Online articles from March 2007

Online archives from March 2007

Dangerous assumptions.
March 1, 2007... It's human nature to make assumptions. We hear or read something and assume it's true (or untrue) based on our previous experience or on how the information is presented. This can be dangerous. Even mainstream media have been known to report a...

Cambridge purchases ProQuest.(industry news)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Cambridge Information Group (CIG) purchased the ProQuest Information and Learning unit from ProQuest Co. for $222 million and combined it with CSA. Marty Kahn will be CEO and Matt Dunie will be president. For more information, see the interview...

Dow Jones restructured.(industry news)(Dow Jones and Company Inc.)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Dow Jones & Co. restructured its Enterprise Media Group into three business units: Dow Jones Indexes and Reprints, Dow Jones Financial Information Services, and Dow Jones Content Technology Solutions. Factiva, now wholly owned by Dow Jones...

GPO salutes Ford.(industry news)(Government Printing Office)(Gerald R. Ford)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) is saluting the public service of recently deceased former President Gerald R. Ford by highlighting the availability of his public messages, speeches, and statements. They are free of charge in the...

The Thomson Corp. announced the acquisition of privately held Baker Robbins & Co.(Legal)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... The Thomson Corp. announced the acquisition of privately held Baker Robbins & Co., a provider of technology and information management consulting to law firms and law departments. The company will be aligned with Thomson's Consulting Services...

PinHawk, LLC, the publisher of daily NewzDigest emails for professionals.(Legal)(Law Firm Press NewzDigest)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... PinHawk, LLC, the publisher of daily NewzDigest emails for professionals, introduced Law Firm Press NewzDigest, an electronic newsletter that aggregates all large law firm press releases in one daily email, providing a source of information for...

H.W. Wilson announced the addition of more than 62,000 images to its Art Museum Image Gallery database.(Social Sciences & Humanities)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... H.W. Wilson announced the addition of more than 62,000 images to its Art Museum Image Gallery database. Drawn from about 1,800 sources worldwide, the new images include material from many of the most respected museums of Europe, Africa, South...

ProQuest Information and Learning's digital House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801-1900 is now available to all 2-year colleges and 4-year universities in the U.K. through funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and ProQuest.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... ProQuest Information and Learning's digital House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801-1900 is now available to all 2-year colleges and 4-year universities in the U.K. through funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and...

Thomson Gale announced the release of the Small Business Resource Center, a database offering content that covers all major areas of starting and operating a business, including accounting, finance, human resources, management, marketing, and taxes.(Business & Finance)(Thomson Corp. Thomson Gale)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Thomson Gale announced the release of the Small Business Resource Center, a database offering content that covers all major areas of starting and operating a business, including accounting, finance, human resources, management, marketing, and...

Reed Business Information launched a free new online publication, ContentAgenda.com, which is a global compendium of news reports and blog commentary on the home and personal entertainment industry powered by LexisNexis.(Business & Finance)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Reed Business Information launched a free new online publication, ContentAgenda.com, which is a global compendium of news reports and blog commentary on the home and personal entertainment industry powered by LexisNexis. At launch, there were...

Teragram Corp.(Business & Finance)(Reed Business Information Ltd. uses its technology)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Teragram Corp., a natural-language technology company, announced that Reed Business Information is using its technology to power its new business search engine, Zibb. Teragram's technology assigns metadata to Reed content and information...

CrossRef announced agreements with three new partners to include journals from developing countries in its linking network.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... CrossRef announced agreements with three new partners to include journals from developing countries in its linking network. The three organizations are INASP (the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications;...

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) announced patent information improvements in CAS databases available through STN, SciFinder, and SciFinder Scholar.(Sci-Tech)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) announced patent information improvements in CAS databases available through STN, SciFinder, and SciFinder Scholar. Improvements include Chinese patent records with information available 120 days faster than any...

Dialog added Engineering Information's (Ei) Engineering Index Backfile to Ei Compendex (File 8) and as a separate historical database (File 988).(Sci-Tech)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Dialog added Engineering Information's (Ei) Engineering Index Backfile to Ei Compendex (File 8) and as a separate historical database (File 988). The backfile adds more than 1.7 million records dating from 1884. File 988 ends with 1969, while...

NewspaperDirect.com and EMpact Sales, the publisher representation group within the EBSCO Information Services division.(Current Awareness)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... NewspaperDirect.com and EMpact Sales, the publisher representation group within the EBSCO Information Services division, announced a distribution agreement under which EMpact will represent NewspaperDirect's PressDisplay digital newspaper...

