Information Today articles from May 2004

Information Today archives from May 2004

Computers in Libraries 2004.
May 1, 2004... "We're getting to the point where there are an awful lot of unintended consequences... and surprises."--Clifford Lynch, executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information Unintended consequences? Of what? Technology, of course....

Hear! Hear! for the publishers.(Report From The Field)
May 1, 2004... Information Today, Inc.'s Dick Kaser was busy this winter attending the conferences of publishers and other content and software information suppliers. Each of the events has been covered in full by Information Today reporters: * The SIIA...

Does more usage of journal articles mean more value?(Report From The Field)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... No journal publisher's meeting would be complete without an appearance by Elsevier's Karen Hunter. Her provocative session at AAP/PSP this year addressed whether increased access to literature actually equates to increased value. ...

EUSIDIC Spring Meeting 2004.(European Association of Information Services)
May 1, 2004... EUSIDIC traditionally hosts two conferences a year. The main event is the Annual Conference, which will be held Oct. 17-20 in Helsinki, Finland. The 2-day Spring Meeting, which is more of a technical workshop event, was held March 7-9 in...

Context, the lawyer join forces.(NewsBytes)(The Lawyer Group)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Context, Ltd., an electronic legal publisher, and The Lawyer Group announced that they have partnered to provide The Lawyer.com community with access to Context's legal research tool, JustCite. JustCite (http://www.justcite.com) provides a...

ebrary announces new partnerships.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... ebrary announced that it has partnered with seven new international distributors to sell its online book databases and other products to libraries around the world. To date, ebrary and its growing roster of international partners have signed...

EBSCO's MetaPress now hosts UK Serials Group title.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... EBSCO announced that the UK Serials Group has selected EBSCO's MetaPress to host its title, Serials. EBSCO also announced that its EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service (EJS) now includes more than 1 million pay-per-view articles. Serials...

Blogs and currency.(Up Front)
May 1, 2004... Good editors will spend hours, even days, each month nursing regular contributors through whatever problems their lives send their way. Love of writers, love of a particular field of study, and love of humanity may explain some of the devotion....

The latest on search, content, and more.(NewsBreak Update)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... April and May are wonderful months. The greening, flowering, and warmer temperatures cheer us, and sending in our tax returns provides great relief. Many folks enjoy Earth Day activities on April 22. This year's National Library Week, held...

Enterprise search update.(NewsBreak Update)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Enterprise search continues to be hot. Recently, Endeca announced the availability of Endeca ProFind 4.1, the latest version of its enterprise search and navigation platform. Endeca also teamed up with Stratify, a provider of unstructured...

More or less?(NewsBreak Update)(Thomson Gale)
May 1, 2004... Thomson Gale said it has finished loading more than 500,000 backfile investment reports into the Investext Plus database. This new content, added at no cost to existing subscribers, extends the database backfile to 1982. On the other hand,...

Googling along.(NewsBreak Update)(personalized web search and web alerts)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... It seems impossible to have a month go by without some news from Google. The search giant recently modified and enhanced its home page and results pages, added personalization features and Web alerts, and, most significantly, launched a free...

Google gets flak.(NewsBreak Update)
May 1, 2004... Within a week, the World Privacy Forum and 27 other privacy and civil liberties organizations had written a letter asking Google to suspend its Gmail service until the privacy issues are adequately addressed. The letter also asked Google to...

Yahoo! Update.(NewsBreak Update)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Though other search engine news was somewhat eclipsed by all the Googling, there were some other important developments. Yahoo! introduced Yahoo! News Search 2.0, which now lets users search more than 7,000 global news sources in 35 languages,...

Narrowcasting.(NewsBreak Update)
May 1, 2004... Meanwhile, specialized search engines, which offer more focused results and specialized content and features than the big guys of search, continue to fill important niches. This is the notion of narrowcasting--narrowing a search to a specific...

Content in (ad) context.(NewsBreak Update)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Finally, one of the more interesting commentaries I've read recently is by analyst John Blossom of Shore Communications, who wrote about how non-publishers are monetizing content. Wal-Mart, Procter & Gamble, and Ford are among the companies...

NewsStand announces new agreement.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... NewsStand, Inc. announced that USA TODAY Sports Weekly has selected NewsStand to provide digital production and delivery of its publication. According to the announcement, by selecting NewsStand's software technology, Sports Weekly can...

