Information Community News

Archived News

  2006 NFAIS Annual Conference – 12/20/2005

Updates will be even more sporadic than in recent weeks during this holiday hiatus. In the meantime, do consider attending the NFAIS 2006 Annual Conference (our 48th!). As you consider whether you can fit us into your travel schedule, you can review the program for each day:

  Scirus Adds Additional Content – 12/19/2005

Scirus Expands its Index of Over Two Million Physics-Related Articles to Include Valuable Content from Institute of Physics Publishing  From the press release:  The addition of IOP’s 200,000 full-text articles to Scirus’ over two million physics-related articles reinforces Scirus’ comprehensiveness in the area of physics.  The index includes physics titles from the American Institute of Physics and Elsevier, as well as preprints from ArXiv.

  New Business Information Services – 12/14/2005

Interesting juxtaposition of two different business information services this week.  The first has to do with the Northern Light Business Research Engine.  They've announced that they've lowered the price on the service from $50.00 per month to a mere $9.99 per month. Information Today, Inc publication Information Advisor had a review last month of the engine.

  Digital Information Future – 12/08/2005

From Inside Higher Ed, this article, on the move to take the research journal literature digital, urges caution as we near the real tipping point in the transition from print-only collections to hybrid collections to fully digital collections.  It is imperative that all parties consider carefully the long-term impact of acquisition and licensing decisions on the wider publishing community to ensure that the scholarly record not be adversely affected, most particularly in the humanities and in the social sciences.

  Presentations from November 18 – 12/05/2005

The bulk of the presentations have been made available from the NFAIS-sponsored one-day event on Web 2.0. You'll want to investigate further.  

  Nerac Launches New Service – 11/29/2005

Nerac 180 Offers Best of Both Worlds: Online Searching and Advanced Analytical Research  Aimed at engineers and small to medium enterprises, this new service from Nerac "features an easy-to-use interface, which provides access to database content comprised of abstracted references to thousands of selected engineering publications and conference proceedings. Nerac 180 offers the unique integration of the hands-on assistance of Nerac’s research staff with end-user focused web search tools. The Nerac 180 database includes a broad range of engineering content relevant to workers in industry, including fields such as aerospace, automotive, bioengineering, chemical, electrical, fuel, nuclear and optics."

  Member Announcements – 11/28/2005

There were a slew of member announcements in my absence so what follows is a long list of links to noteworthy items that may have eluded our readers. First, announcements about people:

  More on Tagging – 11/16/2005

Tagging in the context of the library catalog. The blog entry contains a link to a tag cloud and then to bibliographic records associated with the specific tag, as in this instance with the tag of "child psychology". Very interesting concept.

  Tagging -- Indexing In All Its Glory – 11/15/2005

I've been working on my presentation for later this week (see here; I'm in the afternoon). I've posted the Reading List of Material on Social Bookmarking and Tagging Tools that accompanies my talk. Clearly I've got a hot topic, given that Amazon has now introduced tagging. Business 2.0 has an article in its December issue called The Flickrization of Yahoo.   An interesting area of development!

  Shore Communications – 11/10/2005

John Blossom points out a relevant detail about Google Print for Libraries to reporters at the New York Times.

  Make A Wish, Nov 11th – 11/09/2005

A friend at PALINET forwarded this news to me:

  Carnival of the Infosciences #14 – 11/07/2005

Carnival of the Infosciences #14 (permanent link here):

  Call for Submissions, Recommendations – 11/04/2005

This post will remain at the top of this page for the next week so please scroll down to ensure that you don't miss out on other news entries:

  Tidbits from here and there – 10/31/2005

General roundup of member news:

  Emerging Technologies – 10/27/2005

Interesting article on the topic of Web 2.0. Which of course is also the topic of the November event on the NFAIS calendar.

  Information At the Point of Need – 10/26/2005

Connecting the individual with the appropriate information at their point of need is particularly critical with regard to doctors and patients, as evidenced by the following:

  Carnival of the Infosciences #11 – 10/20/2005

The Carnival of the Infosciences #11 was posted earlier this week at Christina's LISRant. One item that I thought was particularly interesting to consider came from MaisonBisson reflecting on the Web4Lib listserv discussion of Wikipedia and authoritative information.  The Google economy poses a challenge for all of us because while Google does improve awareness of content, it doesn't implement any editorial standards to the capture of available content. Unlike more traditional information services such as AARP's AgeLine or even non-traditional tools like Elsevier's Scirus search engine, Google indexes without judgement.     

  Academy for 21st Century Info Professionals – 10/18/2005

The Louis Round Wilson Academy, convened by the University of North Carolina's School of Information and Library Science, has been formed to "identify methods by which knowledge, trust and stewardship can be advanced in the digital age and information made more manageable and useable to more knowledge consumers". [Read full press release] A number of senior executives from NFAIS member organizations are included in this body:

  Excellent Report on Creativity-Support Tools – 10/17/2005

Excellent information included in this Report of the Workshop on Creativity Support Tools, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, held at the University of Maryland in June of 2005.  In particular, note the chapter by Bill Kules on the role of search tools in support of creativity.

  Merger Activity – 10/13/2005

InsideHigherEd has the news that Blackboard and WebCT are to merge. This has implications for providers in the higher education market space.  Blackboard has some additional information here.

  More to Read – 10/12/2005

First things first, Collin Brooke has written an interesting column about his experiences with technology and the humanities for InsideHigherEd. Go here to read "Mirror, Mirror on the Web". Collin is one of our featured speakers at this week's Humanities Roundtable IV.

  Carnival of the Infosciences #10 – 10/11/2005

The Carnival of the Infosciences (#10) is available today.  It's a really interesting set of links. Note that this page, Information Community News, will be hosting the Carnival the week of November 7th!

  Stuffing papers into your brief... – 10/07/2005

...case as you run out the door to your next conference or meeting. First the member news:

  Web 2.0 – 10/05/2005

Yes, I know Web 2.0 is a buzzword. But you'll still want to look into attending the NFAIS-sponsored one day event in November -- Web 2.0: Current Realities and a Look to the Future.  The date is Friday, November 18, and the venue is here in Philadelphia.

  Knowledge-Wise – 10/04/2005

The September issue of KnowledgeWise from Innodata Isogen looks at the emergence of grass-roots technologies. The issue also spotlights NFAIS as an organization! 

  Update on the STM Market – 09/29/2005

David Mort, writing in the current issue of Research Information, has an update on the STM information market landscape. Note that he is predicting an increase in activity in the area of mergers and acquisitions.

  Libraries, Information and Autonomy – 09/27/2005

Peter Scott today links to an Autonomy news release regarding Autonomy's partnership with NetLibrary, a division of OCLC. It reminded me of a recent interview I encountered with Autonomy's founder, Mike Lynch with the intriguing subtitle "On Google, penguins and the future of search" 

  Question and Answer on CSpan – 09/26/2005

Unofficial transcript of the outstanding CSpan interview last night with Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia.  Two billion pages served every month on 150 servers.

  Impending Hurricane Rita – 09/23/2005

The following is from an announcement by NFAIS member organization, LexisNexis.

  Relief Efforts – 09/19/2005

NFAIS Members Respond to Katrina Devastation.  The information community extends its sympathy and support to those individuals and institutions affected by the path of Hurricane Katrina.

  ThomsonPharma – 09/16/2005

Thomson Pharma Exceeds Expectations. The notable quote is from a vice president at one of the client companies using ThomsonPharma. "Thomson Pharma is a best in class database, providing access to the most complete data available in an efficient search engine.  Thomson Pharma enables us to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in our customer's pipelines as well as to find potential new customers.  We regularly mine the database to find patents, competitive intelligence and new opportunities," concluded Robins.  

  Google and Medicine – 09/15/2005

It's not that one begrudges Google's use of this story, but doesn't it reflect poorly on the medical professionals that they didn't take  advantage of the information resources available to them before they recommended the procedure to the distraught parents in the first place?  A quick review of resources from NLM or Elsevier or Ovid would have been a good strategy. 

  What a question! – 09/14/2005

Jeremy Zawodny asks "How did you learn to search?"  John Battelle fortunately recognizes that some level of effort and critical thinking on the part of the searcher is required. And he links to Gary Price who's covered this discussion in depth. From the NFAIS perspective, there's plenty of good material available and learning opportunities at hand. 

  Member Announcements – 09/13/2005

CABI Publishing has announced the forthcoming launch of CAB Abstracts Plus. This new full text enhancement to CAB Abstracts will provide researchers with access to thousands of additional full text documents direct from the database. Read press release in full [PDF]

CAB Abstracts Plus brings together a range of full text content from difficult-to-find journal and conference papers to distribution maps. Each component is available separately but together they offer a complete range of scientific resources in agriculture and the applied life sciences.

  Keynote Presentations – 09/12/2005

Stephen E. Arnold, Arnold IT, recently posted two keynote presentations he'll be giving at forthcoming conferences. They're both worth reviewing:

  More Discussion of Web 2.0 – 09/08/2005

The most recent issue of our NFAIS Enotes may have whetted members' appetites for additional information pertaining to Web 2.0. I just found this back-and-forth discussion regarding Web 2.0 between Abstract Dynamics (opening discussion), a response from Peter Merholz's Peterme blog, and the subsequent followup from Abstract Dynamics. It's the dialogue that keeps life interesting.

  Google Print (and what to do about it) – 09/07/2005

If you saw the August 12 entry on this page (scroll down), you're aware of the online debate sponsored by the UK-based Publishers Association and EPS, Ltd as to "Publishing and the Age of Search". The initial comment was posted yesterday, an argument written by Adam Hodgkin of xrefer.com. Quote: "Copyrights deserve respect and whereever possible the copyright holder should be identified in any Google service which uses or searches copyright material.  Publishers' representative organizations should admit that the industry has not been very good at keeping track of copyrights..." Worth reading in full.

  Blogs, the Information Community and Katrina – 09/06/2005

The immediate and long-term effects of Hurricane Katrina are moving everyone to extraordinary efforts. Miguel Ramos reports on the response of the information community in today's Newsbreak at Information Today. Read the piece in full. 

  Dissemination of Government Information – 09/05/2005

This presentation, given in August at the IFLA meeting in Oslo, highlights work by U.S. government agencies across the board in disseminating information. It specifically references activities by the General Printing Office, the National Biological Information Infrastructure and the twelve agencies that make up the Science.gov Alliance.

  JISC Licenses SCOPUS for UK Universities – 09/01/2005

UK based JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) finalizes agreement with Elsevier to deliver Scopus A&I database to 70 universities. From the press release: "JISC runs rigorous evaluations before deciding to include an online resource in its portfolio of collections and has been assessing Scopus since its launch in November 2004."

  Meta- or Federated Search – 08/30/2005

Lorcan Dempsey's weblog offers an interesting entry on the state of federated search in the library community.

  Blogs – 08/29/2005

First, kill all the press releases! Deutsche Bank Research explains why we ought to do so.... 

  SciFinder Intro's Similarity Search – 08/28/2005

From the CAS press release: Building upon a decade of innovation, the new SciFinder 2006 advances its reputation as an essential information tool and part of the process of chemical and pharmaceutical research. For the first time, scientists exploring the CAS Registry of 26 million organic and inorganic chemical substances can retrieve "similar substances" to foster new ideas and directions in drug discovery and other fields of scientific inquiry. "Similarity Searching" is only one of several new features adding new power and depth to SciFinder this year.

  New York, New York! – 08/25/2005

The fourth NFAIS Humanities Roundtable will be held in New  York on Friday, October 14.  This year's event is sponsored by the J. Paul Getty Trust and by RILM Abstracts of Music Literature. It is a unique opportunity for content providers in the humanities. The discussions throughout the day will follow the full product life cycle - the identification of user needs, the development of traditional and non-traditional humanities information products and services, the implementation of federated search, and the marketing of humanities information - not only by data providers but also by librarians within their campus environment. Register using this form!

  Amazon's New Business Model? – 08/22/2005

Amazon's newest venture puts them in the role of a publisher but their approach focuses on price reduction (49 cents per item), electronic distribution using a variety of file formats, and perpetual access once you've paid. This entry reveals how one publishing author responded and the subsequent comments go into further discussion. The Wall Street Journal covered the move this way and more author and customer response may be found here.

