Online articles from March 2008

Online archives from March 2008

Social media, information seeking, and generational differences.(homepage)
March 1, 2008... At autumn library conferences, I heard numerous presentations that focused on younger people's use--and perception--of technology (people, that is, who are younger than the presenters). Comparing expectations of digital natives with those of...

ChaCha dances with mobile search.(industry news)(ChaCha Search Inc.)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... ChaCha, the metasearch engine that adds "human-powered" search to its repertoire, announced its entry into mobile search. Send a text message to 242242 (that spells "chacha" on your phone's keypad) and get answers from the ChaCha guides. Some...

Wikimedia requests license change.(industry news)(Wikimedia Foundation requests Free Software Foundation to modify GNU Free Documentation License)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees formally requested that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) modify the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) so that mass collaborative projects such as Wikipedia can use and license existing GFDL...

Record M&A highs in 2007.(industry news)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. reported that mergers and acquisitions for the media and information industries reached record highs in 2007, handily exceeding 2006. With 838 transactions and nearly $110 billion in value, up by 32% and 79%,...

ProQuest now offers Corporate PressDisplay from NewspaperDirect.(Current Awareness)(ProQuest L.L.C.)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ProQuest now offers Corporate PressDisplay from NewspaperDirect, which allows corporate librarians to deliver customized news services from more than 450 worldwide sources directly to executives' and information...

MetaCarta, Inc., a provider of geographic search and referencing solutions, announced MetaCarta NewsMap, which allows online media outlets to display maps that show the places mentioned in their news stories.(Current Awareness)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... MetaCarta, Inc., a provider of geographic search and referencing solutions, announced MetaCarta NewsMap, which allows online media outlets to display maps that show the places mentioned in their news stories. MetaCarta NewsMap draws users back...

Nature.(Sci-Tech)(Nature adds the archives to its website)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Nature added the archive of its first 80 years (1869-1949) to its website. This completes the digitization of the journal, which began with the launch of the 1987-1996 archive in 2003. A special web feature, the History of the Journal Nature,...

Thomson Scientific launched a Citation Impact Forum to promote scholarly discussion about all facets of citation-based research evaluation.(Sci-Tech)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Thomson Scientific launched a Citation Impact Forum to promote scholarly discussion about all facets of citation-based research evaluation, not only from Thomson's own journal Impact Factor, but also emerging citation metrics, such as the...

EBSCO A-to-Z now offers enhanced Unicode searching, browsing, and sorting, allowing customers to find results for non-English language titles that have been added to their A-to-Z title list.(Online Services)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... EBSCO A-to-Z now offers enhanced Unicode searching, browsing, and sorting, allowing customers to find results for non-English language titles that have been added to their A-to-Z title list. With Unicode browsing, the alphabetic menu can be...

Ingenta announced the release of its flagship web platform, IngentaConnect.(Online Services)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Ingenta announced the release of its flagship web platform, IngentaConnect. A new partnership with content guidance and recommendation engine Baynote will provide "more like this" article recommendations based on the current context and the...

CrossRef.(Online Services)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... CrossRef announced in January that it had registered its 30 millionth Digital Object Identifier (DOI). While the majority of DOIs are assigned to online journal articles, there are now more than 2.5 million DOI names assigned to other types of...

OverDrive.(Online Services)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... OverDrive, a digital distributor of ebooks and other media, announced support for the new "epub" digital publication standard. The new epub standard was developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), a nonprofit standards and...

The International Political Science Association (IPSA) and EBSCO Publishing are bringing all the bibliographic records in International Political Science Abstracts to EBSCOhost, dating from Vol. 25.(Social Sciences & Humanities)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The International Political Science Association (IPSA) and EBSCO Publishing are bringing all the bibliographic records in International Political Science Abstracts to EBSCOhost, dating from Vol. 25. The deal brings an additional 14 years of...

The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences.(Social Sciences & Humanities)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS) is now available on EBSCOhost. The database covers the four core social science disciplines as well as interdisciplinary and supporting subjects. IBSS covers English and non-English...

Readex, a Newsbank subsidiary, launched Crossroads: A community for Students, Teachers & Scholars.(Social Sciences & Humanities)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Readex, a Newsbank subsidiary, launched Crossroads: A community for Students, Teachers & Scholars, which provides background and commentary on digitized books, newspapers, government documents, and other materials in online collections. It also...

Newsbank.(Social Sciences & Humanities)(Newsbank Inc. (Naples, Florida))(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Newsbank has an improved interface that enables users to narrow the focus of a given search with a single click. The new interface also allows searchers to explore topics or events over time, compare different viewpoints in news coverage, and...

