Peter Suber, which provides lucid, well-balanced summaries about developments in electronic publishing, digital copyright, and new digital services and products of...

Crashing every hour. (PC Monitor).(Column)
March 1, 2002... What? You say you don't get the Blue Screen of Death at least three times a day? You must be leading a charmed life, at least compared to tech writers. These writers seem to face a constant stream of Windows freezes and crashes, with Mac users...

Recommended reading on new systems and prominent people. (Hardcopy).
March 1, 2002... This month I look at a couple of books for implementing new systems in your library and then step back for some digital life examinations with Barbara Quint and a host of writers from Forbes ASAP. *** Managing Electronic Reserves ...

Dialog's connect-time pricing. (Online Spotlight).(Brief Article)(Column)
March 1, 2002... I'm one of those long-time Dialog searchers who get all misty-eyed at the memories of thermal printers and calculating per-minute costs of each of Dialog's 10 or 15 files. OK, maybe not misty-eyed, but I did cut my searching teeth on Dialog and...