Information World Review articles from February 2006

Information World Review archives from February 2006

racing ahead in the fast lane.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Chillingworth racing ahead in the fast lane With things hotting up in the global enterprise search market, Mark Chillingworth braves heavy snow and temperatures of -11C to visit Fast's headquarters in Oslo and grill...

Are you digitally legit?
February 6, 2006... Byline: Eira Haywood Are you digitally legit? Lawsuits can be lethal, so Eira Hayward enjoys finding safe passage through the legal minefield of copyright and intellectual property issues for librarians Law, Libraries and...

Enter, sage right.(Sage Publications Inc.)(Company overview)
February 6, 2006... Byline: Jane Dudman Enter, sage right Sage Publications has effortlessly traded up from academic bit player to STM starring role. Jane Dudman reports on a company that remains true to its 1960s roots but acts more like thrusting...

PA's political argy-bargy.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Chillingworth PA's political argy-bargy Mark Chillingworth fires up a Press Association tool for searching televised parliamentary debates that puts the politicians firmly in the spotlight Two issues have been...

NetVibes muscles in on GYM.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Bobby Pickering NetVibes muscles in on GYM You can make your homepage look, feel and act exactly as you want it to with NetVibes. Bobby Pickering drags and drops RSS feeds to his heart's content If you've put a lot of...

China's star rises in the information economy.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Chillingworth China's star rises in the information economy A study has found that 9.4% of articles published by Elsevier in 2004 had at least one author from the Republic of China. The country is currently the world's...

Cilip axes jobs to ensure survival.(Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals)
February 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Chillingworth Cilip axes jobs to ensure survival Redundancies give info pro association room to move into online networking, reports Mark Chillingworth By making 13 people redundant in an organisational restructuring,...

WK pushes for health integration Wolters Kluwer has completed the acquisition of two software companies to help provide information professionals in the health and pharmaceutical sectors with a completely integrated system. NDC Health Information Manage.(Brief article)
February 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Chillingworth WK pushes for health integration Wolters Kluwer has completed the acquisition of two software companies to help provide information professionals in the health and pharmaceutical sectors with a completely...

factiva ups ante in news aggregation.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Chillingworth Factiva ups ante in news aggregation A search tool to help end-users access content within the Factiva news aggregation service has gone into beta-testing to perfect the final version. Mark Chillingworth...

new year new position.(Euan Semple left British Broadcasting Corp.)(Neil Infield joined British Library)(Andy Powell joined Eduserv Foundation)
February 6, 2006... Byline: Bobby Pickering movers and shakers New year, new position IWR rounds up recent career shifts for information professionals. If you've had a change of job recently, send details to moversandshakers@iwr.co.uk n With the...

sholarlystats won't push sushi off the usage menu.(Standardised USage Harvesting Initiative)( MPS Technologies )(Brief article)
February 6, 2006... Byline: Tracey Caldwell Hot on the heels of successful tests of the Sushi protocol for delivering usage reports, MPS Technologies has launched the ScholarlyStats service to help librarians analyse the usage of e-journals and databases....

institutional identifiers on trial.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Kim Thomas A pilot project has got under way to improve the process of subscription, supply and access to electronic journals by exploring the advantages of using a common institutional identifier and creating a prototype model....

scholarlystats won't push Sushi off the usage menu.(Brief article)
February 6, 2006... Byline: Kim Thomas Universities have risen to the challenge of the Freedom of Information Act, meeting 96% of requests within the statutory 20 working days, according to a new survey. From January 2005, when the Freedom of Information...

head up the charge.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Chillingworth Head up the charge Mint, Scopus and Factiva Search 2.0 -- what do they have in common? They are all information services with an end-user focus. So where does that leave you, the information professional? ...

red alert British business ill prepared for disaster striking paper records.(Brief article)
February 6, 2006... Byline: Mark Chillingworth A significant number of businesses across the UK would not survive a major catastrophe like the recent fire at the Buncefield oil depot in Hertfordshire. A survey carried out by document management software...