IEEE scores first amendment victory.(NewsBytes)(Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... IEEE announced that it has scored a victory for freedom of the press and the scholarly publishing community with a recent ruling from the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The ruling exempts peer review, editing, and...

Accelerating the transition to the optimal and inevitable.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2004... In the Internet age, open access (OA) has indeed become optimal and inevitable. It remains only to make it actual! In an article [Information Today, April 2004] that is largely on target, Richard Poynder notes that there are two ways to provide...

Green eggs and spam.
May 1, 2004... It took only a few months to start feeling the effects--some desired and some unanticipated--of the Can Spare Act. You'll recall that the new law, which went into effect Jan. 1, sought to reduce the amount of true junk mail that most of us...

Infotoons.
May 1, 2004... UM, DARE I ASK WHAT YOU'RE DOING? I'M DEFRYING THE CAN SPAM ACT. AH HA HA HA! TECHNICALLY, BEING 20 FEET OFF THE COAST OF ATLANTIC CITY DOESN'T MAKE YOU IMMUNE FROM PROSECUTION. HOLY COW, YOU'RE RIGHT! THANKS FOR THE HEADS-UP! ...

The free-access debate flourishes.(Focus on Publishing)
May 1, 2004... In the ongoing debate over how the next chapter of "more open" scholarly publishing should be written, the not-for-profit publishers have made their voices more widely heard. So along with the positions of the commercial publishers and...

The COUNTER Project.(Internet Insights)(Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources)
May 1, 2004... In 2003, Project COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) was incorporated in the U.K. as the not-for-profit organization Counter Usage Metrics. Apparently, the company runs the project very effectively, as I could tell...

You can't do that, it's patented.(Legal Issues)
May 1, 2004... "Commercial interests and activities are the best things that could have ever happened to the Internet." "Commercial interests and activities are the worst things that could have ever happened to the Internet." I think both statements are...

Google teams up with 17 colleges.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Google, Inc. announced that it has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and 16 other universities around the world to provide a way to search the institutions' collections of scholarly papers. A pilot test of the...

Innodata Isogen to digitize cases.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Innodata Isogen, Inc., a provider of content supply chain solutions, announced that it is working with Harvard Business School Publishing, the not-for-profit subsidiary of Harvard University, to digitize more than 1,000 case studies in the...

UPI, LexisNexis expand relationship.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... United Press International and Lexis Nexis U.S. announced a multiyear contract that expands the quantity of content that UPI will deliver. This summer, LexisNexis news-content subscribers will have access to more global coverage of Middle...

Nstein Technologies signs agreement with Alis Technologies.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Nstein Technologies, Inc. announced that it has signed a contract with Alis Technologies on a project with France's General Delegation for Armaments (DGA). The DGA is developing a project for an information portal for which Alis, through...

MicroPatent adds German marks, French patent data.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... MicroPatent, LLC, a subsidiary of Information Holdings, Inc. and a full-service intellectual property information provider, announced the addition of German marks and designs to its trademark service, Trademark.com. Schutz Marken Dienst GmbH, a...

Vicious circle.(Investigative Report)(patents)
May 1, 2004... Patents have attained an unprecedented popularity. The number of applications filed increases each year, and new technologies for filing, searching, managing, and mining patent documents are constantly growing in sophistication. Who wouldn't...

SLA launches interactive job board.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... SLA has announced the relaunch of Career Center, a resource that offers enhanced services and an interactive job board. It is available at http://www.sla .org/careercenter. According to the announcement, employers and recruiters utilizing...

International report.(Issues affecting libraries, publishing and the information industry in Ethiopia, UK and China )
May 1, 2004... China A recent issue of Shanghai Star, Chinas English-language newspaper, reported that the city of Shanghai spends 40-percent less than its U.S. counterparts on its public libraries. And although 70 percent of citizens in Northern...

ProQuest, Extenza to offer e-journal services.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... ProQuest Information and Learning and Extenza e-Publishing Services announced an alliance to offer a broad portfolio of e-journal and database services for publishers and libraries. The agreement delivers a complete distribution and hosting...

The British Library to help save endangered archives.(NewsBytes)(Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund joins British Library for funding an endangered archives preservation progarm)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... The British Library announced that the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund is joining it to fund an $18.2 million program to preserve the world's endangered archives. According to the announcement, the Endangered Archives Programme is the...