Access Innovations, Inc. (AI), content management specialists and publishers of the Data Harmony suite of taxonomy software tools, is working with the IEEE to improve the group's online research services.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Access Innovations, Inc. (AI), content management specialists and publishers of the Data Harmony suite of taxonomy software tools, is working with the IEEE to improve the group's online research services. AI has updated IEEE's in-house...

Factiva announced the addition of three new partners to its Taxonomy Warehouse Partner Network.(Alliances & Deals)(Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive L.L.C. partners with Cycorp Inc., Ibuki and Intellisophic)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Factiva announced the addition of three new partners to its Taxonomy Warehouse Partner Network--Austin, Texas-based Cycorp; Los Altos, Calif.-based Ibuki; and Paoli, Pa.-based Intellisophic. Taxonomy Warehouse is a community directory and...

Joint customers of Serials Solutions and LexisNexis U.S. can now search the LexisNexis Academic service through Central Search.(Alliances & Deals)(service enhancement)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Joint customers of Serials Solutions and LexisNexis U.S. can now search the LexisNexis Academic service through Central Search, Serials Solutions' federated search engine, via an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) gateway. Serials Solutions...

As a result of a restructure at Dow Jones' Enterprise Media Group, several management changes occurred within the group.(Peopleware)(Simon Alterman appointed as senior vice president of strategy)(Richard Hanks appointed as chief operating officer)(Alan Scott appoited as senior vice president and chief operating officer)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... As a result of a restructure at Dow Jones' Enterprise Media Group, several management changes occurred within the group. All of the following executives report to Clare Hart. Simon Alterman was appointed senior vice president of strategy and...

CrossRef.(Peopleware)(Geoffrey Bilder appointed to management team)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... CrossRef announced the addition of Geoffrey Bilder to its management team, in the newly created role of director of strategic initiatives.

H.W. Wilson.(Peopleware)(Mark Gauthier promoted to vice president of indexing and editorial services)(Joseph Miller promoted to vice president of catalogig)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... H.W. Wilson promoted Mark Gauthier to vice president of indexing and editorial services and Joseph Miller to vice president of cataloging and general reference.

George Plosker.(Peopleware)(award from Special Libraries Association )(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... George Plosker, newly appointed client services manager at IEEE, received the SLA San Andreas Chapter 2006 Author Award for his "Information Strategist" column, published in ONLINE since March/April 2004. Due to the pressures of his new job,...

Jason Seiken.(Peopleware)(PBS appoints him as senior vice president)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Internet pioneer Jason Seiken was appointed PBS' senior vice president of interactive, where he will oversee new media content and services, including pbs.org, pbskids.org, pbskidsgo.org, pbsparents.org, as well as emerging broadband and...

Idea Group, Inc.(Peopleware)(Henry Secor appointed as director of marketing and sales)(William C. Hayward appointed as director of marketing for books, journals)(Karolyn Kelly-O'Keefe appointed as director of communications)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Idea Group, Inc. announced the addition of Henry Secor, director of marketing & sales; William C. Hayward, director of marketing for books, journals, and electronic resources; and Karolyn Kelly-O'Keefe, director of communications. The new hires...

Thomson Scientific.(Biomedical)(different modules at Thomson Corp. Thomson Scientific)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Thomson Scientific announced that three new country modules--India, Israel and Turkey--are available in IDRAC, the global pharmaceutical regulatory intelligence database. Updated weekly, it brings together all the information needed to monitor...

The Thomson Corp.(Biomedical)(enhancements to PDR.net)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... The Thomson Corp. announced significant enhancements to PDR.net, the company's medical information portal for prescribers. Taking a strong focus on specialty coverage available through desktop, PDA, and email platforms, the enhanced PDR.net...

BioMed Central.(Open Access)(Journal of Medical Case Reports)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... BioMed Central announced the launch of the Journal of Medical Case Reports, the only journal in the world devoted purely to case reports. An online, open access, peer-reviewed journal, it is expected to publish its first articles in early 2007...

Oxford Journals.(Open Access)(contract with National Institutes of Health. National Library of Medicine)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Oxford Journals announced a new agreement with the National Library of Medicine (NLM) that will make all content published as open access under its Oxford Open model available from PubMed Central. The agreement makes it easier for authors...

John Wiley & Sons completed the acquisition of Health Economic Evaluations Database (HEED).(Open Access)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... John Wiley & Sons completed the acquisition of Health Economic Evaluations Database (HEED), an online source of health economic information and evaluations, in January. HEED was developed as a joint initiative between the Office of Health...

Inxight Federal Systems Group, a provider of federated search, extraction, and visualization solutions for government organizations, has partnered with Mosaic, Inc.(Enterprise Search)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Inxight Federal Systems Group, a provider of federated search, extraction, and visualization solutions for government organizations, has partnered with Mosaic, Inc. to provide professional services and knowledge-based solutions to government...

