Information Today articles from April 2008

Information Today archives from April 2008

Tax time: phishing scams and schemes.
April 1, 2008... The Internal Revenue Service reports that 30,445,000 tax returns were filed electronically in 2007, with online filings outnumbering paper returns by more than 5 to 1. And as the buzz surrounding online filing increases, so do the odds of...

Facebook for professionals.
April 1, 2008... In September 2006, when Facebook decided to open its doors to those outside academia, many post-grads--whether driven by curiosity or social networking--rushed in full speed. According to Facebook, of the 67 million-plus active users, more than...

NFAIS: the next 50 years.(REPORT FROM THE FIELD)(National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services)
April 1, 2008... The NFAIS 2008 Annual Conference and 50th Anniversary Gala started off with a bang. The city of Philadelphia declared Feb. 24, 2008 (the official start of the conference), as "NFAIS Day" to "recognize the valuable education and information...

National Archive Publishing acquires Tichenor Publishing & Printing.(News Bytes)
April 1, 2008... National Archive Publishing Co.(NAPC) acquired Tichenor Publishing & Printing, a firm that provides course packs and supplemental materials for college students. The company will be combined with NAPC's XanEdu Custom Publishing, designed to...

Reed Elsevier to acquire ChoicePoint, changes company direction.(News Bytes)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Reed Elsevier recently acquired ChoicePoint, a public records aggregator, subject to approval. This acquisition (for a total cost of $4.1 billion payable in cash) is expected to push LexisNexis Risk Information and Analytics Group into a...

Copyright Clearance Center broadens annual academic license.(News Bytes)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... The Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC) recently announced that it is expanding its Annual Copyright License for academic institutions to public and private colleges and universities. Since the licensing program was launched in June 2007, 18...

Wiley-Blackwell adheres to carbon neutral commitment.(News Bytes)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... John Wiley & Sons, Inc. announced that it is renewing its commitment to neutralize the company's global carbon footprint since Wiley's 2007 acquisition of Blackwell Publishing (the first global publisher to become carbon neutral in 2006). The...

AccuWeather.com mobile website breaks records for month.(News Bytes)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... AccuWeather.com mobile website reported record-breaking activity during February with more than 32 million page impressions. The mobile site also set a record for its daily impressions of nearly 2 million on Feb. 12. AccuWeather.com has already...

NYPL reveals $1 billion transformation plan.(News Bytes)(The New York Public Library)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... A plan to transform the "people's palace" in New York for the first time in its 100-year history will take more than 5 years to complete and will reach out to the library's 89 locations and its internet users. Among the key plans is to...

SLA board names recipients of Grants, lists candidates.(News Bytes)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... The Special Libraries Association (SLA) announced that its board of directors awarded two SLA Research Grants for 2007. The grants are awarded for research projects that advance evidence-based practice within library and information science, as...

The information industry emerges from the shadows ... or does it?(Up Front)(Excerpt)
April 1, 2008... Remember that old (in internet years) saying, "All information wants to be free"? Well, it looks like all information is getting its wish. Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and author of the article and book titled The Long...

M&A, news products, and networking tools take center stage.(News Break Update)(mergers and acquisitions)
April 1, 2008... The Microsoft offer to acquire Yahoo! created a big diversion and much speculation and commentary. At press time, we were still waiting to hear the outcome of the hostile bid, as Yahoo!'s options were looking fairly limited. And, amid all the...

SAGE Journals Online wins 2007 PSP Award.(News Bytes)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... The SAGE Journals Online (SJO) platform recently won the 2007 PSP Award for Excellence for best platform in the electronic publication category. Professional/ Scholarly Publishing (PSP) is a division of the Association of American Publishers....

JISC Collections and ProQuest team up in publishing venture.(News Bytes)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... JISC Collections provided funding to make ProQuest's digital House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1901-2004 available free of charge to staff and students in U.K. colleges and universities. The online collection has 187,809 individual papers...

Top 20 global websites for 2008.(News Bytes)
April 1, 2008... Byte Level Research conducted its annual study and released its Web Globalization Report Card with a list of the top 20 global websites. More than 225 websites were reviewed, reflecting an average of 20 languages supported, including Turkish,...

EBSCO Information Services et al. creates Open Science Directory.(News Bytes)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... EBSCO Information Services, Belgium's Hasselt University Library, and the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) program of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO (IOC) have joined together to develop...

Letter from the editor.(2008 People's Choice awards)(Editorial)
April 1, 2008... It's that time again, folks. It's time to start thinking about who and what products or services you'll be nominating for the 2008 People's Choice Awards. Our ballots will be posted on the www.infotoday.com site as of May 1, and all you...