EBSCO teams with Al Sharaka.(NewsBytes)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... EBSCO Publishing announced that as part of the Al Sharaka Program for Higher Education in Iraq, an initiative undertaken by USAID and universities comprising the Oklahoma Higher Education partners, all noncommercial institutions in Iraq have...

Project Gutenberg progresses.
May 1, 2004... In 1971, Michael Hart typed the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence into a mainframe computer at the University of Illinois, creating the first electronic book. This was the start of Project Gutenberg (PG), an ambitious effort to...

Specialized encyclopedias for in-depth information.(Link-up@home: your personal guide to the web)
May 1, 2004... If you search for information on Friedrich Nietzsche at Encyclopedia.com, you get a 247-word overview of the German philosopher's life and work. If you look him up in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stan ford.edu), you get...

Green with envy.(CyberSports)(Bill Craib chronicles his visits to 160 minor league ballparks)
May 1, 2004... Everyone has a dream job, right? I would like nothing better than to retreat to my lonely writer's garret, hunch over my laptop, and crank out books. You'd probably like to work at home and read this while wearing your ratty bathrobe instead of...

Where buyer meets seller.(Perspectives)
May 1, 2004... If you search on Google for just about any name-brand product, near the top of the results list you're likely to find links to items auctioned on eBay. The newspaper classified section's worst nightmare, eBay is a global marketplace for...

Where in the world.(On the Road)(conferences)
May 1, 2004... Fall 2004 offers lots of conference choices for info pros and librarians. Or if you fancy Paris in June, you can attend a conference there too. One size doesn't fit all, so here's the scoop about what's on the calendar. You can consider what...

A roundup of other CIL sessions.(Report From The Field)
May 1, 2004... Below is a summary of several other conference sessions. "Dead & Emerging Technologies"--D. Scott Brandt (moderator and technology training librarian at Purdue University Libraries), Darlene Fichter (data librarian for the University of...

Sticky comments from the publishers' meetings.
May 1, 2004... You know it's been a good meeting season when months later you find yourself quoting things you heard way back when. From my rounds at recent publishing events, here are the comments that for me proved to be the stickiest. Draconian...

The ASIDIC Spring 2004 meeting.(Report From The Field)
May 1, 2004... The U.S. government is the world's largest publisher, and the volume of information it produces continues to grow rapidly. Although the government disseminates much of its own information, it also turns to the private sector for help in making...

Conference calendar.(Calendar)
May 1, 2004... May 17-19: Philadelphia (Wyndham Franklin Plaza Hotel). Cambridge Health-tech Institute will hold the eighth annual Cheminformatics: Data Driving Decisions conference. Topics include compound selection, integration of informatics systems,...

Thomson Gale.(People Line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Thomson Learning announced that Gordon T. Macomber has joined Thomson Gale as its president. Most recently, he was CEO of Merriam-Webster, Inc. Macomber holds a B.A. in economics from Colgate University. Source: Thomson Corp., Stamford,...

EDGAR Online, Inc.(People Line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... EDGAR Online, Inc. has announced changes to its management team. Stefan Chopin has been appointed chief technology officer. Previously, he served on EDGAR's board of directors. Doug Richardson joined the company as executive vice...

Wolters Kluwer Health.(People Line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Wolters Kluwer Health announced that Gary Foster has joined the company as president and CEO of its Medical Research division. Prior to this, he was president and CEO of PatientKeeper. Foster holds a B.A. from American University and an...

Institute of Physics Publishing.(People Line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Institute of Physics Publishing announced that Mark Sauter has joined its sales team. Most recently, he was director of North American sales at Knovel Corp. Sauter holds a management/marketing degree from St. Joseph's University in...

Vasont Systems.(People Line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Vasont Systems announced that Michael Hahn has joined the company as a senior content management analyst. He will analyze client requirements for new installations as well as design a curriculum and perform training for users and administrators...

HighBeam Research, LLC.(People Line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... HighBeam Research, LLC has announced the appointment of David Guttman as vice president of finance and administration. Previously, he was a principal and vice president of Workspeed, a provider of Web-based and wireless real estate...

NewsStand, Inc.(People Line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... NewsStand, Inc. announced that Bradley Dinkmeyer has joined the company as director of newspaper sales for North America. Prior to this, he held sales and marketing positions with Dow Jones & Co., the Los Angeles Times, St. Petersburg Times,...