Recommind.(Enterprise Search)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Recommind launched a new version of its MindServer platform, which includes new e-discovery functionality that enables enterprises to locate electronically stored information that must be preserved--and produced--for ongoing or anticipated...

Thomson Gale.(Online Services)(Thomson Corp. Thomson Gale )(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Thomson Gale announced the addition of transcripts and audio from all National Public Radio (NPR) programs to Academic One-File, including NPR content from 1990 to the present (www.thomson.com).

EBSCO Information Services now includes Live Search Academic as one of the openURL-enabled sources for its LinkSource link resolver.(Online Services)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... EBSCO Information Services now includes Live Search Academic as one of the openURL-enabled sources for its LinkSource link resolver, which allows EBSCO A-to-Z customers to activate their online resources through Microsoft's Live Search Academic...

Preprint articles are now accessible via the EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service (EJS).(Online Services)
March 1, 2007... Preprint articles are now accessible via the EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service (EJS). Librarians can provide their end users with access to the most recent electronic content prior to its release in print format. When browsing EJS's...

CSA released CSA Illustrata, a deep indexing search engine for tables, figures, and illustrations found within articles published by scholarly journals.(Online Services)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... CSA released CSA Illustrata, a deep indexing search engine for tables, figures, and illustrations found within articles published by scholarly journals. Working with development partner Blackwell Publishing, CSA Illustrata: Natural Sciences is...

OCLC released its WorldCat Selection service for libraries.(Online Services)(OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc.)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... OCLC released its WorldCat Selection service for libraries, streamlining selection and ordering by moving these processes to the network level for new library materials, thus allowing selectors to view records from multiple vendors in one...

Ask.com.(search engine update)(IAC Search and Media)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Ask.com has a new experimental user interface (UI) called Ask X (www.askx.com) that moves the search box to the left and the results to the right of the screen. In addition to the regular Web results, hits from other databases--images,...

AskCity.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... AskCity is Ask.com's newly relaunched local search. It integrates four databases: Businesses, Events, Movies, and Maps and Directions. It also adds local information from Citysearch.com, Ticketmaster, TripAdvisor, and other content providers....

exalead.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... exalead now offers an account feature that lets users log in and store preferences and shortcuts. It also has expanded its "gadgets" and now offers toolbars for Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox, a Firefox search bar add-on, a Mac OS X...

Geographic searching.(search engine update)(Flash Earth)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Geographic Searching: With all the satellite and aerial imagery data sets at Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, and elsewhere, they obviously do not all use the same underlying data. Flash Earth (www.flashearth.com) provides a quick way to compare...

Google.(search engine update for patent searching)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Google launched a patent database that includes U.S. patents from the 1790s through the middle of 2006, with plans to add patents that are more recent. Google Patents can search U.S. and international patent classes, assignees, inventors, and...

Google Answers has been closed to new questions and answers.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Google Answers has been closed to new questions and answers. The database of existing answers remains available, at least for now. Google Answers was a fee-based service. Meanwhile, Yahoo! Answers, the 1-year-old free service, has been booming....

Google Book Search.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Google Book Search has a new book viewer. For books available in Full View or Limited Preview, the new viewer has a continuous scroll for the pages and a zoom capability. It sometimes has an algorithmically produced Contents section, links to...

Live Search.(search engine update)(Live Search Books)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Live Search has added a new database, Live Search Books, in beta (http://books.live.com). Also found under the "more" tab at the top of search results, Live Search Books consists of copyright-free works from libraries at the University of...

Live Search Academic.(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Live Search Academic beta (http://academic.live.com) has been updated with the addition of millions of biomedical articles. In this first major expansion of its scope beyond computer science, engineering, and physics, it now indexes thousands...

Open Content Alliance.(search engine update)
March 1, 2007... The Open Content Alliance (OCA) has digitized many works and made its searchable collection of full-text books available at the Internet Archive Text Archive (www.archive.org/details/texts). New collections to be added include works from The...

Sitemaps.(search engine update)(Google Inc.)(Microsoft Corp.)(Yahoo! Inc.)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Sitemaps (www.sitemap.org) is now a standard accepted by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Originally introduced by Google, Sitemaps uses a Web site owner-created XML (eXtensible Markup Language) file that can include each page on the site along...

Yahoo!(search engine update)(changes in extra database links)(Brief article)
March 1, 2007... Yahoo! has changed the extra database links above the search box on the main Yahoo! page. The visible choices above the search box have been cut down to Web, Images, Video, Local, and Shopping. The removed links (News, Audio, and Directory) are...