ebrary bulks out its e-books range and makes subs more flexible.
February 6, 2006... Byline: tracey caldwell E-book provider Ebrary has extended its pricing models and added 8,000 new titles to its service, writes Tracey Caldwell. It now offers 10 multi-user subscription databases, priced according to the number of...

thomson attacks scopus citation tracker feature.(Thomson Corp. Thomson Scientific, Elsevier Group PLC)
February 6, 2006... Byline: Bobby Pickering Thomson Scientific has raised doubts about the usefulness of the new citation tracker features that Elsevier has announced for its Scopus online STM service. Citation Tracker is intended to plug a major hole...

e-government a success but e-GMS could yet fail.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Kim Thomas Kim Thomas Local authorities have met government online service targets, according to the Office for the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). By the 31 December deadline, councils in England had achieved 97%...

Euro search engine gets hushed up.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Bobby Pickering A project to develop a European search engine with video and audio searching and linguistic translation features has become the subject of an official information blackout after its existence was publicised last...

Speech recognition tool slashes compliance costs.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Kim Thomas Kim Thomas Lawyers have searched more than 1,000 hours' worth of phone call recordings for key words, phrases and conversations, as part of a major financial litigation case. International law firm Simmons &...

ISI users tracking research evolution.
February 6, 2006... Byline: Tracey Caldwell Tracey Caldwell Significant gaps in the digitisation capabilities of new EU member states are threatening the European Commission's vision of a shared European heritage network, a study has found. A report...

Cilip axes jobs to ensure survival. Redundancies give info pro association room to move into online networking.(Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professional)
February 22, 2006... By making 13 people redundant in an organisational restructuring, Cilip is financially back on track, according to chief executive Bob McKee. The chartered institute is now looking to invest in 21st century networking technology for a new...

China's star rises in the information economy.
February 22, 2006... A study has found that 9.4% of articles published by Elsevier in 2004 had at least one author from the Republic of China. The country is currently the world's fastest-growing economy, and information professionals need to recognise the...

Editor's View.(Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
February 22, 2006... Cilip takes corrective action Organisations serving the information professional in the UK have been having a rocky time. This time last year, Aslib was dusting itself off after the trauma of its liquidation. It still exists today, but is a...

Thomson attacks Scopus Citation Tracker features. A&I rival blasts 10 years' citation data as meaningless.(Thomson Corp. Thomson Scientific)
February 22, 2006... Thomson Scientific has raised doubts about the usefulness of the new citation tracker features that Elsevier has announced for its Scopus online STM service. Citation Tracker is intended to plug a major hole in Scopus. The A&I database has...

E-government a success, but e-GMS could yet fail.
February 22, 2006... Byline: Kim Thomas. Local authorities have met government online service targets, according to the Office for the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM). By the 31 December deadline, councils in England had achieved 97% e-enablement, with legal...

WK pushes for health integration.
February 22, 2006... Wolters Kluwer has completed the acquisition of two software companies to help provide information professionals in the health and pharmaceutical sectors with a completely integrated system. NDC Health Information Management, a provider of...

Red alert British business ill prepared for disaster striking paper records.(survey)(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... A significant number of businesses across the UK would not survive a major catastrophe like the recent fire at the Buncefield oil depot in Hertfordshire. A survey carried out by document management software specialist Version One found that 30%...

Speech recognition tool slashes compliance costs.
February 22, 2006... Byline: Kim Thomas. Lawyers have searched more than 1,000 hours' worth of phone call recordings for key words, phrases and conversations, as part of a major financial litigation case. International law firm Simmons & Simmons used...

Euro search engine gets hushed up.
February 22, 2006... A project to develop a European search engine with video and audio searching and linguistic translation features has become the subject of an official information blackout after its existence was publicised last month. Project Quaero (a...