  Publishers Blog as Much as Librarians! – 08/18/2005

I've been keeping an eye out for scholarly publishing types who have entered the world of blogging, particularly those who understand that they shouldn't be doing this just for the sake of selling a product. It's a mixed bag, but here are the recent results of my monitoring.

  University of California & Google Scholar – 08/17/2005

A posting to Web4Lib brought this report to my attention. The twelve-page report, available in PDF file format, is entitled UC Libraries Use of Google Scholar.  This is a quote from the opening page: "The replies indicate a core of respondents do not use Google Scholar at all. Others use it rarely, instead strongly preferring licensed article databases purchased by the libraries for use in specific disciplines. Some are reluctant to use it because they are unsure of what it actually covers."  Check out the last page of the report for some useful training tools.

  Make Contact – 08/16/2005

If you're a regular reader of this particular content and have a spare minute during these dog days of August, please drop Jill O'Neill a line and let her know. Except for those weeks before the NFAIS Annual Conference, this page is the one most frequently visited.  Knowing who's looking at the page regularly may be a starting point for forming a focus group to help us work out potential improvements. 

  Amazon (UK) and Talis – 08/15/2005

This announcement of an agreement between Amazon UK and Talis puts a whole new spin to library book sales. You may recall that Talis is the far-seeing organization behind Project Silkworm. You'll certainly want to read the white paper on Silkworm, if you haven't done so already.

  Google Debate (at) EPS, Ltd – 08/12/2005

Publishers Association and EPS, Ltd. to Stage Major Online Debate on Traditional Publishing in the 'Age of Search'. The two UK-based organizations are planning to "stage a six-month major online debate on the impact of digitisation technologies and web search tools on traditional book publishing". To read the full text of the press release, go to the Publishers Association web site [linked above] and find the link under "What's New". The list of debate topics are quite provocative.

  DRM and Textbooks – 08/11/2005

Oh, this has such potential on so many fronts...Recently MBS Textbook Exchange, in cooperation with four leading textbook publishers, launched the Universal Digital Textbooks(TM) program. Go here to read the press release in full. Note in particular the very last paragraph of the press release as it indicates at least in part the rationale behind the initiative.

  Tim Berners-Lee, Blogs, and more – 08/10/2005

Excellent BBC interview with Tim Berners-Lee on the Read/Write Web. Discusses the value of blogging.

  ASIDIC in the Napa Valley – 08/09/2005

ASIDIC will be holding their forthcoming fall meeting, The Changing Value of Content, in Napa, California. The topics center around how providers are addressing the value added equation and producing content that users feel is worth paying for. The speaker roster looks interesting!

  Carnival of the InfoSciences – 08/08/2005

I've watched these carnivals spring up surrounding the blogging entries of other special interest groups (such as Carnival of the Recipes or Carnival of the Capitalists) but here's one for this group. The Carnival of the Infosciences! And there's really good content to be found there! I challenge you to read them all.

  Federated Search Presentations – 08/04/2005

The powerpoint presentations from last Friday's event, Federated Search: Practical Applications and Future Direction , are now posted! We had a packed house.

  Knowledge Wise – 08/03/2005

Innodata Isogen is publishing a newsletter, Knowledge Wise, that will offer glimpses into content industries. Their website offers a number of good resources.

  Collection Development Manager – 08/02/2005

Thomson Scientific to launch Collection Development Manager tool in 2006. According to this Information Week article, the tool will allow information managers to "measure article usage, impact factors, where their academics publish their articles and the journals they cite." The tool is being developed in conjunction with five major research institutions including Dartmouth College and Drexel University.  

  ISI Web of Knowledge – 07/28/2005

Thomson Scientific has announced a new service that will allow users to access ISI Web of KnowledgeSM from wherever they are working. Over 100,000 users each day will benefit from the XML gateway that puts premium content and tools in easy reach from within library and institutional portals. Thomson Scientific has collaborated with Ex Libris to test the XML gateway. Ex Libris is the provider of MetaLib®—which enables patrons at academic institutions to conduct a MetaSearch™ across heterogeneous resources.  Full Press Release.

  APA Enhances Permission Processes – 07/27/2005

The American Psychological Association (APA) has revised its permissions policy by automatically authorizing re-use of material within specific parameters.  In addition, permission to use APA material in a print product automatically grants permission to use content in the equivalent electronic version of the book or journal.

  Personalized Google – 07/26/2005

Google has quietly improved the personalization function of the site. If you are looking for a new RSS reader, their hope is that the ease of use and intuitive feel of their system will draw users further into the adoption of RSS and similar services for receiving and retrieving information on the Web.

  From the Blogosphere – 07/23/2005

Here's a new approach to teaching preservation techniques. By the way, if you have time, go visit the various blogs on Tangognat's blogroll. Marvelous library-oriented material and interesting people.

  Launch of IEE Digital Library – 07/22/2005

The IEE is pleased to announce the launch of the new IEE Digital Library.  The IEE Digital Library is hosted on the Scitation platform from the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and replaces the current IOJ (IEE Online Journals) platform. For more information, read the announcement on their site.

  This Is So Cool! – 07/20/2005

Search Tuna is just one of the coolest search applications I've seen in a good long while. It still has a few bugs with its algorithms but otherwise, there's real potential for this type of functionality. For-fee content providers might want to pay attention to this particular beta product.

  Engineering Information & RSS – 07/19/2005

Straight from the Elsevier Engineering Information press release in my email: "After a successful beta release in January 2005, Engineering Village 2 is among the first subscription based abstracting and indexing (A&I) services to allow users to view, group, organize and retain references (including article titles and hyperlinks) using their preferred RSS reader (compatible with all RSS 2.0 readers).  It enables users to build their own search criteria based upon their specific areas of interest and create personalized RSS feeds in accordance with their own information needs."  For more information, read the most recent EI Update.

  ArtStor and more – 07/18/2005

Interesting article on ArtSTOR in the current issue of Library Journal! In particular, the article notes the challenges to the creation of this type of resource, particularly:

  From The Blogs – 07/15/2005

Some interesting tidbits of blogs of interest to this community:

  American Psychological Association – 07/12/2005

The American Psychological Association (APA) has updated the journal coverage list for PsycInfo. The database currently indexes just under 2000 titles. More on PsycInfo Journal Literature Coverage, including interdisciplinary applications and coverage.

  Interesting Reading – 07/11/2005

"Cost-conscious clients have begun demanding that lawyers improve their efficiency by using librarians who are more skilled searchers." From The American Lawyer, quoted from an article in this month's issue entitled "Don't Count Them Out". The median number of hours billed by a library research to clients in 2004 was 292. Interesting!

  Paula J. Hane on Multisearch – 07/07/2005

This week's Newsbreak by Paula J. Hane of  Information Today focuses on the Multisearch functionality from CSA, a new federated search service featured on this page just before ALA   (scroll down to the entry for June 22).  Note as well that when blogger Tangognat wrote up her take-aways from ALA, she included this tidbit, " CSA is going to implement an author information feature for their databases at some point in the future, which will provide a brief biographical sketch, picture when available, institutional affiliation, etc. This looked very cool..."

  CABI Announcement – 07/06/2005

CAB International Publishing (CABI Publishing) is to begin delivering the journal, Animal Sciences, on behalf of the British Society of Animal Science as of 2006. The full press release is here.

  Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – 07/05/2005

The National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (NCPTSD) is responsible for the PILOTS database (Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress). Their 2004 Annual Report provides specifics about enhancements. PILOTS is adding 2000 records per year and increasing their coverage of child trauma. For more on the Center's publications, see pages 13-14 of the Annual Report.

  New Strategic Direction – 06/29/2005

Lynne Brindley of the British Library is predicting that -- by the year 2020 -- 40% of UK research monographs will be available in electronic format only, while a further 50% will be produced in both print and digital. Her remarks were made at the launch of the Library's new three-year strategy. "The Library will build on its work in collecting digital items, digitising existing collections, and archiving websites, to set up the infrastructure to hold the national collection of digital items in the same way as the organisation manages the 150 million item national collection of books, manuscripts, sound recordings, patents, stamps and maps."

  Federated Search – 06/23/2005

Presentation on Federated Search from SLA 2005, provided by Abe Lederman of DeepWeb Technologies.  He's also one of our speakers at the NFAIS event on Federated Search. Check out the updated program with confirmed speaker names. 

  Product News from CSA and More – 06/22/2005

CSA has some interesting news due out at ALA. For a start, here's yesterday's press release on their implementation of Multisearch. 

CSA, Elsevier, and NBII/USGS are all member organizations of  NFAIS.

  OpenURL Linking to Google Scholar – 06/21/2005

EBSCO has announced that they've included Google Scholar as one of the many OpenURL-enabled sources to provide users with access through their link resolver, LinkSource(TM).  From the press release: "...end users at participating schools who use Google Scholar will see article-level links displayed for their institution’s subscriptions. These links will lead to the library’s LinkSource menu from which the user can access the appropriate copy of the article, bringing the licensed electronic full-text to just a click or two from the Google Scholar search results."

  Scope e-Knowledge Wins! – 06/20/2005

Scope e-Knowledge has been named as  "Service Provider of the Year 2005" by the Data Publishers Association (UK) on the basis of superior project management and operational offshore efficiencies. Read the press release.

  From the Blogosphere – 06/17/2005

Given that news and commentary flows from a number of new information sources, the following blogged items may be of interest to this readership:

  Yahoo Search Subscriptions – 06/16/2005

I haven't even looked yet to see if Gary Price has already written this up for Search Engine Watch, but I think it's worthy of note that both IEEE and the New England Journal of Medicine are included in this new beta service from Yahoo!  Learn more here.

  The Single Search Box – 06/15/2005

In Search of the Single Search Box was a presentation by two NCSU librarians given at the DLF Spring Forum, April 2005.  Apparently the tool they've created will be launched this coming fall.

  JISC and Digital Repositories in the UK – 06/14/2005

In the UK, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced that a new £4m programme will continue JISC's work to encourage the growth of repositories in universities and colleges across the UK. For more information on the Digital Repositories Programme, visit this page.

  Nerac Has A Blog! – 06/13/2005

Nerac has a blog. And people must be reading it because I note that the entries already have comments!  (No, the comments aren't due to spammers either). Cool!

  Federated Search – 06/10/2005

ScienceResearch.com is a metasearch tool from Deep Web Technologies that facilitates searching STM content from a variety of content providers.  A few quick and simple searches garnered results from commercial providers (Blackwells, Taylor & Francis, Elsevier & others), from government agencies participating in the Science.gov initiative and from openly accessible resources such as the DOAJ and Yahoo! Science News. Note that this is still in beta testing, but I'm told it is expected to be out of that phase very soon.

  Judith Russell Honored by SLA – 06/09/2005

Judith Russell, Managing Director, Information Dissemination, US General Printing Office has been honored by the Special Library Association for her outstanding contribution to the global community of information professionals. (The press release is not yet available on line) Judith is also the first woman in history to hold the position of US Superintendent of Documents. She is a member of the NFAIS Board of Directors.

  Somebody Gets It! – 06/08/2005

Kudos to this NFAIS member organization. Institutional repositories are beginning to be an important element of the information landscape and this is the right direction in which to move!

  Member Announcements – 06/07/2005

Mark Logic Releases New MarkLogic Content Server 3.0.  Mark Logic provides technology in support of the repurposing of content by publishers.  That flexibility allows publishers to create new content products from existing lines. In the words of the press release, publishers are enabled to "rapidly and precisely search, discover, and retrieve specific pieces of information, not just links to documents, otherwise hidden within large contentbases."  

  Practical Advice and News from SLA – 06/06/2005

Elsevier is providing Library Connect Practical Assistance Pamphlets in PDF file formats from their Web site (scroll down on the page.). Topics covered include usage statistics, authorized uses of articles published by Elsevier, and best practices for training users on e-resources. These are substantive resources rather than sales literature.

  Miscellany – 06/02/2005

A mixed bag of articles, press releases and other forms of content:

  Searching Google Print – 05/27/2005

Google Print Launches Search Interface.  Visit the Search Engine Watch Blog to see what Gary Price has to say about the new functionality.  Meanwhile, there's an interesting discussion in their forum as to whether Google has overstepped the bounds as AAUP's letter to Google suggests. You might also be interested in reading what the Outsell blog has to say about it. 