Miscellaneous & et cetera.(Column)
April 1, 2008... I guess you could call him the leading authority on the "new authority." At any rate, when David Weinberger gave his keynote at the NFAIS Annual Conference in Philadelphia during its 50th anniversary, it struck me as ironic that the person who...

Infotoons.(Cartoon)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] ACCESS TO THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY HAS SLOWED TO A TRICKLE AS MILLIONS OF LAST-MINUTE TAX FILERS HIT THE SEND BUTTON... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Harvard Faculty mandates OA.(Focus on Publishing)
April 1, 2008... On Feb. 12, Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) unanimously voted to permit the president and fellows of Harvard College to make their scholarly articles available as well as exercise the copyright in those articles. By doing so,...

Dropping a dime.(Internet Waves)
April 1, 2008... Dime--v. To rat someone out.--Urban Dictionary (www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dime) I was a newspaper reporter before I went to library school, and I am working as a news researcher now. So in a way, my career has come full...

The right to remain anonymous.(Legal Issues)
April 1, 2008... When judges and academics talk about the First Amendment and the right to freedom of speech, they often invoke the nostalgic images of the speaker on the soapbox or the anonymous pamphleteer. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas once noted...

Copyright coverage and reportage erratum.(Intellectual Property)
April 1, 2008... Right before the start of the new year, Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher wrote an article that claimed the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) argued in a court filing that "it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased...

Google Calendar: let's make it a date.(Library Stuff Revisited)
April 1, 2008... In the last two columns, I focused on Gmail and the many available features from developers, from Google, and from third parties. I hope that they have helped in making your email experience less painful overall (at its core, email is annoying...

In memoriam: William Z. Nasri.(News Bytes)(death of William Z. Nasri)(In memoriam)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... William Z. Nasri, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Information Sciences (SIS), died in February at the age of 82. He retired from the university in 1996. He was a member of the SIS community for more than 3...

Westchester Library System rolls out Medicare mashup.
April 1, 2008... Some patrons aren't just heading out to the Grinton I. Will Branch Library to pick up their reserved copies of the latest best-seller. This branch of the Westchester Library System (WLS) in Yonkers, N.Y., recently added a Health Advocacy...

The new investment cycle in Internet commerce: Web 2.0 goes mainstream.(Insider's Perspective)(Viewpoint essay)
April 1, 2008... [Insider's Perspective is a column written by an expert in the information industry who shares his or her insights about a specific corner of the industry. --Ed.] After 5 or 6 years of anemic web investments, mainstream organizations are...

Retrospective: 25 years ago in Information Today.
April 1, 2008... We've come a long way, baby. As Information Today celebrates 25 years in print this year, we're taking a closer look at the hot news from 1983, gleaned from the actual issues. In an article by Dena Gordon, "Customer Service and Training...

Nuospace brings wiki environment to document collaboration.(IT Spotlight)(Company overview)
April 1, 2008... Here's another high-tech company with an innovative service that offers a special method for social networking. FOUNDER BrightSide Software was founded in June 2007 to address an expected movement in the enterprise software market to...

Portals, plans, and peer review.(International REPORT)
April 1, 2008... Single portals that provide access to multiple data collections and integrated, international collections of diverse multimedia materials continue to receive significant funding from international bodies, as with UNdata and Europeana. But while...

Jan Velterop leaves Springer.(News Makers)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Jan Velterop will be leaving his post as the longtime director of open access at Springer. He will be joining Knewco, Inc. as CEO. Knewco, which was founded in 2006, is a company created for scientists by scientists that uses semantic...

Columbia University librarian receives ALA Preservation Award.(News Makers)(award for Janet Gertz)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Janet Gertz, the director of the Preservation & Digital Conversion Division at Columbia Universities Libraries, recently won the 2008 Paul Banks and Carolyn Harris Preservation Award. The award honors an individual...

IPI-Award 2008 goes to Nancy Lambert.(News Makers)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nancy Lambert, former senior information analyst at Chevron Texaco, recently won the International Patent Information (IPI) Award 2008. The IPI-Award selection board cited Lambert's 30-plus years in the chemical...

Conference dates.(Conference Circuit)(Conference news)(Calendar)
April 1, 2008... Internet@Schools East April 7-8 Hyatt Regency, Crystal City Arlington, Va. Computers in Libraries April 7-9 (Preconference workshops begin April 6; postconference workshops begin April 10) Hyatt Regency, Crystal City Arlington, Va. ...

April conference deluge continues.(Conference Circuit)(Conference news)
April 1, 2008... Last month, I started covering the abundance of April conferences. This was a good thing because there wouldn't have been enough space otherwise to include some of the interesting ones noted here. In addition to the many society conferences in...