Institutional identifiers on trial. British Library and HighWire Press lead pilot project to improve e-journal supply chain.
February 22, 2006... Byline: Kim Thomas. A pilot project has got under way to improve the process of subscription, supply and access to electronic journals by exploring the advantages of using a common institutional identifier and creating a prototype model....

Ebrary bulks out its e-books range and makes subs more flexible.
February 22, 2006... E-book provider Ebrary has extended its pricing models and added 8,000 new titles to its service, writes Tracey Caldwell. It now offers 10 multi-user subscription databases, priced according to the number of full-time equivalent end-users...

ScholarlyStats won't push Sushi off the usage menu. Technologies complementary, declare MPS and Ex Libris.(MPS Technologies )(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Byline: Tracey Caldwell. Hot on the heels of successful tests of the Sushi protocol for delivering usage reports, MPS Technologies has launched the ScholarlyStats service to help librarians analyse the usage of e-journals and databases....

New EU members put Euro digital library vision at risk. EC urged to take action on multiple barriers to library digitisation in new EU states.
February 22, 2006... Byline: Tracey Caldwell. Significant gaps in the digitisation capabilities of new EU member states are threatening the European Commission's vision of a shared European heritage network, a study has found. A report by Tel-Me-Mor, the...

My ICC blooms as Juniper and Plum are set to wither.(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... ICC has announced a major new integrated business information service. Called My ICC, the service will offer greater customisation and personalisation features. ICC will merge its three existing online business services, Juniper, Juniper XP and...

Nature podcast secures future as audio show climbs charts.(Nature Publishing Group)(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Nature Publishing Group's innovative technology development team has come up with another winner. The Nature podcast initiative has secured sponsorship from Bio-Rad Laboratories to become a fully fledged service for the scientific community....

Publishers, authors and agents thrash out digital rights.
February 22, 2006... The Publishers Association met with the Society of Authors and the Association of Authors' Agents (AAA) last month to discuss how digital rights should be covered in contracts. The meeting was an acknowledgement by publishers of the need to...

OCLC buys Openly Informatics linking services.(Online Computer Library Centre)(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... The Online Computer Library Centre (OCLC) has acquired Openly Informatics, a US provider of linking software. Openly Informatics has a database of 1.2 million linking metadata records, which will be integrated into the OCLC WorldCat database of...

Blackwell to launch wide-ranging journal blitz.
February 22, 2006... Oxford-based society publisher Blackwell will release 59 journals from 39 new publishing partnerships this year and launch seven brand-new titles. Blackwell will publish titles previously with all the major players, including CABI, Cambridge...

EBSCO enters RSS news delivery market.
February 22, 2006... EBSCO Publishing, part of the subscription agent specialist, has launched a business information monitoring service called Executive Daily Brief. The service uses a search engine from the Content Analyst Company, which enables users to search...

UK's universities pass FoI test with flying colours. Study by funding bodies finds academia coping with FoI, but considering new records management technology to stay on top, reports Kim Thomas.(Freedom of Information Act)(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Universities have risen to the challenge of the Freedom of Information Act, meeting 96% of requests within the statutory 20 working days, according to a new survey. From January 2005, when the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act came into...

Movers and shakers - New year, new position. IWR rounds up recent career shifts for information professionals. If you've had a change of job recently, send details to moversandshakers@iwr.co.uk.
February 22, 2006... - With the IWR Information Professional of the Year 2005 Award safely tucked under his belt, Euan Semple (pictured) will be leaving the BBC this month to embark on a career in consultancy. Semple, who created and sustained the BBC's innovative...

Head up the charge.(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Mint, Scopus and Factiva Search 2.0 - what do they have in common? They are all information services with an end-user focus. So where does that leave you, the information professional? Where it doesn't leave you is out of a job. The truth...

Opinion - Is all the talk of Web 2.0 just a lot of codswallop? Web 2.0 is big news, argues David Tebbutt. We're at another turning point in the internet's development with the use of web apps to access information.
February 22, 2006... A lot of people are putting their shirts on Web 2.0 not turning out to be Bubble 2.0. What is Web 2.0? Isn't the web the web? Well, not as we once knew it. The web started as a means of delivering more or less static information to...