  Cutting Editorial Costs – 05/26/2005

Publishers may be able to cut back on costs by outsourcing editorial functions. Innodata-Isogen is offering a two-part Webinar series to commercial publishers as well as a white paper entitled, Outsourcing Editorial Services -- Seven Tips for Reducing Costs and Improving Quality (registration required).

  Google Scholar and Metasearch – 05/24/2005

Perhaps others have seen this presentation by Roy Tennant, given at NISO's Spring 2005 meeting, with the provocative title, Google Scholar: Is Metasearch Dead?  Here's a quote, "Libraries need the ability to unify searching of heterogenous sources that apply to a specific audience and/or purpose." Tennant raises legitimate concerns with the resource from the information professional perspective.

  Database Marketplace 2005 – 05/23/2005

Dr. Carol Tenopir's column in the May 15th issue of Library Journal is a rundown on database producers. There's a sidebar feature which itemizes the following characteristics of the typical 2005 database firm:

  UK Report on E-Resources – 05/20/2005

The British Academy has released a lengthy report on the status of E-Resources for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Among the recommendations included in the report, "that provision for non-e-resources, especially monographs, be maintained; that coordinated provision for digitizing other primary and secondary resources be adopted and that guidelines for e-resource creation be formulated and promoted."

  Stated Concerns from ACS and CAS – 05/19/2005

The American Chemical Society along with its business division, Chemical Abstracts Service,  have issued a statement with regard to their concerns about PubChem [PDF].  From that statement: "We have asked NIH to "refocus" PubChem, not discontinue it, but refocus it, on the stated mission: linking and communicating data created by the Molecular Libraries Screening Center initiative which NIH funds".  The statement is worth reading.

  Publishers, You May Want to Take Note – 05/18/2005

From the press release: LookSmart, an online media and technology company, announced on Monday that it will begin making Furl, its personalized, online filing cabinet and bookmarking service, available to publishers as part of a comprehensive toolset designed to increase audience, revenue and profits. Furl allows for saving of a publisher's content for personal use, as well as sharing of links to the content with others. Read the press release.

  IEEE Journals – 05/17/2005

IEEE journals shown to be less expensive than those of commercial providers. From the press release: Based solely on price, the survey reveals that the average cost of an engineering journal in 2005 is $1,683, and the average cost of a math and computer science journal is approximately $1,262. Using the same calculation method, the average price of an individual IEEE Journal is just $549.

  Fair Use: An International Overview – 05/16/2005

Barry Mahon of ICSTI has forwarded a link to this document from the Australian Attorney General, "Fair Use and Other Copyright Exceptions" [PDF]. Comments are sought on the options proposed.

  What Google Said – 05/12/2005

Dr. Carol Tenopir provides a write-up in Library Journal of the presentation provided by Cathy Gordon, Director, Business Development, Google, to attendees of the NFAIS Annual Conference. 

  Reading for the Train or Plane – 05/11/2005

A miscellany of interesting readings that deserve higher visibility:

  H.W. Wilson Product Enhancement – 05/10/2005

WilsonWeb Full Text Coverage Tops 2,000 Journals From the press release:  This expansion is part of a carefully controlled Wilson program to give researchers greater access to full text while ensuring that this content is research-worthy and of the highest quality...Says WilsonWeb product manager Bernie Seiler. "Wilson scrupulously vets the journals that make their way into our databases, so users can be confident that everything they find has come through layers of authoritative review and editorial scrutiny."

  Ovid and Federated Search – 05/10/2005

Two entries in one day!  But this is a member announcement that has some interesting potential.  Ovid Announces SearchSolver - A Next Generation Federated Search Solution. Apparently they're launching it next week at the Medical Library Association meeting in San Antonio.

  NYTimes on Grokker – 05/09/2005

Today's issue of the New York Times has a nice article on Groxis' move to allow users to view Yahoo! search results with their desktop software tool, Grokker.   See how it works.

  Book Content – 05/05/2005

It may have been a serendipitous occurence or perhaps Gary Price and Greg Notess planned it this way. In any case, both published columns this week on the topic of searchable book content, focused largely on Google and Amazon. 

  Long-Lived Digital Data Collections – 05/04/2005

A draft report from the National Science Board entitled Long-Lived Digital Data Collections: Enabling Research and Education in the 21st Century makes for some interesting reading for the STM community. From the Executive Summary: "...the NSB and NSF working together -- with each fulfilling its respective responsibilities -- need to take stock of the current NSF policies that lead to Foundation funding of a large number of data collections with an indeterminate lifetime and to ask what deliberate strategies will best serve the multiple research and education communities."

  Thomson Learning Labs Research Results – 05/02/2005

The press release came to me from the Thomson Corporation but the research project involved the University of Virginia, Microsoft, and Hewlett-Packard as well as Thomson Learning Labs. From that press release: "The first phase of the project involved 362 UVa students enrolled in the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences' fall 2004 biochemistry, psychology and statistics classes, as well as their instructors. Students participating in the technology-rich courses provided formal evaluations of the tools and materials and gave predominantly positive feedback on the content, Microsoft® OneNote® software and the HP Tablet PC 1100."

  More on the Complexities of Publishing – 04/28/2005

A colleague had forwarded this keynote speech from the Humber College "The New Face of Publishing" conference held earlier in April. The author is Mike Shatzkin of The Idea Logical Company.  The presentation does not specifically deal with scholarly or reference publishing although it does reference John Wiley & Sons in the context of trade publishing. Shatzkin provides an illuminating and in-depth look at the book-selling business in the current transitioning environment.  The overall picture is far more complex than most realize and this should be required reading. 

  Presentations, NFAIS Automated Indexing For – 04/26/2005

The slides from each presentation at the NFAIS-sponsored Automated Indexing Forum in New York City last week are now available on this site. Do take a look!

  Comments on Automated Indexing – 04/25/2005

Last Friday in New York, NFAIS sponsored a Forum on Automated Indexing.  John Blossom, President of Shore Communications, tells you what he heard while there. John's slides as well as those from other speakers of the day will be available on this site by week's end.

  One Person's Commentary – 04/21/2005

This is a truly challenging time for all of us in the information community.  We have to serve users, some of whom may be slow in figuring out when and where fee-paid services may be preferable to free services.  This particular doctoral candidate/researcher noted his lessons in his blog when he (a) had to do some serious reviews of the biomedical literature and (b) when he worked for a bit with Google Scholar. The upshot was that for the particular work he had in hand, he was going to stick with the Web of Science. Google wouldn't work for him in this particular instance. 

  IEE/Inspec Achieves Accreditation from ISO – 04/18/2005

IEE/Inspec has announced that they have been accredited with the International Quality Standard (ISO 9001:2000) on the basis of proven achievement in the area of high quality production workflow and processes.  From the press release: "Inspec undertook customer research in May 2004, which showed an overall customer satisfaction level of 80 per cent, significantly better than competitor products. This measure will be used as a benchmark for going forward to show continuous improvement."

  National Agricultural Library – 04/15/2005

Beginning today, the National Agricultural Library will use the Relais Enterprise document request system to receive and process requests for documents [press release]. To request materials from NAL, review the posted instructions.

  ProQuest Makes Great Strides – 04/13/2005

Proquest has recently been expanding their content offerings:

  Corporate support for Wikipedia – 04/08/2005

Yahoo! to provide hardware and resources to Wikipedia.

  Duke Digital Initiative – 04/07/2005

CNN is reporting today that Duke is adopting a more targeted approach to the use of iPods on campus (see news story). The Duke iPod Web site has this memo from Provost Peter Lange that further explains the thinking behind the Duke Digital Initiative.

  Social Policy and Practice – 04/06/2005

Ovid Announces Availability of Social Policy and Practice Database.  From the press release: "The Social Policy and Practice database is comprised of over 200,000 bibliographic records and abstracts referencing materials held by four highly-respected UK-based organizations; Centre for Policy on Ageing, Greater London Authority, IDOX, and the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE). A significant number of references are 'grey' literature."

  Comments on Orphan Works – 04/05/2005

Fascinating comments received by the U.S. Copyright Office with regard to issues associated with "orphan works". The links to commentary from a range of interested participants indicates the scope of the issue. See below for just a sampling:

  Expanding List of Members – 04/04/2005

NFAIS is pleased to note the expansion of our membership roster. New member organizations include AARP, the Copyright Clearance Center and MarkLogic.

  Use of Examples in Demonstrating Functionality – 03/31/2005

One challenge for any organization supporting an online information service is to provide examples in the help documents that accurately reflect the functionality as promised.  Google recently announced a search mechanism for finding the weather in a particular city.  The functionality in this case (Google example: weather palo alto, ca) apparently works when you input city and state, but when I changed the variables to a zip code rather than a state in the search as Google suggests is feasible, the results were not as promised.   

  Google Scholar and Link Resolvers – 03/29/2005

Breaking News From Library Journal today: Google Scholar Advances; Universities Test Link Resolvers. Basically, it discusses further development of the Google Scholar Preferences page.

  Yahoo! – 03/25/2005

Yahoo! Introduces a Beta Search Tool for Creative Commons

  Scirus Adds Patent Data – 03/22/2005

Scirus, Elsevier's free science-specific search tool, has added patent literature to its index. Read the press release. Patent searching has also been added to Scopus, Elsevier's bibliographic tool, available via license agreement. There are some useful white papers available on the Scopus site that could be used for training purposes.

  Off the Beaten Track A Bit – 03/18/2005

This space is repeatedly used to emphasize that the information community encompasses a number of players -- libraries, content providers, technology vendors, etc.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the blogosphere, where many voices document the current state of transition we're experiencing. In occasional postings we've referenced items that have been pointed out by the likes of Tara Calashain, Gary Price, Peter Suber, Lorcan Dempsey, and NFAIS member organization Information Today in this regard but there are so many other great voices in the information community that you should be reading, including:

  Paying Attention – 03/17/2005

Just another reminder today about the forthcoming one-day event on Automated Indexing and Abstracting, Friday, April 22, 2005 in New York City.  Register now as we have a great line-up of confirmed speakers, including John Blossom, Shore Communications, Margie Hlava, Access Innovations, David D. Lewis, Consultant and Craig Emerson, CSA.  And that is just the morning crew!  

  Membership Busy with Announcements – 03/16/2005

Partnering with Libraries to Help Institutional Repositories Thrive, article by James Pringle, Vice President, Development and General Manager, BIOSIS, Thomson Scientific

  SciFinder Scholar – 03/15/2005

SciFinder Scholar(TM) Now In Use In More Than One Thousand Academic Institutions Worldwide. From the press release: The one thousand institution mark was surpassed as academic consortia in Brazil and mainland China signed agreements to adopt SciFinder Scholar to serve the research needs of member universities with a combined enrollment of more than a million students. CAS announced this achievement during the American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting in San Diego, California.

  Meaningful Content – 03/14/2005

Internet News posted this link first [at least, that's where I encountered it initially], but it's worth repetition.  FactBites is from Australian-based technology company, Rapid Intelligence. See how they compare that their own technology with that of Google.  The firm focuses on computational linguistics, data mining, data warehousing and artificial intelligence. From the press release, "...Factbites delves into the tone and subject matter of the given topic. The engine "reads" the content of each page and determines how meaningful the text is. It seeks out authoritative and informative content..."

  Make-Up Material – 03/11/2005

To make up for missing two days in a row this week, here are multiple and miscellaneous links to review:

  A motley assortment of material – 03/08/2005

Just a quick assortment of items today:

  NFAIS Announcements from Annual Conference – 03/07/2005

Two key announcements from the 2005 NFAIS Annual Conference

  New York Public Library Digital Gallery – 03/03/2005

Quite an impressive array of images now available from the New York Public Library. Read the press release about the new Digital Gallery. 275,000 images from the full range of the NY Public Library's four research libraries' collections, including Civil War photographs, illuminated manuscripts and 19th century sheet music. It opens today at digitalgallery.nypl.org!

  Full Coverage of the NFAIS Annual Conference – 03/02/2005

Information Today did a truly outstanding job of covering the NFAIS Annual Conference.  Read everything that happened over the course of the past three days at the Information Today Blog.  Our most heartfelt thanks to Dick Kaser and Marydee Ojala for blogging live from the event and for being willing to step in at the last minute to deliver a dual full-length discussion of blogs and their place in the information landscape.. Thanks also to Paula Hane for her write-up of the significance of the NFAIS event in this week's Information Today Newsbreaks! 