Bibliographic Data Services.(People Line)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Bibliographic Data Services announced the appointment of Cleve Vine as chairman of its board. Previously, Vine was Book Data's deputy managing director. Source: Bibliographic Data Services, Dumfries, Scotland, 011-44-1387-702251;...

David Walke, CEO of FIND/SVP, Inc.(Executive Profile)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... David Walke joined FIND/SVP, Inc., a provider of business advisory, research, and consulting services, with a clear vision to build a diversified, client-centric knowledge services company that expands its core offerings and leverages the...

Snapshots International launches new global panorama series.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Snapshots International announced the launch of the Global Panorama Series, a collection of reports that contain aggregated figures from the single country reports published within the Snapshots Series. The Global Panorama Series offers two...

FindLaw revamps FindLaw for the Public Web site, adds directory to Microsoft Office.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... FindLaw announced the release of a new version of its FindLaw for the Public Web site (http://public.findlaw.com). The company also announced that Microsoft Office 2003 Editions will include its West Legal Directory. FindLaw for the Public...

Gale virtual reference library supersizes reference e-books.(Database Review)
May 1, 2004... These days, everything is supersized. You can get 3-ton SUVs, houses with five bathrooms, and softball-sized muffins. So why not supersized reference e-book collections? Other reference e-collections are substantial: Oxford Reference Online has...

Dogpile upgrades search toolbar.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Dogpile announced an upgrade of its Dogpile Search Toolbar. It now includes options for locating and accessing syndicated XML content. According to the announcement, the new Dogpile Toolbar brings the benefits of RSS and Atom content to...

Thomson Derwent unveils new alerting service.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Thomson Derwent announced the availability of Derwent World Patents Index First View (DWPI First View) on Dialog and STN International. DWPI First View is a new alerting companion file to the Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) database of...

Dialog announces new services, platform.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Dialog Corp. announced that real-time financial and business news and analysis produced by CBS MarketWatch are now available through Dialog NewsRoom, Dialog NewsEdge, Dialog NewsEdge Live, and NewsEdge Insights. The company also announced the...

Factiva releases iWorker Search Technology.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Factiva announced the launch of Factiva iWorker Search Technology, an algorithm-based product platform capability. This patent-pending system seamlessly matches simple keyword searches to the filtering capability embedded within Factiva's...

Wiley InterScience introduces new Organic Reactions database.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Wiley InterScience announced the introduction of Organic Reactions, a comprehensive new database devoted exclusively to important synthetic reactions. Organic Reactions presents chemistry from a preparative point of view, with a focus on...

Westlaw offers ResultsPlus for searching statutes.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... West announced that ResultsPlus, a research-assistance feature available on Westlaw, has been expanded to include statute searches. This new offering recommends additional relevant information resources to help legal professionals develop an...

Convera rolls out new taxonomies.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Convera announced that it has introduced five new industry-specific taxonomies: Genetics, Finance & Business, General Enterprise, Technology, and U.S. Government. According to the announcement, these taxonomies contain industry-standard...

WSJ.com to offer Audience Search service.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... The Wall Street Journal Online (WSJ .com) announced that it will offer Audience Search. This service, developed and powered by Revenue Science, Inc., uses natural language keywords to create custom audience segments in real time and rank the...

xrefer adds CIA World Factbook to xreferplus.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... xrefer, a provider of online ready reference services to academic, public, and corporate libraries, announced that it has integrated the CIA World Factbook into its xreferplus subscription service, adding interactive and exportable data tables....

Thomson ISI ResearchSoft releases Reference Manager 11 bibliographic software.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Thomson ISI ResearchSoft announced that it has shipped a major upgrade to Reference Manager, its bibliographic software that streamlines research, writing, and publishing for corporate, government, and academic researchers. Reference...

FIZ Karlsruhe adds FRANCEPAT database.(Product News & Reviews)(Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle )(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... FIZ Karlsruhe announced that it has added the new bibliographic patent database FRANCEPAT to its product portfolio. FRANCEPAT, a private service under a distribution agreement with Institut National de la Propriete Industrielle (INPI), contains...

Thomson Gale offers MARC records, adds new database features.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Thomson Gale announced that the MARC records from Literature Resource Center's most-studied authors are now available for free. The company also announced that it has added new features to four of its databases. MARC Records Using...