Opinion - Blogosphere http://fromthehart.typepad.com/ - From the Hart. We feature a blog where debate and discussion has aroused interest. This month: Factiva CEO Clare Hart.
February 22, 2006... Main post - 5 January 2006 What do I see in 2006? My predictions for enterprise information management in 2006 centre around: 1) Search. Everyone knows Google, Yahoo and MSN (or GYM as we affectionately call them), which have...

Search market - Racing ahead in the fast lane. With things hotting up in the global enterprise search market, Mark Chillingworth braves heavy snow and temperatures of -11C to visit Fast's headquarters in Oslo and grill senior management on current developments.(Fast Search and Transfer ASA)
February 22, 2006... Over the past three years, plucky Norwegian upstart Fast Search & Transfer has been building up a profile as a big beast in the enterprise search market. IT analyst Gartner Group ranked the company as a leader in its report on information...

Convergence - Breaking down the walls. With university libraries increasingly dependent on the internet, and their work overlapping ever more with remote learning and administration services, the case for converging libraries and IT departments is growing. Tracey Caldwell discovers some signal successes - and failures.
February 22, 2006... The marriages of IT and library services have not always been happy. Some were forced on unwilling partners, while others seemed like a good idea at the time merely because everyone else was doing it. A few have even ended in tears and divorce....

Profile - Enter, sage right. Sage Publications has effortlessly traded up from academic bit player to STM starring role. Jane Dudman reports on a company that remains true to its 1960s roots but acts more like thrusting entrepreneur than ageing hippy.(Company Profile)
February 22, 2006... Academic press or STM publisher? Well, both, really, for this is Sage Publications, which began life 40 years ago in social sciences and has managed to turn itself into one of the top STM publishers in the world. Sage Publications was...

Sector update - Company, business and financial data. Information about businesses and the people who run them is now available on platforms that have an increasingly global reach. Add to that ever more sophisticated tools that track stock markets, financial instruments, fund performance, credit ratings and much more - and it is clear that company, business and financial data services are in the midst of a mighty expansion.(Company Profile)
February 22, 2006... Biogs www.biogs.co.uk Overview: Biogs is a specialist research service providing biographical information on business people and other notable individuals. The information is drawn from wide-ranging, publicly available but often...

Resources - Site review - Factiva ups ante in news aggregation. A search tool to help end-users access content within the Factiva news aggregation service has gone into beta-testing to perfect the final version. Mark Chillingworth predicts a hit for a site bristling with powerful but easy-to-use data mining technologies.
February 22, 2006... Not that long ago a search engine merely had to throw a list of results at a user to justify its existence. Today, there is just too much information online, whether on the internet or within a subscriber-accessed news database like Factiva. As...

Resources - Site review - PA's political argy-bargy. Mark Chillingworth fires up a Press Association tool for searching televised parliamentary debates that puts the politicians firmly in the spotlight.
February 22, 2006... Two issues have been grabbing a lot of headline space of late: video search and leadership changes within the UK's political parties. So a web service that provides free text searching of BBC and Press Association content from the Houses of...

Resources - Thought-provoking cognitive science encyclopaedia.
February 22, 2006... Scientific book and journal publisher John Wiley & Sons has released the very latest edition of its Encyclopaedia of Cognitive Science, which it claims "reflects all the current knowledge about brain function". The title contains more than 700...

Resources - ProQuest tables more parliamentary papers online.
February 22, 2006... The ProQuest database of House of Commons parliamentary papers now covers more than a century of British legislative history, with users able to access records as recent as 2004. The latest release includes papers from 1901 to 2004, is fully...

Resources - Oxford beats faster with European heart rhythm.journal[SO] IWLDR;.
February 22, 2006... [PP] 27 [PL] WORLD Oxford Journals, the journal publishing arm of Oxford University Press, has been selected by the European Heart Rhythm Association to publish its journal, Europace. The association is part of the European Society for...