  Blogging the NFAIS Annual Conference – 02/25/2005

Information Today, Inc. (ITI) announces the launch of the "Live from NFAIS" Blog from the 2005 NFAIS Annual Conference in Philadelphia, February 27 - March 1, 2005. The blog will be featured here, starting February 27 and will continue throughout the show.

  2005 Horizon Report – 02/23/2005

From the New Media Consortium (NMC), and the National Learning Infrastructrue Initiative, an EDUCAUSE Program: The Horizon Report 2005 Edition.  The report indicates that these are the forthcoming technology trends in teaching and learning, based on conversations with more than 500 technology professionals in Silicon Valley, senior IT reps and faculty leaders from colleges and universities and representatives of leading corporations: 

  Access Innovations – 02/22/2005

Access Innovations Named by KMWorld Magazine as one of "100 Companies That Matter" 

  Resource Materials – 02/21/2005

I'm still thinking about this entry on Lorcan Dempsey's weblog, as the various pictures of how information is flowing throughout the academic environment are intriguing -- that we're not dealing with a point-to-point transmission of information but with webs of relationships.   

  The Disposability of Information – 02/16/2005

This is the full text of what Michael Wolff, media columnist at Vanity Fair, actually said during his opening remarks at the SIIA Information Industry Summit. [scroll down to see the relevant links in the February 9 entry below].  The quote that catches one's attention is "We've created a situation of such high disposability of information that, of course, the value is going to drop..."

  Rough Seas Ahead – 02/15/2005

It's the time of year when our news service blogging tends to be on the light side with regard to linking. The NFAIS Annual Conference is in less than two weeks but we'll post some interesting bits now and again between today and the end of the month, including:

  Platforms, Traditional and Other – 02/11/2005

Two announcements today, both pertaining to platform information environments.

  Even More Good Stuff – 02/10/2005

More interesting reading uncovered in the wee small hours:

  Really Good Stuff – 02/09/2005

There are some really interesting short articles and conference reports available for reading this morning (found them all last night!)

  Realignment of Dialog – 02/08/2005

Information Today released an interesting article yesterday about the realignment of Dialog business units within the Thomson framework. Marydee Ojala raises some interesting points about the move.

  NLM Names New Deputy Director – 02/07/2005

Donald A.B. Lindberg, Director, National Library of Medicine has named Betsy Humphries as Deputy Director, it was announced this morning. Ms. Humphreys has served as NLM Associate Director for Library Operations since 1999, but has served the Library since 1973. 

  NIH Policy on Releasing Research Publications – 02/03/2005

From the National Institutes of Health: Public Access to Research Publications, February 3, 2005.  Essentially, NIH is requesting that authors place their final manuscripts in a Web-based archive, specifically PubMedCentral, managed by the National Library of Medicine. The deposit of the manuscript should take place within 12 months of the manuscript's acceptance by a publisher. Here's the updated FAQ.

  Miscellany – 02/02/2005

Ovid Introduces New Statistics Reporting Tool. From the press release: Ovid Stats provides monthly snapshots of sessions, searches, license, and peak usage. Users have the option of choosing between predefined reports or creating custom reports to fit their unique workflow needs. In addition, Ovid Stats includes usage reports for journals and databases that are compliant with the international COUNTER Code of Practice.

  AARP Named One of the Best Free Reference Sites – 02/01/2005

AARP Named One of the Best Free Reference Web Sites of 2004. From the write up: "A vast assortment of resources makes this one of the best sites on the Web. From health and travel to taxes and finances to computers and technology, there are topics for everyone at AARP.  The site boasts a colorful, user-friendly interface with print large enough for people to read."

  Member News – 01/28/2005

IEEE-USA Seeks to Prevent Copyright Infringement While Preserving Technological Innovation in Electronic File Sharing. This of course relates to the case before the Supreme Court [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios vs. Grokster ].

  Engineering Village 2 – 01/27/2005

Engineering Information has released a new version of Engineering Village 2.  One of its enhancements is faceted searching.  From the press release: "Faceted searches group and count results according to the value of key data elements or "facets." This method supplements the traditional, long list displays of search results, and can replace the need to filter through large quantities of individual records. By grouping results according to data facets, common threads between search results are revealed, enabling searchers to quickly refine their results to an increasingly relevant set."

  2005 Codie Awards, SIIA – 01/26/2005

The Software and Information Industry Association has announced the finalists for the 2005 Codie Awards and several NFAIS members are on the list:

  Searchers and Search Engines – 01/24/2005

NFAIS offices are officially closed today due to the weekend snowstorm but for those readers who may be checking in, there is a new report out from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. [PDF File Format] Some tidbits:

  The 20/5 Rule from Google – 01/21/2005

Fascinating tidbit from this write-up of a local Bay-area presentation by a Google staff person:

  H.W. Wilson Adds Depth of Coverage – 01/20/2005

H.W. Wilson adds ten years worth of coverage to its Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective. From the press release: "With the addition of ten years more retrospective coverage in September 2005, Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective will allow users to search periodicals as far back as 1908...The database makes more than 70 years of periodicals research readily available for educators, students, law professionals and others, with cover-to-cover indexing of publications 1908 through 1981."

  Three Disparate Items – 01/19/2005

Congratulations to the British Library on the news that "Turning The Pages" was selected as a Yahoo! Find of the Year 2004" . 

  Member News – 01/18/2005

A variety of announcements from ALA Midwinter:

  2005 NFAIS Annual Conference – 01/13/2005

Speakers across the three days of the NFAIS Annual Conference include Cathy Gordon of Google, Dr. Lynn Connaway of OCLC, and Peter Morville of Semantic Studios.  All members of the information community are welcome!

  ARL, SPARC and NFAIS Members – 01/12/2005

News and announcements from The Association of Research Libraries may be of interest to the NFAIS community.  First of all, Karla Hahn has been named as the new Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication.

  From the Berkman Center, Harvard University – 01/11/2005

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School has released an 83-page report [PDF File format] entitled, Content and Control: Assessing the Impact of Policy Choices on Potential Online Business Models in the Music and Film Industries. From the Introduction: "This paper seeks to identify potential implications of the actions sought from policymakers...To do so, it describes the organizing principles and structures of four exemplar business models."

  EPIC – 01/10/2005

Click through if you're on a fast connection to view Robin Sloan's documentary, EPIC: 2014.  The hosting site is describing it as "a flash documentary on how the current global media will change by 2014".   While it clearly has a political message, it's worthwhile if you're attentive to the information landscape.

  More on Wikipedia – 01/04/2005

Clay Shirky responds to Larry Sanger's criticisms of Wikipedia as an information resource. And then there's the follow-up, Academia and Wikipedia, in response to both of the previous essays. The debate is indicative of a tension between those who insist on an authoritative imprimatur and targeted content and those who would rather the community of users pronounce on the validity of content accessible in an open environment.  I suspect this tension will become more pronounced in 2005.

  Start Your Engines! – 01/03/2005

Revving up the motors, I find some fascinating reading is available for this first week of 2005:

  CSA Illumina – 12/27/2004

Information Today gives a great write-up of Illumina, the new platform from CSA. 

  Home for the Holidays – 12/23/2004

NFAIS offices are officially closed until January 3rd.  We'll be on hiatus until then.  Best of the season to all! Hi.

  Attitudes Towards Google – 12/22/2004

Assuming that you're looking for factual information, The San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent and detailed write-up of the Google Book Digitization Project. But if you're interested in general user responses to the project, this week's piece (Google and the Human Spirit) with the appended comments, appearing in the Washington Monthly, provides an interesting cross-section of views. That piece was written in response to the Michael Gorman op-ed piece (Google and God's Mind in the Los Angeles Times last week).  As I have said before, it's really the dialogue that makes life interesting. 

  Member News – 12/21/2004

Okay, Gary wins -- Not only did he grab the news of CSA's acquisition of PAIS but he has even posted the FAQ.

  A Hodge-Podge of Entries – 12/20/2004

A hodge-podge of items --

  News & Articles from the Wider World – 12/16/2004

A few interesting news pieces and articles:

  Google Announcement – 12/15/2004

The Christian Science Monitor has the best (that is to say, the calmest) coverage I've seen so far of the Google book digitization project.  The universities involved each have their own press releases for those interested:

  ProQuest Announcement – 12/14/2004

ProQuest To Acquire Voyager Expanded Learning.  This acquisition better positions ProQuest as an aggregator for the full range of educational resources (K-12 through Post-Graduate levels).

  Interview with DTIC's Kurt Molholm – 12/10/2004

Kurt Molholm had been administrator for the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), a former president of both ICSTI and NFAIS, and the 2003 Miles Conrad Lecturer. Barbara Quint did an great interview with him that appeared in this month's  Information Today just before he retired. Our best wishes go out to Kurt!

  Patients and Access to Research – 12/09/2004

Scientific Publishers, Leading Health Organizations Launch PatientINFORM site. Full Press Release (PDF) Here. NFAIS member organizations participating in this initiative include:

  STM Meeting, December 3, 2004 – 12/08/2004

The International Association of Scientific, Technical, & Medical Publishers (STM) in cooperation with the Publishers Association London (UK) held a meeting with the theme of "The Future of Primary Publishing: Will Navigational Services Win The Day?" Follow the link to see the presentations provided by representatives of several NFAIS member organizations.

  Gray's Anatomy – 12/07/2004

Elsevier Launches 39th Edition of Gray's Anatomy  The press release makes it clear that this edition has been entirely revamped, including expanded sections on neuroanatomy and embryology, "areas of rapid progress in recent years...Also for the first time, Gray’s has been structured by body region rather than by body system, making it easier to use and more clinically relevant. The text of the e-dition is fully searchable and allows users to download and incorporate all the images to their own teaching and presentations."

  Physics and Book Sales – 12/06/2004

A UCLA physicist has developed a theory surrounding book sales by seeing them as a occurences of exogenous and/or endogenous shocks in a complex system.  The press release deserves a thorough reading.

  Member Announcements – 12/03/2004

Plenty of announcements this week:

  More News from London – 12/02/2004

Scirus now indexing full-text content from the American Institute of Physics -- For more on this story, you may want to take a moment to read the Information Today Newslink piece by Paula J. Hane.

  Miscellany – 12/01/2004

This Ziff-Davis piece, Search Gets Ready to Rumble, provides a 2004 overview of the corporate Web search industry (Yahoo, MSN, Google). But the tools that are being developed by individuals such as this visualization tool for citation information in Google Scholar or social bookmarking software such as CiteULike demonstrate that innovation is happening at the grassroot levels as well.

  Pharma As Next Big Thing – 11/30/2004

It's not the next big thing; it's been a big thing for a while. But it's clear within the information community that information services for the pharmaceutical sector are a key target for the big content providers. 

  Back from Hiatus – 11/29/2004

Now that we've returned from the Thanksgiving hiatus, it seems we've alot to shine a spotlight towards:

  Google Scholar – 11/19/2004

Naturally, the launch of Google Scholar in beta is an exciting event. As an indication of the level of buzz in the general community, the link to the service is #1 at both Blogdex and Daypop today. The weblog commentaries by academics struck me as cautiously enthusiastic. It's worthwhile to note that Google's FAQ doesn't clearly state that the scope of information contained within the humanities is very thin. Further comments are available at Traffick today.

  Papers & Articles Of Interest – 11/17/2004

Reading for the plane or train:

  Interesting Reading – 11/16/2004

IEE/Inspec Announces New Developments for Online Information 2004 in London.  The IEE is a member organization of NFAIS.

  Two News Items – 11/15/2004

C-Span will be covering the Library of Congress' new evening lecture series, "Digital Future". The first in the series will air this evening at 6:30pm with David Weinberger.

  HAL during the Holidays – 11/12/2004

Borders has a new form of shopper help this season called the Giftmixer 3000.   The recommendation system talks to the user, sounding alot like the computer HAL, from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Go play with it and listen to how it responds to the positioning of the sliders on screen. Talk about interacting with content... 

  Online Education – 11/11/2004

A survey of 1,100 colleges and universities by Babson College and the Sloan Consortium reveals that the average growth rate for online students in 24.8% up from 19.8% in 2003.  According to the press release, 53% of the schools surveyed indicated that online education is critical to their long-term strategy.  The full text of the Entering the Mainstream report (PDF file format) may be downloaded here.