The art of Twittering.
April 1, 2008... When I attended two conferences in February--IN-SOURCE (www.insource.cz/en) and NFAIS (www.nfais.org)--I experimented with microblogging as a reporting tool. At INSOURCE, fellow attendee and speaker Karen Blakeman was asked by two friends to...

O'Reilly's Tools of Change: looking for social currency.
April 1, 2008... O'Reilly Media's second annual Tools of Change (TOC) for Publishing conference was even more successful than the first last year in San Jose, Calif. More than 900 attendees converged Feb. 11-12 in New York City this year, which was more than...

SMX West: ready for search 3.0 and 4.0?
April 1, 2008... Silicon Valley, Calif., the home of search technology, was the fitting setting for the inaugural Search Engine Marketing West (SMX West) Feb. 26-28 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. SMX West is the first general search marketing...

Afloat in the Wireless Pond.(REPORT FROM THE FIELD)
April 1, 2008... About 100 Minnesotans gathered March 1 at the snow-covered campus of Luther Seminary in St. Paul to examine the realities and challenges of being Afloat in the Wireless Pond. The goals were twofold: to raise public awareness of the...

Conferences around the world.
April 1, 2008... For information on ITI's conferences, turn to page 24. April 7-9: Las Vegas (Orleans Hotel & Casino). The International Conference on Information Technology: New Generations (ITNG) 2008 focuses on the state of the art in digital...

MyiLibrary offers Lecture Notes Collection.(Product News & Reviews)
April 1, 2008... Ingram Digital added the Wiley-Blackwell Lecture Notes Collection as an exclusive offering to MyiLibrary. The 30-book collection features key books for the medical textbook (basic medical sciences, clinical medicine, and general medicine) and...

Humana Press launches new website.(Product News & Reviews)(www.springer.com/humana)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Humana Press, now part of Springer Science+Business Media, introduced a new website (www.springer.com/humana) that will include the complete Humana Press catalog. The new site offers featured titles, a conference schedule link, and links to its...

New portals enrich STM menu.(Database Review)
April 1, 2008... These days, much of the news about search engines covers new content types such as blogs, user-generated videos, wikis, and other Web 2.0 tools. More quietly, progress is still being made in conventional search engines, the kinds that actually...

Cengage: targeting the end user.(Product News & Reviews)
April 1, 2008... Gale, part of Cengage Learning, is keeping a corporate eye on its end users. And so far, this approach seems to be working well. In January, the American Library Association's Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) named three of...

Credo Reference adds seven new titles.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Credo Reference signed an agreement with Harvard University Press to add seven more titles to the Credo General Reference collection. The following titles are now part of the collection: [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] * Keywords and Concepts...

Scopus launches TopCited.com.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Scopus' new Scopus search API technology helped launch Scopus TopCited (www.topcited.com), a new website that offers the top 20 cited articles in 26 subject areas during the past 5 years. The site also features authors, affiliations, cited-by...

Caringo introduces third-party Developer Program.(Product News & Reviews)
April 1, 2008... Caringo, Inc. released the CaringoConnect Developer Program for software developers in several sectors, including independent software vendors (ISV), academics, systems integrators, and Web 2.0. This dedicated web portal streamlines the...

Thomson debuts website, adds patent content, and publishes patent report.(Product News & Reviews)(ScienceWatch.com)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Thomson Scientific announced the launch of ScienceWatch.com, a free, open web resource for science metrics and analysis. The new site combines content from the latest Science Watch newsletter and regularly updated data, analysis, interviews,...

Elsevier: illumin8 sheds new light on research.(Product News & Reviews)(NetBase Solutions Inc.)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... I n an age of information overload, any tool that can cut through the data chatter and clutter is a welcome site. That's one of the reasons why Elsevier teamed up with NetBase Solutions, Inc. for a new research tool called illumin8. Rafael...

Covario: insights into universal search.(Product News & Reviews)
April 1, 2008... Covario, Inc. recently announced the release of several enhancements to its Organic Search Insight including support for universal search, a new way of showing how search engines are displaying data to consumers through text results as well as...

EBSCO Information Services adds Express Content via Ariba.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... EBSCO Information Services announced that it is the first vendor to supply Express Content for subscriptions and publications as part of the Express Content program offered by Ariba, Inc. This exclusive agreement for magazines and subscriptions...

Thomson Collexis Dashboard digs for data.(Product News & Reviews)(Thomson Scientific and Collexis Holdings Inc.)
April 1, 2008... Thomson Scientific and Collexis Holdings, Inc. recently finished collaborating on a new tool that digs deeply into scientific data. Collexis used its Knowledge Dashboard to search and retrieve information in Thomson Scientific's Web of Science,...