Trade agreements as the New Copyright Law: this trend portends a serious danger: the establishment of copyright policy in private ... and often in a way that circumvents Congress' authority as this country's sole legislative body.
March 1, 2007... Susan Schwab, the U.S. trade representative, reached a deal with trade officials from Russia during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Nov. 19, 2006. It calls for the former Soviet country to "significantly...

Cambridge Information Group buys ProQuest information and learning: an interview with CEO Martin Kahn and President Matt Dunie.(CAMBRIDGE PROQUEST)(ProQuest Co.)(Interview)
March 1, 2007... IN mid-December 2006, press releases from both privately held Cambridge Information Group (CIG) and public company ProQuest (PQ) announced that CIG had agreed to acquire the ProQuest Information and Learning (PQIL) segment of PQ for about $222...

Everybody's a critic: business watchdogs online: in an information overloaded world ... it's a chore to find qualified and balanced sources to rely on.
March 1, 2007... Most of us need advice at one time or another about the quality of business services or products--regardless of the information resources we have on hand or the number of social networks in which we participate. In an information overloaded...

The source of it all: William F. von Meister.(Biography)
March 1, 2007... Information professionals--accustomed to searching premium content databases such as Dialog, Factiva, and LexisNexis--know that these services have a long history, stretching back 3 decades. They're well aware that online information predates...

How we teach (or should teach) online searching.
March 1, 2007... "WHY do they still teach Dialog?" pondered one employer of graduates of library and information science programs. The setting was informal and the question evoked responses around the table, with two other people chiming in to agree that it...

Researching the "perfect payday" of corporate options backdating.
March 1, 2007... Imagine being able to choose the price at which you would like to buy a stock. You could find a date when the share price was very low, watch that stock, and when the price became much higher, buy lots of shares at the previously chosen low...

International search engines and directories: beyond tourist sights and sites.(Website list)
March 1, 2007... Finding good sites for international information is a challenge for many types of online research. In an increasingly global environment, the Web is not just for those with English as their mother tongue, nor is Google the only search engine....

Wake up to Web page change alerts.
March 1, 2007... Web pages change. Some change daily; some even more frequently. There are the Web pages that will eventually have more information added to them, but it is anyone's guess as to when. How do you track when such pages are finally updated?...

Searching by and for the book.
March 1, 2007... Before there were online and the Internet, libraries connoted books to most people. Yet books are one of the more overlooked research resources in an electronic-information environment. Those who advocate the Internet as a replacement for a...

The age of Darwinian design.
March 1, 2007... Rapid iterative design approaches are finding their way into standard practice for Web design teams. Rather than waiting for months or even years between major redesigns and then being crushed under the weight of such a gargantuan undertaking,...

North Carolina State and Plymouth State Universities' OPACs and Dialog's PsycINFO.(Online Public Access Catalog)(Column)
March 1, 2007... I have never before chosen an OPAC for this column, simply because I have not seen one that impressed me enough. Just because they show "Windows dressing" for window dressing and are accessible through the Web, functionally they are not that...

Self-service best practices.
March 1, 2007... When was the last time you worked with a travel agent to book a personal trip? Expedia, Travelocity.com, Priceline.com, and others have made online travel planning so easy that working through an agent for all but the most complicated trips (or...

Rethinking Information Work: A Career Guide for Librarians and Other Information Professionals.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... *** Rethinking Information Work: A Career Guide for Librarians and Other Information Professionals by G. Kim Dority ISBN: 978-1-59158-180-X Published: 2006 Pages: 236 pp.; softcover Price: $38 Available from: Libraries Unlimited, 88 Post Road...

Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2007... Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-Design Your Company's Future by Patricia B. Seybold ISBN: 978-0-06-113590-9 Published: 2006 Pages: 412 pp.; hardcover Price: $26.95 Available from: Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins...

Teaching Web Search Skills: Techniques and Strategies of Top Trainers.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... **** Teaching Web Search Skills: Techniques and Strategies of Top Trainers by Greg R. Notess ISBN: 978-1-57387-267-9 Published: 2006 Pages: 344 pp.; softcover Price: $29.50 Available from: Information Today, Inc., 143 Old Marlton Pike, Medford,...

Blogging for Dummies.(Book review)
March 1, 2007... *** Blogging for Dummies by Brad Hill ISBN: 978-0-471-77084-1 Published: 2006 Pages: 368 pp.; softcover Price: $21.99 Available from: Wiley Publishing, Inc., 111 River Street; Hoboken, NJ 07030; (800) 762-2974; www.wiley.com Like most...

Building a better search engine.
March 1, 2007... One way that we distinguish ourselves from Google--at least in the eyes of our clients or users--is by finding content that they can't. But we can also beat the search engines at their own game by creating a customized filter that can be...