  Google Acquisition – 11/10/2004

Google has acquired an 3D image mapping application, Keyhole. Gary Price gives additional information on the Search Engine Watch Blog while PC Magazine characterizes Keyhole as "a pioneer in the growing field of location-based intelligence" in their October 19 article.  

  Member News – 11/09/2004

ProQuest and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Partner to Bring Historical Content to the Web. From the press release: "Using advanced zoning and digitizing techniques, ProQuest will digitally reproduce every issue from cover to cover -- not just news stories and editorials, but also photos, graphics, and advertisements." ProQuest has similar agreements with The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times.

  KMWorld 2004 – 11/05/2004

I only found this site today, but apparently Information Today sponsored this Knowledge Management wiki, as a way of spotlighting the coverage of last week's KMWorld 04 and the associated conference-blogging that went on. You can also find some of the presentations from the event.

  2005 NFAIS Annual Conference – 11/04/2004

The preliminary program for the 2005 NFAIS Annual Conference is now available. Organizations represented by keynote speakers include Google (Cathy Gordon), CSA (Jim McGinty) and Semantic Studios (Peter Morville).

  Member News – 11/03/2004

The U.S. General Printing Office has named the Southern Oregon University Hannon Library as its Library of the Year.  This is the second year that GPO has presented this award, and the Hannon Library was awarded it on the basis of public service, creativity and innovation.

  EDUCAUSE Review – 11/02/2004

EDUCAUSE Review has published their November/December Issue. In particular, you'll want to read:

  Interesting Tidbit – 11/01/2004

Michael Feldstein' blog posted this entry last week on "Open Access, Furl and Coursepacks".  His speculations were intriguing on their own merits, but his posting included a link to The Learner's Library, an interesting new service. Check out the FAQ and the source list. 

  CODATA – 10/29/2004

Gladys Cotter, Associate Chief Biologist for Information, USGS Biological Resources Division, will be providing the keynote, Interoperability--Biodiversity, at the 19th CODATA International Conference.  The conference, to be held in Berlin, November 7-10, 2004, has the theme of  "The Information Society: New Horizons for Science". 

  Morgan Stanley Report – 10/28/2004

There is a fascinating report from Morgan Stanley entitled "An Update From the Digital World -- October 2004".  The focus is on syndicated content, RSS feeds and Weblogs, likening the development of this activity to the early development of the Associated Press.  Spotted at Internet News, credit to Gwen Harris.

  Nutrition.Gov – 10/27/2004

The National Agricultural Library is giving a soft launch to their new site, Nutrition.Gov. They're interested in feedback from users so do visit.

  Information Industry Awards – 10/26/2004

What does it say about the current state of the information community when the short list of nominees for the International Information Industry Awards includes such diverse organizations as:

  Something of a Miscellany – 10/22/2004

Adaptive Path has a good article, MetaData for the Masses, which discusses ethnoclassification, as exemplified by such tools as del.icio.us.  Interesting reading, including a reference to the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names Online.  (The J. Paul Getty Trust is a member organization of NFAIS.)

  One Million Registered Users – 10/21/2004

One Million Registered Users for The Lancet Online.  From the press release:  "Downloads of The Lancet content by institutional users via ScienceDirect (Elsevier's electronic platform) topped 2.4 million in 2003 alone. The number of registered users of our website...continues to rise and this summer saw the launch of The Lancet Mobile -- offering The Lancet content via mobile phone and personal digital assistant..." 

  CrossRef – 10/20/2004

The press release is not yet available online but CrossRef has announced that it now boasts more than "700 participating publishers and societies and is adding an average of 9,000 DOIs per day..."  Among the organization's new members are:

  Desktop Search – 10/19/2004

While I was away attending the NFAIS Humanities Roundtable III held at the Getty in Los Angeles, California, Google made a major announcement about Google's new Desktop Search.  The following represent an interesting overview:

  From the Crooked Timber Web log – 10/13/2004

Sometimes it is interesting to listen in on the conversation. At the Crooked Timber weblog, there was this interesting discussion of co-authorship in academe.  The original entry provides food for thought but the comments associated with the entry show how differing practices exist throughout disciplines.

  National Agricultural Library – 10/12/2004

The National Agricultural Library makes four new bibliographies available from its Water Quality Information Center.   

  More From Google – 10/08/2004

EWeek Magazine provides more news on Google - specifically what Google is looking to do in the area of clustering results. 

  Google Print – 10/07/2004

Barbara Quint of Information Today was kind enough to send me the link to her NewsBreak on the Google Print initiative.  But Cory Doctorow's notes from Brewster Kahle's presentation (Web 2.0 conference, San Francisco)  indicate that the cost to Google to scan each book is approximately $10.00 per volume. 

  Open Letter from Duke University Press – 10/06/2004

Duke University Press has posted this open letter to librarians on their site.  University presses face tremendous pressure and Press Director Steve Cohn provides an honest and straight-forward explanation of the economics behind the Duke e-package.

  Online Usage Statistics – 10/05/2004

The vast majority of the presentations given at our October 1 seminar on Online Usage Statistics are available for review.     

  ARL Newsletter 236 – 10/04/2004

The October 2004 bimonthly report from the Association of Research Libraries has several items of interest this month pertaining to LibQual+(tm).  Start with this brief write-up on how ARL University Communities Assess Information.

  User Experience Resources – 09/30/2004

This User Experience Resource Collection is from a consultant's web site but it has a fairly extensive set of materials that may be useful to a broad spectrum of the information community.

  Dialog Offers Streaming Real Time News – 09/29/2004

Dialog now offers streaming real-time news through enhanced NewsEdge service.  From the press release: "Dialog NewsEdge users can now monitor breaking news stories throughout the day without disrupting their workflow...Scrolling news headlines can be read through a floating window or may be accessed through a tab labeled "My Live News." 

  InterLibrary Loan and Document Delivery – 09/28/2004

The Association of Research Libraries has announced its findings that user-initiated interlibrary loan is more cost-effective than mediated interlibrary loan. While the numbers for user initiated ILL are provided in a range ($6.16-$26.76), mediated ILL is shown to cost $26.76 at present.  More on the study. The ARL home page also points to a graph [PDF format] showing supply and demand in ARL libraries (1986-2003).

  Peridot – 09/27/2004

No more dead links.  From BBC News Online comes this report of a web-based tool developed by computer science student-interns at IBM - UK for link-checking of corporate extranets and intranets.  From the story: "Peridot's innovation is that it detects more substantial changes and has adjustable levels of autonomy, according to the researchers."   

  EUSIDIC Program – 09/23/2004

EUSIDIC is holding its Annual Conference in Helsinki, Finland, October 17-19, 2004.  Along with representatives from Factiva and Xrefer, the program features a keynote by the director of the National Library of Finland. 

  Humanities Oriented News and Event – 09/22/2004

Ovid and INIST Partner -- You might think of both of these organizations as being chiefly STM-oriented, but as the press release indicates, the two are working together to deliver information resources in humanities and social sciences through a new BiblioSHS portal (http://biblioshs.inist.fr).

  STM – 09/21/2004

Pieter Bolman Accepts Position as CEO of STM Organization.  Previously, Bolman has held positions with Elsevier, Pergamon and Academic Press.  [Note the entry below for September 16 regarding this year's STM program]

  Paper on Open Access – 09/20/2004

Article in a forthcoming issue of Serials Review puts forward A Not-For-Profit Publisher's Perspective on Open Access. From the conclusion, "Publishers will keep looking for ways to make the content more readily available both to subscribers and to other interested persons.  Legislative interevntion is disruptive and unnecessary, but one can only hope that these and other concerns of not-for-profit publishers will be heard in the midst of the well-orchestrated clamor for Open Access". 

  STM Program – 09/16/2004

The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) will be holding their Annual Conference in Frankfurt on October 5.  The program features intriguing discussions of such challenges as "Open Access, government intervention of some form, electronic archiving, institutional repositories, and unauthorised electronic document delivery."

  Formal Launch of A9 – 09/15/2004

Visit the new A9 [see press release here] Udi Manber is quoted in the press release as saying "Search has become an integral part of many people's work...We strive to extend current search tools by helping people not only discover information easily but also remember and manage that information." 

  Information Format Trends – 09/14/2004

Information Format Trends - OCLC has published this 18-page report that discusses future directions for the information community.  Just the pull quotes in the margins  alone are worth downloading the report!  But read all of it....

  Wikis This Week – 09/13/2004

As there is a good deal of discussion of Open Access via this channel and that, the focus here is on Wiki software in a variety of settings.

  Information Architecture – 09/08/2004

Peter Morville of Semantic Studios supplies us with a "radically incomplete and idiosyncratic list of freely accessible research papers" in his most recently published column.  

  Electronic Resource Management – 09/02/2004

The Digital Library Federation has released a report from the members of their Electronic Resource Management Initiaitive.   Read the report to learn what new functionalities library systems will have.

  Great Article! – 09/01/2004

The Future of College Textbooks -- From this month's issue of Syllabus magazine. 

  Human Population & Natural Resource Management – 08/31/2004

New Database!  CSA is making available Human Population & Natural Resource Management, a new content resource dealing with "issues arising from the conflict between the ever-increasing population of the Earth and the Earth's limited environmental and natural resources. Human Population & Natural Resource Management explores human population and demography topics, as well as societal issues involving natural resource management."

  Blogs, Swarms, Wikis and Games – 08/30/2004

Blogs, Swarms, Wikis and Games -- That's the subtitle for the September/October 2004 issue of Educause Review.  It's an intelligent retort to the article (Librarian: Don't Use Wikipedia As Source) which has sparked such furor on many library weblogs and technology-oriented forums (including a threaded discussion over at the Web4Lib listserv).

  Up and Coming – 08/27/2004

Great statistics offered by the Pew Internet and American Life Project:

  Conflicting Viewpoints – 08/26/2004

As always, it's the dialogue that makes life interesting. The Professional and Scholarly Publishers Division (AAP/PSP) of the Association of American Publishers has posted documents of interest at their site. Scroll down the page to view the full text of:

  Scopus (Elsevier Product) – 08/25/2004

Elsevier will be launching its new abstracting and indexing service, SCOPUS before the end of 2004.  Those interested may read this in-depth assessment of the product, or view an online video demonstration.

  Reading for the Train or the Plane – 08/20/2004

A real mix of news and opinion pieces:

  PsycBooks Launches – 08/19/2004

The American Psychological Association takes PsycBooks live this week!  From the July 2004 press release: The initial release will include over 600 books and more than 10,000 individual chapters published by APA and over 1,500 entries from the Encyclopedia of Psychology, co-published by APA and Oxford University Press, as well as a selection of archival books from other publishers.  For more information, see:

APA is a member organization of NFAIS.

  Highwire Press and Oxford Journals – 08/18/2004

Highwire Press to Host All Oxford University Press Journals. This will broaden the scope of coverage at Highwire to include the humanities and social sciences. Browse the full spectrum of subject areas at Highwire.

  Miscellany – 08/16/2004

There is a Call for Presentations for the new Infonortics meeting, Intelligence Tools scheduled for June 27-28, 2005 in Philadelphia.

  Congressional Budget Office Report – 08/12/2004

Copyright Issues in Digital Media -- Excellent overview of the various factors to be considered by Congress on the topic.  For example, there's this quote:  "The economically efficient level of copyright protection is difficult to determine, for example, because copyright applies to diverse creative works that incorporate varying degrees of creative and artistic expression -- from journalism to literature , music, and movies -- and to works of a more technical nature, such as software.  A single property rights regime therefore may not produce efficiency in markets for all of those products."  Read the whole report!

  2005 NFAIS Annual Conference – 08/11/2004

Book the dates now! It's the 2005 NFAIS Annual Conference in Philadelphia, Sunday, February 27 - Tuesday, March 1, 2005.  Here's the press release and other relevant details.

  Amazoogle? – 08/10/2004

Those folks at OCLC are looking at some interesting stuff.  For example, Lorcan Dempsey at a conference in the UK last month discussed Libraries in the Age of Amazoogle. And if you're not following the blog kept by three OCLC staffers, then you wouldn't have noticed the update they provided on the Duke initiative with iPods.