CrossRef introduces free citation tool for bloggers.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... CrossRef launched the beta version of a new plug-in that lets bloggers look up and insert DOI-enabled citations in a blog. The plug-in (https://sourceforge.net/ projects/crossref-cite) lets bloggers use a widget-based interface to search...

Collexis and Dell launch scientific social network.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Collexis Holdings, Inc. and Dell launched BioMedExperts, a social networking community designed to promote collaborative medical research and development. This new online community will let healthcare and life sciences professionals connect and...

It's that time: the Financial Times' deadline.(Product News & Reviews)
April 1, 2008... If you normally read the Financial Times online and that digital content doesn't appear on April 1, it's no April Fools' joke. Check to make sure you have the proper licensing agreement that went into effect April 1. Caspar de Bono,...

Onvia: entering the construction zone.(Product News & Reviews)
April 1, 2008... Onvia, well-known for its comprehensive database detailing the wide range of government-sector job opportunities, recently branched out into the construction zone. "Many of our customers are familiar with Onvia on the government side," says...

Wiley-Blackwell adds new journal to publishing schedule.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Wiley-Blackwell announced that it will publish the Institute of Psychoanalysis' flagship journal, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis (IJPA), which is published six times a year. IJPA, which is now in its 88th volume, is the sole...

CompTIA debuts new website for managed services.(Product News & Reviews)(Computing Technology Industry Association)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) launched a new website called FocusOnMSP (www.focusonmsp.com) for the growing market for managed technology services. This comprehensive resource provides tools...

Time to meetup: wherever you are: a quick glance at a few of the thousands of groups listed on the site (groups that hold more than 70,000 offline meetings a month) confirms the veracity of the motto....(Link-up @ Home: Your Personal Guide to the Web)
April 1, 2008... Some people blame the internet for a decline in social interaction. They say that even as we use online technology to join groups and communicate with others around the globe, we isolate ourselves and ignore the personal and social rewards...

A stroll down memory lane from homer to the rocket.(CyberSports)
April 1, 2008... Even back in the Dark Ages when we accessed the internet through something called Prodigy (or, when we were feeling particularly techie, CompuServe), we watched The Simpsons for entertainment. Yes, our computers and web access may change, but...

The world of consulting: glamour or grind?(Cover Notes)
April 1, 2008... Is Consulting for You? A Primer for Information Professionals by Ulla de Stricker Chicago: ALA Editions, 2007 ISBN: 978-0-8389-0947-8 101 pages; $40, soft-cover We have all probably daydreamed about becoming a consultant: getting up late,...

Matters of intelligence.(In Other Words)
April 1, 2008... Intelligence isn't just about being brainy. You can be street-smart with little formal education. You can be too smart for your own good. You can be a member of Mensa and possess absolutely no common sense. The articles from the April issues of...

IntraLinks.(People Line & the Executive Profile)(J. Andrew Damico )(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IntraLinks announced that it has named J. Andrew Damico as CEO. He has worked for the company for 7 years in positions such as COO, executive vice president of sales and marketing, and most recently, he was acting...

Intellitactics.(People Line & the Executive Profile)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Intellitactics announced the appointment of Sunil Bhargava to the newly created position of CTO. In this position, Bhargava will determine the company's strategic technology direction and be responsible for...

Attivio, Inc.(People Line & the Executive Profile)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Attivio, Inc. announced that Kirby Lunger is joining the company as senior vice president of corporate development. In this role, she will lead market analysis, business development, and investor and partner...

Lightning Source, Inc.(People Line & the Executive Profile)(Dave Piper)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Lightning Source, Inc. announced the appointment of Dave Piper as deputy managing director for Lightning Source U.K. In this position, he will be responsible for day-to-day operations, as well as the development of business models to increase...

LibLime.(People Line & the Executive Profile)(John Rose)(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] LibLime announced that John Rose has joined the company as vice president of strategic markets. In this position, he will help develop and execute sales strategies. Most recently, Rose was national sales manager...

Thomson Scientific.(People Line & the Executive Profile)(Marian Hollingsworth )(Brief article)
April 1, 2008... Thomson Scientific announced the promotion of Marian Hollingsworth to director of publisher relations. Since joining the company in 2000, she has been the manager of publisher relations. As director, she will be responsible for communications...

David 'Skip' Prichard, president and CEO, Ingram Book Group.(People Line & the Executive Profile)(Brief biography)
April 1, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Although people worried that the increase in available digital content would lead to the death of print, it actually opened up new avenues for doing business and for getting information to the masses. According to...