MuseGlobal and Mark Logic now offer a joint solution for content management and delivery.(Enterprise Search)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... MuseGlobal and Mark Logic now offer a joint solution for content management and delivery. Mark Logic's Content Server maximizes the value of XML content for customers through load, query, manipulate, and rendering processes, while MuseGlobal's...

Outsell, Inc.(Enterprise Search)(report estimating worldwide market Social Media Market Intelligence )(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Outsell, Inc. released a new report estimating the worldwide market for Social Media Market Intelligence (SM-MI) at more than $80 million in 2007. The companies in this segment provide turnkey systems that harvest social media content from...

Ingenta announced that Rebecca Lenzini, president of The Charleston Co.(Peopleware)(appointment of Rebecca Lenzini)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Ingenta announced that Rebecca Lenzini, president of The Charleston Co. and a long-standing member of the scholarly publishing and library communities, will join the firm as director of business development, publisher services. Jeff Downing,...

Toby Pearlstein retired as director, global information services, Bain & Co.(Peopleware)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Toby Pearlstein retired as director, global information services, Bain & Co. Monica Ertel succeeds her and will be based in Bain's San Francisco office.

Jennefer Nicholson.(Peopleware)(appointments in International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Jennefer Nicholson will be the new secretary-general of IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations). She has been working with the Australian government of media and content policy for the past year and is a former executive...

LexisNexis.(Peopleware)(appointment of Doug Kaplan to LexisNexis Group)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... LexisNexis named Doug Kaplan CEO of LexisNexis Asia Pacific.

Cengage Learning.(Peopleware)(appointment of William D. Rieders )(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Cengage Learning named William D. Rieders as executive vice president, reporting directly to CEO Ronald Dunn and tasked with integrating the newly acquired Houghton Mifflin College Division into Cengage.

IAC announced that Jim Lanzone is leaving as CEO of Ask.com to serve as entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures, but he will remain in an advisory role at Ask.com for several months.(Peopleware)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... IAC announced that Jim Lanzone is leaving as CEO of Ask.com to serve as entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures, but he will remain in an advisory role at Ask.com for several months. Replacing Lanzone is Jim Safka, who will also remain...

Microsoft announced it will acquire enterprise search engine company Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST) for $1.2 billion.(Alliances & Deals)(Microsoft Corp.)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Microsoft announced it will acquire enterprise search engine company Fast Search & Transfer ASA (FAST) for $1.2 billion. It will integrate FAST technology into its SharePoint software product (www.microsoft.com).

Allen Press, Inc. will continue to provide BioOne's full-text collections (one open source and two others subscription-based) with online hosting.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Allen Press, Inc. will continue to provide BioOne's full-text collections (one open source and two others subscription-based) with online hosting through a new online platform provided through a strategic alliance that Allen Press has signed...

Innodata Isogen has signed a master services agreement with Swets to expand their ongoing outsourcing relationship.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Innodata Isogen has signed a master services agreement with Swets to expand their ongoing outsourcing relationship. Pursuant to the agreement, Innodata Isogen will undertake a variety of data management and knowledge process outsourcing...

Wiley-Blackwell and the Cochrane Collaboration announced the joint effort of free access to The Cochrane Library for all the World Bank's list of low-income economies.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Wiley-Blackwell and The Cochrane Collaboration announced the joint effort of free access to The Cochrane Library for all the World Bank's list of low-income economies (countries with a per capita gross national income of less than $1,000)....

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC) announced that it has expanded its licensing services to include rights to more than a thousand popular and respected blogs.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC) announced that it has expanded its licensing services to include rights to more than a thousand popular and respected blogs. CCC is making rights to blog content available through an agreement with...

Springer has chosen MPS Technologies' JournalStore platform as the provider for Springer Protocols.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Springer has chosen MPS Technologies' JournalStore platform as the provider for Springer Protocols. The partnership will ensure that Springer's content becomes more discoverable by a broader audience and will provide access to content in new...

RefWorks LLC has partnered with LexisNexis Academic to provide an export from its platform into RefWorks.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... RefWorks LLC has partnered with LexisNexis Academic to provide an export from its platform into RefWorks. This direct export link will expedite the research workflow process, automatically transferring data from one service to another. RefWorks...

ProQuest and Dow Jones extended for 2 years their longtime agreement to make ProQuest licensed content available in Factiva.(Alliances & Deals)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... ProQuest and Dow Jones extended for 2 years their longtime agreement to make ProQuest licensed content available in Factiva. ProQuest will continue to supply Factiva with some 2,000 full-text and news sources, with the exception of five Scripps...