  ASIDIC Program on Open Access – 08/05/2004

ASIDIC's fall program theme is Open Access: Removing the Barriers.  The meeting dates are September 19-21 and the venue is the Ritz Carlton in Phoenix, AZ.  The program features David Worlock of EPS, David Stern of Yale, Kate Knoerr of MuseGlobal and Kevin Bouley of Nerac.

  An Olympic Gold Medal – 08/04/2004

Ovid Technologies to Provide Free Access to Medical Resources at 2004 Olympics.  The free access, granted to physicians, coaches, athletes and sports administrators, includes access to the SIRC SportDiscus database for sports medicine as well as journals from Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, the BMJ Publishing Group and Adis International.

  Grid Computing – 08/03/2004

Two items that discuss the emerging technological shift towards grid computing. 

  Relevant and Interesting Reading – 08/02/2004

August, already!  But during this slightly slower period of the year, there's still plenty to read and review:

  Understanding Metadata – 07/29/2004

Understanding Metadata, an introduction to metadata that includes an overview of leading metadata contenders and examples of practical applications, is now available as a free download from NISO.  The publication covers a range of fundamentals.

  New Look at Reviews.com – 07/28/2004

Computing Reviews has a great new look!  The publication, a joint initiative between the Association of Computing Machinery and Reviews.com, is an online resource for reviews of the best new books and articles in computing literature. For more on the new look and functionality, go here.

  Information Futures Institute – 07/27/2004

Arnold Hirshon of NELINET gave this great presentation at the September 2003 meeting of the Information Futures Institute. This title says so much "What, Me Worry About the Future When We're Not Managing the Present So Well?"  The next meeting of IFI is in San Francisco in September 2004.

  Online Usage Statistics – 07/26/2004

NFAIS is offering a one-day workshop on usage statistics in October.  Register now, using the form found here.

  Reservations from IEE on Scientific Publishing Rep – 07/23/2004

The IEE in the UK has expressed some reservations about the findings of the House of Commons Committee on Science and Technology.  Read the full press release and do note the quote from Dr. Alf Roberts, Chief Executive of the IEE.

  Mobile Devices and Duke University Students – 07/21/2004

Duke University (Durham, NC) will be distributing iPods to incoming freshmen this fall as a mechanism for delivering content. Wired has a good take on the story.

  Reading for the Train – 07/20/2004

You could read what everyone else appears to be reading (that is, the report on scientific publications from the House of Commons Committee on Science and Technology) or you might try one of these:

  SSP Top Management Roundtable – 07/15/2004

The Society for Scholarly Publishing holds its Top Management Roundtable, September 8-9 at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia.  This year's theme is "On Demand Innovation: Concept or Mandate".  Excellent line up of speakers and topics.

  New CEO for Elsevier Science and Medical Division – 07/13/2004

Reed-Elsevier has named Erik Engstrom as the new CEO for the Science and Medical Division. Mr. Engstrom has a publishing background that includes Random House and Doubleday. 

  DTIC Sets New Goals – 07/09/2004

The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) has some interesting new goals set for itself in the field of information technology, including the "exploitation of emerging information technology tools on dynamic science and technology databases." See the full press release for details.

  UK House of Commons Report – 07/08/2004

The ICSTI listserv carried the announcement this morning that "The Science and Technology Committee of the UK House of Commons will publish its Tenth Report of Session 2003-04, Scientific Publications: Free for all? (HC 399) , ... on Tuesday 20 July 2004."  The press release from the Science and Technology Committee is available here.

  From Darwin Magazine – 07/07/2004

Interesting reading from the June issue of Darwin magazine.  The article is entitled The Legend of the Lost Link.  The reporter has done some investigation, as he makes reference to URNs, URIs, and persistent URLS. 

  Digital Rights Management – 06/30/2004

It's the dialogue that makes life interesting...Noted science-fiction author Jerry Pournelle has written a counterpoint to the now famous presentation given by Cory Doctorow to Microsoft on the topic of digital rights management.  What provides the spice is that Pournelle and Doctorow are published authors in the fields of science fiction and computer science. 

  More From ALA – 06/29/2004

More interesting announcements released during ALA:

  News on Micropatent – 06/28/2004

Micropatent Launches Command Line Searching within the PatSearch full-text database.  Micropatent is a subsidiary of Information Holdings, Inc.  According to a press release dated today, Thomson is to acquire Information Holdings, Inc.  Read both press releases for full details.

  ALA Announcements – 06/25/2004

A variety of news items for the opening of the American Library Association meeting in Orlando:

  User Design Experience – 06/22/2004

Peter Morville of Semantic Studios has posted a new column on User Experience Design.  In particular, Figure 2 may be of interest to this audience as it discusses the User Experience Honeycomb consisting of seven aspects that should be considered in the creation of an information environment.  The column also references Peter's "other" site, Findability.org, which is another excellent resource.

  Opinions and Reports – 06/21/2004

Donald W. King offers his opinion on the place of commercial content providers in the open access model  in the June 2004 issue of D-Lib Magazine.  King was the Miles Conrad Lecturer in 1979 and was named an Honorary Fellow of NFAIS in 1997.

  CrossRef and Forward Linking – 06/16/2004

CrossRef and Atypon Announce Forward-Linking Service  From the press release:  "In addition to using CrossRef to create outbound links from their references, CrossRef member publishers can now retrieve “cited-by” links -- links to other articles that cite their content. This new service is being offered as an optional tool to allow CrossRef members to display cited-by links in the primary content that they publish."

  Worthwhile Reading – 06/15/2004

There's no permalink to this article from Stephen Downes but it's currently on the main page of his Web site, dated June 10, 2004:  From Classrooms to Learning Environments: A Mid-range Projection of E-Learning Technologies. 

  Gary on Federated Search – 06/11/2004

Gary Price of ResourceShelf gave a presentation at SLA 2004 that referenced both Science.Gov and STINet as instances of the value of federated searching.  NFAIS member organizations are involved with both, including the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), the National Agricultural Library (NAL), the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) and many others. 

  Interesting Web Logs – 06/10/2004

Interesting entry entitled "The Semantic Web, Metadata and Libraries" from the Raw Brick Weblog. 

  CABI Publishing – 06/09/2004

CABI Announces Improvements to CAB Direct. From the press release: CABI Publishing has announced that their content delivery platform is now OpenURL compliant...CAB Direct, which currently delivers the combined files of CAB Abstracts and Global Health, has undergone further development in  response to customer feedback, including improvements to marked lists,  record output and results management features.

  News from SLA – 06/08/2004

The Information Today Web log coverage from SLA is such a good way to keep an eye on what's happening in Nashville.  NFAIS member organizations Nerac and Thomson Scientific have already gotten a mention.... 

  Nerac News – 06/04/2004

Nerac, Inc., announces the official launch of TOC Journal Watch Plus, an online service that tracks the table of contents from 21,000+ publications. Journal Watch Plus also delivers an easy solution for locating the full-text document through DOI (Digital Object Identifier) platforms, Open URL or a combination of both systems.

  Link Resolvers – 06/03/2004

Excellent and useful overview of link resolvers  from Simon Inger, Scholarly Information Strategies. The presentation was given at this year's UK Serials Group meeting.  If you're unfamiliar with them, Scholarly Information Strategies is a publishing and library consultancy, based in Oxford, UK.

  This Week's issue of Library Journal – 06/02/2004

Library Journal's June 1 issue features some interesting articles:

  News from the Membership – 06/01/2004

ProQuest and NYTimes.com to provide New York Times archive back to 1851.  That is 15 million articles! 

  Interesting Reading – 05/27/2004

Mixed Content and Mixed MetaData: Information Discovery in a Messy World.  This chapter, written by Caroline Arms and Bill Arms, is from a forthcoming book, Metadata in Practice, to be published by ALA Editions in 2004. Very clear and useful.

  New President of Thomson Scientific – 05/26/2004

Vin Caraher named as the new President and CEO of Thomson Scientific.  Thomson Scientific is a member organization of NFAIS.

  Vendor Platform – 05/25/2004

Ingenta is currently beta-testing the latest version of their platform and they've provided some interesting background information at their IngentaConnect site:

  The Scent of Information – 05/24/2004

Trails of information are always intriguing.  Gary Price posted a link to this opinion piece from American Libraries, which reminded me of this article "Imagining Information Retrieval in the Library" referencing the great Hepburn/Tracy movie "Desk Set" which in turn brought me to this review of A History of Online Information Services 1963-1976 .   The book is written by Charles P. Bourne, the NFAIS Miles Conrad Lecturer in 1999. Fascinating!

  User Experience Design – 05/22/2004

Peter Morville of Semantic Studios has posted a new column on User Experience Design.  His Figure 2 in that column displays the user experience honeycomb consisting of seven hexagons. Useful if you are trying to structure a discussion about the architecture of an information environment or platform. The appended comments are also worth reading.  If you haven't already visited Peter's other site, Findability.org, that's also worth a visit. 

  Fantastic Article! – 05/20/2004

Published in the May 1st issue of Library Journal, this article -- Born With The Chip -- by Stephen Abram and Judy Luther is a must-read.  I found myself nodding in agreement with just about every paragraph.  All members of the information community need to read this and think about the possible repercussions.

  Information Aggregators – 05/19/2004

Value Creation in Aggregation: The need for a flexible approach in content aggregation and production to meet future customer demand. This is an excellent overview of the challenges faced by vendors over the course of the next 3-5 years,  presented at VALA 2004 by Martin Marlow, Director of Strategic Marketing, ProQuest Information and Learning.  Worth a read.

  Review of RILM – 05/18/2004

The Spring 2004 edition of NetConnect has an excellent overview of information resources available in the field of music.  RILM Abstracts of Music Literature gets a particularly glowing review. 

  New England Journal of Medicine – 05/17/2004

Information professionals may find this interview with Kent Anderson of the New England Journal of Medicine to be of interest.  It features this quote:  "…atomizing information will continue, repurposing to myriad devices will continue, and the need for quality filters to save time and gain reader trust will continue. I think demographics will shape our response more than technology—technology will be part of the response to change, but technology can't be imposed. We need to understand the need, the behavior, and the pre-conscious mind.”

  Ithaka – 05/14/2004

Ithaka is a recently created foundation with the aim of helping to accelerate "the adoption of productive and efficient uses of information technology for the benefit of the worldwide higher education community.  Three recent presentations provide background on the research already accomplished by this group as well as the rationale behind its formation:

  Articles of Interest – 05/13/2004

Business Week, in a special report called Gurus of Tech, featured this interview with the creators of IBM WebFountain.  Worth a read!

  News From Ovid Technologies, Inc. – 05/11/2004

Ovid Offers New Service to Build, Host Custom Branding Portal Sites.  Readers may or may not recall that about a year ago, Ovid had launched customized medical information web site services, seen as an avenue for smaller or mid-sized publishers to gain access to the corporate market.  This looks like an interesting new direction for the organization. 

  Joint Publication from CENDI and ICSTI – 05/10/2004

CENDI and ICSTI Together Announce Report on the State of the Practice in Digital Preservation.  The report is entitled Digital Preservation and Permanent Access to Scientific Information.  From the press release:  "The report provides suggestions for how two major national and international scientific and technical information organizations can continue to support progress in digital preservation and how individual publishers, libraries, information centers, and learned societies can promote preservation activities."

  New Pricing for APS – 05/07/2004

The American Physical Society announces today that they are lowering their pricing for 2005.  From the letter to librarians, "The price decreases are in the presence of continued growth in journal size and in manuscript submissions.  They reflect a long and intense development of new technology by the Society and its vendors..." 

  Member News and Press Releases – 05/05/2004

NLM announces that the Index Medicus, launched by John Shaw Billings in 1879, will cease as a print publication as of the end of 2004.

  Sharing Knowledge on Electronic Publishing – 05/04/2004

Distributed via a number of listservs, the formation of PANEL by a number of Dutch and Belgian university libraries, SPARC and SPARC Europe, and other electronic publishing groups. PANEL is characterized as "a virtual knowledge and information exchange place for organisations and individuals who are active or wish to start up projects in the area of scholarly and scientific electronic publishing."

  Patent Information and Trends in '03 and '04 – 05/03/2004

Thomson Scientific recently posted these two PDF documents that provide an analysis of patent information trends in 2003 as well as a watch list for trends in patent information in 2004.  The presentation is timely in view of the PIUG (Patent Information User Group) meeting at the end of May. 