SilkRoad Technology announces the availability of its Eprise 2004 software.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... SilkRoad Technology, Inc., a provider of content management and collaboration software, announced the availability of the Eprise 2004 content management system. Eprise 2004 offers features built on top of the existing Eprise platform that allow...

EBSCO Publishing enhances LinkSource.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... EBSCO Publishing announced that its LinkSource service now offers several new features designed to maximize its effectiveness in libraries. With the addition of more customization options, LinkSource provides more access to full text across all...

Library of Congress adds AACR2 to Web edition of Cataloger's Desktop tool.(Product News & Reviews)(Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition )(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... The Library of Congress' Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) and the co-publishers of the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2nd edition (AACR2), have agreed to add AACR2 to the Web edition of CDS's Cataloger's Desktop cataloging tool. AACR2...

San Jose Public Library launches new digital service.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... OverDrive, Inc. announced that the San Jose Public Library has launched a new digital library (http://ebooks.sjlibrary.org). This resource will give residents access to popular e-books directly from their home or office. OverDrive supplied the...

Thomson releases 2004 Patent Focus Report.(Product News & Reviews)(Thomson Scientific, Reference, and Healthcare)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Thomson Scientific announced the publication of the 2004 Thomson Patent Focus Report. This document offers the most recently available statistics for patent filings worldwide and focuses on legislative and infrastructure developments in the...

Omnigraphics releases Headquarters USA print directory as electronic database.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Omnigraphics announced that Headquarters USA is now available as HQ Online, a searchable electronic database. This database offers access to the headquarters and main offices of top businesses and organizations in the U.S. and Canada. All...

Surpass software offers centralized cataloging pricing for Surpass Copycat.(Product News & Reviews)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2004... Surpass Software announced that it now offers new centralized cataloging pricing for Surpass Copycat. This cataloging tool provides for free downloading of MARC records with no annual database subscription needed. With the new pricing,...

What is information, anyway?(Cover Notes)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Understanding Information Systems: What They Do and Why We Need Them by Lee Ratzan Chicago: ALA, 2004 ISBN: 0-8389-0868-3 253 pages $58 If you're like me and finished library school a few years back, you may not remember much from those...

The rating game.(In Other Words)(Editorial)
May 1, 2004... It's May. Or as it's known throughout TV-dom, the regular-season-ending "sweeps" period. Sweeps, for those not in the know, happen four times a year: February, May, August, and November. May sweeps are particularly noteworthy because series...

The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: a Guide for the Serious Searcher.(New Titles for the Information Professional)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher By Randolph Hock Foreword by Gary Price The Extreme Searcher's Internet Handbook is the essential guide for anyone who uses the Internet for research: librarians,...

Net Effects: How Librarians Can Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet.(New Titles for the Information Professional)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Net Effects: How Librarians Can Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet Edited by Marylaine Block The Internet is a mixed blessing for libraries and librarians. Today, the Net challenges the librarian's ability to select,...

The Web Library: Building a World Class Personal Library with Free Web Resources.(New Titles for the Information Professional)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... The Web Library: Building a World Class Personal Library with Free Web Resources By Nicholas G. Tomaiuolo Edited by Barbara Quint With this remarkable, eye-opening book and its companion Web site, Nicholas G. Tomaiuolo shows how anyone can...

The Accidental Webmaster.(New Titles for the Information Professional)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... The Accidental Webmaster By Julie M. Still Here is a lifeline for the individual who has not been trained as a Webmaster, but who--whether by choice or under duress--has become one nonetheless. While most Web-mastering books focus on...

Building & Running a Successful Research Business: a Guide for the Independent Information Professional.(New Titles for the Information Professional)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Building & Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional. By Mary Ellen Bates Edited by Reva Basch This is the handbook every aspiring independent information professional needs to launch,...

Assessing Competitive Intelligence Software: a Guide to Evaluating CI Technology.(New Titles for the Information Professional)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Assessing Competitive Intelligence Software: A Guide to Evaluating CI Technology By France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer Foreword by Chun Wei Choo As commercial software products for competitive intelligence (CI) emerge and gain...

Knowledge Management Lessons Learned: What Works and What Doesn't.(New Titles for the Information Professional)(Book Review)
May 1, 2004... Knowledge Management Lessons Learned: What Works and What Doesn't Edited by Michael E. D. Koenig and T Kanti Srikantaiah Editors Srikantaiah and Koenig follow up their groundbreaking Knowledge Management for the Information Professional...