Wiley-Blackwell, the scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.(Biomedical)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Wiley-Blackwell, the scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., announced the re-launch of an enhanced version of its evidence-based medicine (EBM) content resource InfoPOEMs with InfoRetriever...

As part of its ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source, ProQuest will distribute full-text, evidence-based health information for nurses and allied health professionals from the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI).(Biomedical)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... As part of its ProQuest Nursing & Allied Health Source, ProQuest will distribute full-text, evidence-based health information for nurses and allied health professionals from the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI). A collaboration of nurses, medical...

LexisNexis launched a new Environmental Law & Climate Change Center.(Legal)(LexisNexis Group)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... LexisNexis launched a new Environmental Law & Climate Change Center, with content provided by Jenner & Block LLP and Marten Law Group (www.lexisnexis.com).

H.W. Wilson released a new reference database, the Business Periodicals Index Retrospective: 1913-1982.(Business & Finance)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... H.W. Wilson released a new reference database, the Business Periodicals Index Retrospective: 1913-1982. A detailed index of the content of more than 1,000 business periodicals back to World War I, it allows for the searching of more than 2.5...

Manta.com, operated by ECNext, announced the release of myManta, which allows members to create, manage, and share lists of companies built from the site's 45 million company profiles, sourced from D&B.(Business & Finance)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Manta.com, operated by ECNext, announced the release of myManta, which allows members to create, manage, and share lists of companies built from the site's 45 million company profiles, sourced from D&B. Manta.com offers free company research,...

Lloyd's List unveiled ePaper, a fully featured digital edition that replicates the newspaper's pages.(Business & Finance)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Lloyd's List unveiled ePaper, a fully featured digital edition that replicates the newspaper's pages. It is available to subscribers and new readers on a "pay as you go" basis (www.lloydslist.com).

Dow Jones & Co.(Business & Finance)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Dow Jones & Co. introduced new capabilities offered by its services division, Dow Jones Client Solutions, which focuses on the integration of job-specific information into the daily workflow of corporate, media, and financial clients. Dow Jones...

PhysMath Central.(Open Access)(PhysMath Central announces membership agreements with the European Organization for Nuclear Research )(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... PhysMath Central, the open access publisher for physics, mathematics, and computer science, announced membership agreements with the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and The German Electron Synchrotron (DESY) high-energy...

BioMed Central announced the latest upgrades to Open Repository, the open access publisher's hosted repository solution.(Open Access)(BioMed Central Group)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... BioMed Central announced the latest upgrades to Open Repository, the open access publisher's hosted repository solution. The upgrades include new features from DSpace, the open source platform for accessing, managing, and preserving scholarly...

AlltheWeb.(search engine update)(AllTheWeb shuts down its livesearch demonstration site)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... AlltheWeb shut down its LiveSearch demonstration site, even though it still links to it on its front page. The Yahoo!-owned AlltheWeb had run LiveSearch for more than a year with its ability to display search suggestions as the search was...

Archive-It.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Archive-It, the Internet Archive's specialized collections of archived websites, now has advanced search capabilities. Unlike the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, Archive-It (www.archive-it.org) allows full-text searching of the collections....

Ask.com.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Ask.com now offers AskEraser for raising the level of privacy on searches. For U.S. and U.K. Ask.com searchers, turning on AskEraser (via the link in the upper right-hand corner) means that Ask.com will erase any searches run while enabled from...

Ask Mobile.(search engine update)(company now adds voice-activated directions to its map search service)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Ask Mobile has now added voice-activated directions to its map search service. Available only on its mobile platform, the voice input option uses technology from Dial Directions to let mobile users speak the beginning and end locations into...

Google.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Google has been changing the links in the upper left-hand corner again. Video was replaced with Products, and Products was renamed Shopping. Under the "more" list, Blog Search has been renamed Blogs. Video and YouTube have been added. Blogger,...

Google Maps.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Google Maps now has a "terrain view" that shows topography of land as well as buildings in some cities. The "terrain view" choice took the place of the "hybrid view," which gave satellite imagery along with street labels. While that "hybrid...

Google News.(search engine update)(Google Inc. adds new features to its advanced search page)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Google News has added a few new features to its advanced search page. In the source box, Google News will now suggest sources that match the characters being typed. Since it offers no list of sources, this can help identify specific news...

Live Search.(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Live Search now displays subsite links below search results for some websites. Try a search on something like ALA or IBM to see up to four links to pages within the site listed after the cached page link. For some searches, primarily for...

Wikia Search.(search engine update)(http://alpha.search.wikia.com)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Wikia Search has been launched in an alpha version (http://alpha.search.wikia.com) by Jimmy Wales, a founder of Wikipedia. It is very early in its development, so expect frequent changes. Its initial alpha version has several databases which...