  Miscellaneous Items of Interest – 04/30/2004

The Google IPO filing. An interesting document that reflects many of the statements published in "Ten Things Google Has Found To Be True".

  Morgan Stanley Analysis – 04/29/2004

This analysis from Morgan Stanley of Internet trends should be considered as required reading for content and technology providers as well as those in the library community.  Highly indicative of future areas of growth, including these statements:

  CrossRef Launches Pilot Version of CrossRef Search – 04/28/2004

The press release is not yet available online, but CrossRef has just announced that they've launched the pilot version of CrossRef Search.  From the press release: CrossRef announced today a new initiative that enables users to search the full text of high-quality, peer-reviewed journal articles, conference proceedings, and other resources covering the full spectrum of scholarly research from nine leading publishers. Called CrossRef Search, this new pilot program utilizes the collaborative environment of CrossRef, the reference-linking service for scholarly publishing, and Google search technologies

  Elsevier Adds Books to ScienceDirect – 04/27/2004

ScienceDirect Announces New Product Line.  According to the press release, multiple users at a single institution can simultaneously access the Elsevier Book Series titles, previously available only via print. "Packages available in early 2004 include: Business, Management and Economics, Chemistry, Life Sciences and Methods in Enzymology."  For further details, click here.  For the fact sheet in PDF file format, go here.

  Well, that was a short hiatus! – 04/26/2004

ProQuest acquires Reading A-Z.  From the press release: "ProQuest Information and Learning has acquired Reading A-Z, the award-winning publisher of K-5 reading resources.Reading A-Z offers extensive and affordable reading resources for educators, parents, and home-school families worldwide by delivering downloadable, printable books, and other resources over the Internet."

  NFAIS Moving – 04/23/2004

NFAIS Headquarters will be moving to a new suite (Ste. 1004) in our current building over the next few days. We expect that the phones will be out of commission on Friday, April 23rd, and that we will not have access to e-mail until at least Tuesday, April 27th. Postings to this Web log (understandably) will be sporadic. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

  U.S. Government Printing Office – 04/20/2004

For some time, the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has been working on a plan to establish a Collection of Last Resort (CLR) to support the shared mission of GPO and Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) to provide comprehensive, timely, permanent public access to U.S. Government publications in all formats. 

  Blackboard Course Management Software – 04/19/2004

This is an interesting story on Blackboard from E-Commerce Times. Lots of background on that organization as well as an overview of the course management software industry.   

  Dialog – 04/16/2004

Dialog, a Thomson business, has been releasing a barrage of news this week:

  Open Access Journals – 04/15/2004

Thomson ISI has announced that journals published in the new Open Access (OA) model are beginning to register impact in the world of scholarly research.  A significant number of OA titles meet the stringent selection criteria in place at Thomson ISI. For the full text of the paper, go here. Or review the press release.

  A New Thing to Play With! – 04/14/2004

Don't just surf today.  Go directly to the new site A9.com (created by Amazon Search Technologies).  Have a field day!  Download the tool bar (and then compare it with Google's tool bar).  This will take me a week to evaluate -- but as a useful tool, it has possibilities beyond just sales on Amazon.  Of course, Gary Price at ResourceShelf has already assembled a lot of information on the functionality.

  FYI – 04/13/2004

Interesting reading provided by Roger C. Schonfeld in his book entitled JSTOR.  The first chapter in PDF file format is available here. Alternatively, the HTML file of the first chapter is here.

  NISO Workshop on MetaData – 04/12/2004

NISO Offers Strategic Insights with Metadata Practices on the Cutting Edge: Early Bird Registration Closes April 15th.  Speakers include Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC, Howard Ratner, Nature Publishing Group, MacKenzie Smith, MIT, and many others. 

  Proquest Announces New Offering – 04/09/2004

ProQuest and Extenza have allied themselves in order to provide a portfolio of e-journal and database services, specifically distribution and hosting, to publishers and libraries.  See the press release here.

  Scirus – 04/08/2004

Some may sniff and say Scirus is only a tool for marketing Elsevier product, but they've actually built a terrific index for the scientific community as this story from Wired shows.  I think they deserve the good press.  Also in the midst of all of the news of cancelled journal deals, it's nice to read this story about six institutions in Virginia signing on to an Elsevier "big deal".

  MetaDiversity III Summary and Findings – 04/07/2004

Currently available via the USGS/NBII web site is the summary of findings from MetaDiversity III, Global Access for Biodiversity Through Integrated Systems.  [PDF file].  The meeting offered a fascinating glimpse into how changes in technology have made possible and transformed new research and new information resources in a particular interdisciplinary region of science. 

  New CEO at Ovid – 04/06/2004

Wolters Kluwer Health Announces New Chief Executive Officer.  From the press release: Wolters Kluwer Health, a division of Wolters Kluwer NV, today announced that Gary Foster has joined as President and Chief Executive Officer of the global Medical Research division, which includes Ovid and Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) journal publishing.

Ovid is a member organization of NFAIS.

  New Issue of ICSTI Forum – 04/05/2004

The latest issue of the ICSTI Forum was published over the weekend. The general theme of the well-balanced issue is open access but there's also a very good article by Martin Smith of IEE/INSPEC discussing the end user of STM material. 

  MIT Open Course Ware – 04/02/2004

MIT announced today that the OpenCourseWare Initiative has published 200 new courses, bringing the total number of courses online to just over 700.  The Christian Science Monitor wrote a meaty article about one such course offering -- "Black Ships and Samurai."  That course may be see here with an extensive listing of resources here.  The project, it may be worth noting, is actually funded through grants from MIT itself, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

  Well, this looks cool! – 03/31/2004

In the mad dash to create information visualization tools, this one looks cool (although the site is a little unclear on hard functionality).

  Digitization of Museum Specimens – 03/30/2004

Peter Suber posted this before I did.  The current issue of The Scientist has an opinion piece by Gladys Cotter, Associate Chief Biologist for Informatics, U.S. Geological Survey. From her article, "...more than three million museum specimen records are already available through the NBII and theme-based networks such as the Mammal Network Information System."

  What's New from CAS – 03/28/2004

What's New from CAS for the Spring American Chemical Society meeting in Orlando, Florida. See who garnered the most Real-time Document Requests(TM) in 2003.

  Reading for the Train – 03/26/2004

Significant Developments in U.S. and E.U. Copyright Law: Top Ten for 2003  -- This publication from a law firm (offices in Washington, DC, New York, London, Brussels, and San Francisco) provides perspective on some critical copyright oriented events from 2003. 

  Science Commons Announced – 03/25/2004

Very interesting announcement earlier this week from Creative Commons.  From the Creative Commons weblog regarding their intent "to explore a Science Commons -- a new, parallel branch of our organization dedicated to investigating how our "some rights reserved" model can be applied to pressing problems in science and the field of biomedical research."  

  Been Out of Town – 03/24/2004

I haven't yet found the original posting to LibLicense but according to this article from Library Journal, dated 3/15/2004, Jan Velterop of BioMedCentral (BMC) made an announcement on that listserv about a pricing model shift at BMC.  According to the story, "BMC announced that it would 'link fees to the past record of publication as a proxy'."

  Database Protection – 03/19/2004

Certainly, there's been much made of the ongoing debate in Congress over database protection legislation. [See recent coverage from the TechLaw Journal here and here.]  NFAIS members would refer interested parties to the 2001 NFAIS White Paper on this topic, entitled Securing the Future of U.S. Intellectual Property and Scholarly Communication.

  Proceedings Publication – 03/18/2004

Knowledge Lost in Information, the full text proceedings from last year's NSF Workshop on Strategic Directions for Digital Libraries (June 15-17, 2003), Chatham, Massachusetts, are now publicly available in PDF file format.   Definitely a must-read!

  Member Item of Interest – 03/17/2004

The most recent issue of Research Information includes a piece written by Lynne Brindley, CEO of The British Library. Entitled "The View from the British Library", it's accompanied by some wonderful photos of the BL.

  Washington DC Principles – 03/16/2004

The Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science organization held a press conference this morning.  Their statement is available here and a list of signatories is available here.

  Dialog Launches Strategic Platform – 03/15/2004

The title of the press release says it all -- Dialog Launches Strategic Platform for Business Information, News and Market Research.

  Parallels for The Information Community – 03/12/2004

This article by Stephen VanDyke is focused on news traveling on the Internet and focuses in large part on how Web logs are a part of that process, but as I studied his excellent diagram, it caused me to consider how indexing of information will be handled in an open environment for scientific, technical, and medical information.  What about users' ability to evaluate good vs. bad information? With vetted databases such as those created by NFAIS member organizations, the user can rely on trusted authorities and communities of knowledge.

  New from Nerac! – 03/11/2004

Nerac, has added a great new feature to their corporate Web site. These are brief columns written by their staff information professionals for a local newsletter which may have interest for a wider audience.  For example:

  ASIDIC Meeting – 03/10/2004

Readers of this page may have an interest in attending this year's ASIDIC meeting in Alexandria, Virginia this year.  The focus of the '04 Spring Meeting is on producers and resellers of government information, access to government information, and open access publishing issues.

  Reading for the Train – 03/10/2004

Nerac, Inc., a member organization of NFAIS, has a great new feature on their corporate Web site.  Brief columns that have been written by their information professionals for a local newsletter but which have applicability for a wider audience, for example:

  NFAIS Annual Conference Presentations – 03/09/2004

Readers of this Web log may have an interest in seeing the slides from presentations provided at the NFAIS Annual Conference, February 22-24, 2004.  Click on the individual days of the conference to hear from Miles Conrad Lecturer John J. Regazzi (Monday), Dr. Jan Pederson of Yahoo! (Sunday) or Dr. Ben Schneiderman, University of Maryland (Tuesday).

  Bits and Pieces – 03/08/2004

Two items regarding Elsevier:

  Still Catching Up – 03/04/2004

Member organization news items:

  New Weblog of Interest – 03/03/2004

The Forum on Information Technology and Research Universities, part of the National Academies' Policy and Global Affairs Division, has a Weblog.  Over the course of February 2004, it pointed to the following items of interest:

  Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics – 03/02/2004

I haven't seen anyone else reporting these stats, which have clear implications for future user behavior

  Bits and Pieces – 02/26/2004

Two items that I just never got to post here before today --

  Washington Post Article and more – 02/16/2004

From the February 15th issue of the Washington Post, an article entitled "Search for Tomorrow".  Not the best piece of reporting that the Post has ever done but some provocative statements.

  Scholarly Publishers and OFAC – 02/13/2004

This week's (and probably next week's) sporadic posting has been due to preparations for the NFAIS Annual Conference. 

  CAS and CSA Agree to Provide Content on STN – 02/11/2004

CAS and CSA Agree to Provide Additional Databases on STN.  From the press release: "Subject areas represented by the CSA databases soon to join STN are biotechnology, engineering specialties, earth and environmental studies and library and information science."

  Article on OpenURL – 02/09/2004

From the most recent issue of Ariadne (UK Publication from UKOLN), a write up of the October 2003 workshop sponsored by NISO on Open URL.  The full title is "The OpenURL and the OpenURL Framework: Demystifying Link Resolution".

  ICSTI Winter Meeting 2004 on Open Access – 02/05/2004

Available to non-members visitors for only one week!  Review the presentations from the January 2004 ICSTI meeting on Open Access.  The programme presented a nicely balanced approach to the topic, based on the summarization offered.  

  Online Learning Environments – 02/04/2004

Stephen Downes is a recommended resource in the field of online learning.  His OLDaily Newsletter guided me to two interesting publications:

  IBM Web Fountain – 02/03/2004

Even if you're not thrilled with the title of the article, Monster Librarian At Work, it is still an interesting write up of IBM's cool software application, WebFountain.  WebFountain is part of the program for this year's Annual Conference. 

  Miscellaneous Press Announcements – 01/30/2004

The National Agricultural Library is working with Mississippi State University on the creation of a high-value science information system in agriculture.

  Digging Out From Under – 01/28/2004

Why Can't We All Just Collaborate?  It's always interesting to read the newsletter from Really Strategies, Inc. in terms of understanding what publishers concerns are with regard to implementation of information technologies. 

  From KMWorld Magazine – 01/22/2004

Nice article from KMWorld Magazine (an Information Today publication) entitled Let's Hear It for 'Humanities Computing'. 