Resources - Neurocytology transplanted to Brain Cell Biology.(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... STM publisher Springer is relaunching the Journal of Neurocytology as Brain Cell Biology with a new editorial team. George Augustine of Duke University Medical Centre in the US will take over as editor-in-chief of the journal, which will now...

Resources - Asia gains co-operative journal for chemical interaction.
February 22, 2006... Wiley-VCH, the German division of John Wiley and Sons, is to publish the journal Chemistry: An Asian Journal on behalf of four Asian societies. The new journal will support the Chinese Chemical Society, the Chemical Research Society of India,...

Resources - CUP's new journals offer classical treble.(Cambridge University Press )(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Cambridge University Press has launched new journals for 2006. The titles include Greece and Rome, Classical Quarterly, Classical Review, BioSocieties, Health Economics Policy and Law, Journal of Global History, Journal of Larynology and...

Resources - HW Wilson addresses state of US nation.(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Humanities publisher HW Wilson has launched a new edition of its Reference Shelf book, Representative American Speeches 2004-2005. The title features some of the top speeches from 2004 to 2005, including those from Hillary Clinton and George W...

Resources - Site review - NetVibes muscles in on GYM. You can make your homepage look, feel and act exactly as you want it to with NetVibes. Bobby Pickering drags and drops RSS feeds to his heart's content.
February 22, 2006... If you've put a lot of effort into developing an intranet that lets employees or members of your organisation personalise their homepage, then check out this website to get a glimpse of what the future holds. NetVibes is one of a growing...

Resources - Book review - Are you digitally legit? Lawsuits can be lethal, so Eira Hayward enjoys finding safe passage through the legal minefield of copyright and intellectual property issues for librarians.
February 22, 2006... Law, Libraries and Technology by Mark van Hoorebeek is a useful guide that should give information professionals a good grounding and insight into the increasingly litigious issues of copyright and intellectual property law as it relates to...

Resources - Training.
February 22, 2006... Writing for the web, writing for people 16 February, London A free book by course leader Paul Pedley is included in the price of this training event, which focuses on producing content for websites and intranet sites. The course...

Diary.
February 22, 2006... London Book Fair 2006 5-7 March, London Excel These are stirring times for this major brand in the Reed Exhibitions portfolio, as it finally makes the move across London from Olympia to Docklands. The new venue is a good one, although...

Backchat - Not-amused trio are Victoria's cross.(Oxford University Press)(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Backchat has developed a stonking great crush on Victoria Coren, the petite little terrier of a presenter on Balderdash and Piffle, the BBC's extended advertisement for the Oxford English Dictionary. Each Tuesday, Backchat has been settling...

Backchat - Movers and groovers at CiG.(Nick Collinson)(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Barely had Backchat had the opportunity to ply outgoing CiG chairman Nick Collinson with a tasty Belgian brew before he confessed he was leaving dear old Blighty for a shiny new job in the Big Apple. After five years in corporate sales at...

Backchat - Cilip to play the joker at L+i Show awards ceremony.
February 22, 2006... Backchat's quite chuffed that Cilip has chosen comic poet John Hegley to present the Libraries Change Lives Award at the Library + information Show this year. The awards acknowledge innovative initiatives between libraries and their communities...

Backchat - Word in your ear. Every month we explain a new word that keeps popping up on information professionals' radar.(Brief Article)
February 22, 2006... Ajax (abbrev) Expect to hear rather more of the acronym for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML" in the future as new websites become available allowing users to take advantage of simple web applications within a browser. Personalisable...

Backchat - Flashback: February 2001. We look back to a time when the dotcom bandwagon had yet to hit the buffers ...
February 22, 2006... Border brushed aside by business information We had Irish cross-border friendship and co-operation on our minds as we saluted the launch of a new Northern Ireland-Eire business information service five years ago. Our photo showed former...