Yahoo!(search engine update)(Brief article)
March 1, 2008... Yahoo! has stopped numbering its search results. Some time ago, Yahoo! stopped including the "more from this site" links that used to appear at the end of search records. These can be added back to search results by changing the preference. Go...

Putting a public face on private equity.
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] PRIVATE equity (PE) firms had a busy 2007. In the news were: buyouts of more than 40 big public companies--including Hilton Hotels (Blackstone Group), Guitar Center (Bain Capital Partners), and Alltel (TPG Capital,...

Private equity investment in the information industry: customer benefit or concern?
March 1, 2008... One mark of a maturing industry is its ownership infrastructure. Our own information industry is a case in point. Led by technology advances occurring over the past decade or more, the information management and software industries continue to...

XBRL: overcoming the skepticism of global regulators.
March 1, 2008... ACCORDING to XBRL International (www .xbrl.org), XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is a technology that supports the representation, use, and transmission of business information from companies to their different regulatory bodies...

A web of industry overviews.
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] OFF-THE-SHELF industry overviews have become quite the commodity, as a variety of business intelligence and market research firms are packaging their industry research into off-the-shelf reports to sell on the web....

Historical GIS: mapping the past to understand the future.
March 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Call it what you like--the resurgence of geography, the reinvention of maps, or the vindication of cartography--but the increasing prominence of geographic information systems (GISs) becomes more pronounced every...

Libraries in the converging worlds of open data, E-research, and Web 2.0.
March 1, 2008... INFORMATION and communication technologies (ICT) are transforming the way academic researchers work. The new forms of research enabled by the latest technologies bring about collaboration among researchers in different locations, institutions,...

Speed searching.(on the net)(Viewpoint essay)
March 1, 2008... In these days of internet plenty, we have a wealth of searchable databases and online content--from Google to ScienceDirect to Amazon.com and a myriad of specialized databases (both free and fee). We can search the full text within journal...

Business Research 2.0.(the dollar sign)
March 1, 2008... The 2.0 craze is affecting many professions and industries, including those related to business research. Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Learning 2.0, Travel 2.0, News 2.0, Publishing 2.0--all of these seriously impact the ability of...

What to do with Wikipedia.(infolit land)
March 1, 2008... If you want to get five opinions from four information professionals, just mention Wikipedia. Often banned by professors, panned by traditional reference book publishers, and embraced by just about everyone else, Wikipedia marches on like a...

Amazon, Google Book Search, and Google Scholar.(peter's picks & pans)
March 1, 2008... The picks include my longtime favorite Amazon.com, which somehow never made it to my lists of picks (probably because it is so much of a classic trailblazer). Because it is constantly enriched, it is better for me to honor it later rather than...

The new rules of web design.(intranet librarian)
March 1, 2008... We're working in an exciting time in the web world--exciting not only because of the amazing tools and services we can now offer our users but also because we have several decades of reliable research in usability, interface design, and...

Observers, advocates, and authority.(crawford at large)
March 1, 2008... You read an article citing an Ipsos or Gallup poll stating that 80% of adult Americans favor gay marriage. You might want to see the size of the poll and its characteristics, but as a first cut, you'd probably say, "Well, that's progress." Or...

Information Tomorrow: Reflections on Technology and the Future of Public and Academic Libraries.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... **1/2 Information Tomorrow: Reflections on Technology and the Future of Public and Academic Libraries edited by Rachel Singer Gordon ISBN: 978-1-57387-303-1 Published: 2007 Pages: 280 pp.; softcover Price: $35 ...

The Medical Library Association Guide to Cancer Information: Authoritative, Patient-Friendly Print and Electronic Resources.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... *** The Medical Library Association Guide to Cancer Information: Authoritative, Patient-Friendly Print and Electronic Resources by Ruti Malis Volk ISBN: 978-1-55570-585-5 Published: 2007 Pages: 372 pp.; softcover Price:...

Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... **** Designing Web Navigation: Optimizing the User Experience by James Kalbach ISBN: 978-0-596-52810-2 Published: 2007 Pages: 412 pp.; softcover Price: $49.99 Available from: O'Reilly Media, 1005 Gravenstein Highway...

Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... ***1/2 Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator by Stephen E. Arnold Published: 2007 Pages: 266 pp.; PDF Price: $640 Available in PDF only from: Infonortics Ltd., 15 Market Place, Tetbury, Glos. GL8 8DD, U.K.; +...

Explore EDGAR by XBRLing.(online spotlight)(Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval)
March 1, 2008... IT will date me to admit that I remember the days before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) required electronic filing of forms through its EDGAR program. Before the mid-1990s, the only way you could get information on a...