  Sense and SPARC – 01/20/2004

I'm not the only one linking to this sensible interview with Martin Blume, Editor-In-Chief, American Physical Society, focusing on the economics of Open Access.   Dr. Bloom, as always, provides a rational, sensible understanding of the issues. 

  From the Digital Library Federation – 01/16/2004

The Digital Library Federation (DLF) has published A Survey of Digital Library Aggregation Services by Martha L. Brogan.  From the listserv posting by David Seaman, Executive Director, DLF "This report provides an overview of a diverse set of more than thirty digital library aggregation services, organizes them into functional clusters, and then evaluates them more fully from the perspective of an informed user...Each service is annotated with its organizational affiliation, subject coverage, function, audience, status, and size."

  Library Connect, Issue 4, 2003 – 01/14/2004

In the most recent issue of Elsevier's Library Connect newsletter (December 2003), Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President, Strategy, Elsevier, has twelve observations on the current situation in scholarly publishing.  As always her views are cogent and practical, understanding as she does both the library and the business worlds.  Here are three of the twelve observations:

  CLIR Publication – 01/12/2004

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) has a new and interesting publication, Reflections on Leadership, that features three essays by three influential university librarians, Michael Keller (Stanford), Kate Wittenborg (Univ. of Virginia) and Chris Ferguson (Pacific Lutheran University). 

  OCLC Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition – 01/09/2004

OCLC has today published their 2003 Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition. The report provides a truly outstanding and substantive overview of the current information landscape. It is absolutely required reading for every segment of the information community.

  ICSTI Forum – 01/08/2004

The new issue of the ICSTI Forum is now available.  This issue contains the following articles of interest to this audience.

  Facts & Figures – 01/07/2004

JSTOR has Facts & Figures for 2003 posted to their Web site. The usage statistics indicate more than 28 million searches performed in 2003 across 9 collections covering 360 journal titles.

  Keeping Up – 01/06/2004

Vivisimo gets lengthy coverage by CNN.  And you probably thought that you only found mini-bars in hotel rooms...

  Happy Holiday Season – 12/19/2003

This is the best high-tech holiday card we've received at NFAIS this season!

  NTIS – 12/18/2003

The National Technical Information Service (NTIS) is an excellent resource, a fact recognized by many vendors.  For example:

  New Offerings – 12/17/2003

In the midst of much buzz about budgets and open access, it is worthwhile noting that new products and services are still being brought to market.  For example, this week Elsevier announced the launch of a new journal, Digital Investigation; the twenty-second edition of  The Cecil Textbook of Medicine, and in conjunction with the NASPE - Heart Rhythm Society, another new journal title, Heart Rhythm. 

  PILOTS Database and more – 12/16/2003

An index to the literature on traumatic stress containing more than 22,000 references, the PILOTS database is a service from the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders.  NCPTSD is a member organization of NFAIS. 

  NISO White Paper – 12/12/2003

Followers of the discussion regarding  the OpenURL standard may find the new NISO White Paper by Priscilla Caplan to be of interest.  Entitled Patents and Open Standards, it provides an excellent case study and discussion of the issues encompassing intellectual property and interoperability of information systems.  Also recommended as supplemental reading is the Washington Post article "Patenting Air or Protecting Property".

  Digital Rights Management – 12/10/2003

The Technology of Rights: Digital Rights Management -- Talk given by Karen Coyle at the Library of Congress in November 2003.  Link above is to the HTML version of the talk but this link will take you to the printable PDF file.

  Presentation by David Seaman – 12/09/2003

This may have been noted by others but I only saw it this morning.  A presentation by David Seaman entitled Transformations of Librarianship and Scholarship given at the Digital Scholars retreat held in March 2003 at the University of Washington.  David Seaman is the Director of the Digital Library Federation and he will be speaking at the 2004 NFAIS Annual Conference.

  AGRICOLA News – 12/08/2003

The National Agricultural Library (NAL) has released a significant upgrade to its Web-based AGRICOLA catalog of records for the materials in its collection. The new version of AGRICOLA provides improved access--many new search and retrieval capabilities, with daily updates--to over 4 million bibliographic records, the world’s largest compilation of agricultural information. Read the full press release.

  More News from Members – 12/03/2003

Ovid Launches Pay-Per-View -- From the press release: "With PayPerView, individuals will purchase full text journal articles from our bibliographic databases, Journals@Ovid database, and article reference links. This service is available on both the Ovid and SilverPlatter platforms...Once a user has located a bibliographic citation from a journal to which his/her institution does not subscribe, the user will have the option to select a -buy now- link, which will appear for any PayPerView licensed article."  Access to the article is permitted for 24 hours.

  News from London Online – 12/02/2003

STN Express(r) Analysis Edition from the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) introduces tools for chemical structure analysis and assistance in query development with the CA Lexicon.  For more information on this new version, read the full press release issued today at the London Online Information meeting. 

Announcement from H.W. Wilson --  WilsonWeb databases now link to Google and other popular Web search tools. From the press release:  WilsonWeb provides an unparalleled information gateway—a single WilsonWeb search brings users results from three distinct sources: the database(s) searched, full text links to other open-URL compliant databases to which the library subscribes, and now Google and other popular Internet search engines.

  Taxonomies and Technology News – 12/01/2003

The taxonomies from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) are part of the enhancements offered by Verity in their content organization products.  From the press release:  Verity drew on highly regarded and open source thesauri and industry standard taxonomies as well as the company's considerable experience in knowledge engineering, the process of building taxonomies.

  An Example – 11/26/2003

Looking for a good example of the difference between authoritative information and that of questionable value? Here is a fun possibility:

  A Feast of Materials – 11/24/2003

Plenty to read and think about this week.  First, there are two white papers that this audience may find to be of interest:

  IEE/INSPEC – 11/20/2003

Announcements from INSPEC (Stand 240) for the 2003 Online Information Meeting in London, December 2-4, 2003.

  A Century of Science – 11/18/2003

ISI and A Century of Science.  From the press release: The Century of Science initiative will expand the Web of Science to include bibliographic data from the highest impact scientific literature published between 1944-1900, adding nearly 850,000 articles from approximately 200 journals. The journals have been carefully selected by the Thomson ISI editorial team based on such criteria as citation patterns, geographic origin, and meaningful balance across scientific disciplines.

  Learning Repositories – 11/17/2003

"A resource is a learning repository if it is created in order to provide access to digital educational materials and if the nature of its content or metadata reflects an interest in those materials being used in an educational context".  Read more in this summit report, From Local Challenges to a Global Community: Learning Repositories and the Global Learning Repositories Summit.  An example of a learning repository would be something like Merlot or BioSciEdNet.

  CrossRef News – 11/14/2003

CrossRef has announced that they are dropping the DOI retrieval fees for all member and affiliate organizations as of January 2004.  From the press release:  "This move gives all CrossRef users unlimited access to DOIs, and is particularly significant for secondary publishers, as DOI links from citations and bibliographic databases to full text are expected to increase greatly as a result"

  Criteria for inclusion in PubMed Central – 11/13/2003

This document outlines the criteria for open access materials to be included in PubMed Central.  Of particular interest to this audience is this clause: "Participant shall furnish, in paragraph 15, a list of the journals from which open access articles will be deposited in PubMed Central. As a condition of inclusion in PubMed Central, each journal must be indexed in one of the major abstracting and indexing services such as MEDLINE, BIOSIS, EMBASE, Science Citation Index, PsychINFO, Agricola or Chemical Abstracts."

  Fair Use Statement – 11/11/2003

Applying Fair Use in the Development of Electronic Reserves Systems.  This statement comes from ARL and was developed by Georgia Harper (Univ of Texas) and Peggy Hoon (North Carolina State University).  See also Duane Webster's cover memo.  

  AIIP Gives Award to Google – 11/10/2003

The Association of Independent Information Professionals has distinguished the Google Toolbar by awarding it with the AIIP Technology Award for this year.  The AIIP Technology Award is given each year to the company whose product assists independent information professionals with their day-to-day operations in locating, analyzing, and organizing information.

  Introducing.... – 11/07/2003

The Business Software Alliance has introduced a character by the name of Meg A. Byte as part of their educational campaign against software piracy.

  ISI and Dartmouth University – 11/06/2003

There is a new Engineering and Applied Sciences Portal at Dartmouth University which was created in partnership with Thomson ISI.  The product is in a trials phase until May of 2004.

  Another side to the story – 11/05/2003

Recognition of the contribution of commercial publishers.   Worth a read...

  Miscellaneous Items of Interest – 11/04/2003

IEEE has updated information on their site pertaining to the ruling from the Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets  Control.  This is in addition to the piece that appeared earlier in the IEEE Spectrum publication [see entry for October 22, 2003 below].

  Announcements – 10/30/2003

Ovid has announced the opening of a Regional Data Center (RDC) in Taiwan today.  The press release offers some interesting statistics about Ovid's global capacity.  For example:

  Information Growth – 10/29/2003

New update from UC professors Hal Varian and Peter Lyman regarding information growth. Results from the study (How Much Information? 2003) include the following insights:

  News Clips from Information Today – 10/27/2003

Barbara Quint of Information Today is on a roll this week with two outstanding newsbreak stories. The first is about the Thomson-Biosis transaction.  Her discussions with Chris Pooley, Thomson ISI, make it particularly intriguing -- a "super-record"? 

  National Agricultural Library – 10/24/2003

The National Agricultural Library (NAL) will be using the RELAIS system to enhance its document delivery services. See the press release. The National Agricultural Library, in Beltsville, Md., is known for its expert staff, extensive AGRICOLA bibliographic database of more than 4 million citations, leadership role in information services and technology applications, and collections.

  The Information Imperative – 10/23/2003

ICSTI has published their excellent study The Information Imperative which looks at the socio-economic impacts of scientific information.  [press release]  Several NFAIS member organizations contributed to this study, including the British Library, CSA, INIST and the National Library of Medicine.

  IEEE and Trade Embargoes – 10/22/2003

The IEEE has provided background information on the impact of a recent ruling by the U.S. Department of the Treasury regarding the provision of editorial services to countries under a trade embargo with the United States.

  Humanities Roundtable II – 10/18/2003

Information Community News will be updated again on Wednesday, October 22, 2003 while the author attends the NFAIS Humanities Roundtable II in Chicago.

  Interview with Michael Eisen, PLoS – 10/17/2003

Creative Commons is featuring an interview with Michael Eisen discussing the launch of the Public Library of Science publication, PLoS Biology, under a CC license.

  Repetoire International de Litterature Musicale – 10/16/2003

RILM offers new volume and new conference on the intellectual history of music scholarship. They've issued a call for papers for the 2004 Conference, which aims to assess changing attitudes and viewpoints in writings on music from antiquity to the present day. 

  News Regarding BIOSIS – 10/14/2003

BIOSIS Pursues Final Negotiations With Bidder.  From the press release:  Today, the Board of Trustees of Biological Abstracts announced that it has voted to pursue final negotiations with The Thomson Corporation leading to a potential sale of the publishing assets of Biological Abstracts, Inc. and BIOSIS, UK. 

  American Institute of Physics – 10/13/2003

AIP Publishing Services to Fulfill PNAS.  From the press release: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) and  the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Publishing Services announced an agreement today for AIP to provide fulfillment and customer service for both the print and online editions of PNAS. The arrangement is effective immediately.

  Ovid Responds to Customers – 10/10/2003

Ovid has posted a letter to their customers on their Web site, regarding the earlier announcement this week from CSA. 

  ICSTI Forum, No. 43 – 10/08/2003

ICSTI has released the most recent issue of the ICSTI Forum.  This issue contains write-ups of the presentations made at this year's Annual Conference.  The theme was The Information Imperative: Impacts of STM Information and STM Organizations.  Abstracts and slides for the presentations are available for presentations by Elliot Siegel, NLM, Bernard DuMouchel, NRC-CISTI, David Brown, British Library and more.  Recommended reading.

  News, news, news! – 10/07/2003

Two items of specific interest:

  CSA – 10/06/2003

Further details will be forthcoming from CSA but the library community may want to be aware that the company will be withdrawing their content from the Silverplatter platform over the course of the next seven months.  Institutions may continue to access CSA content via the Internet Database Service from CSA, or other platforms such as NISC, OCLC or STN.  Full details will be available soon from the CSA website.

  National Academy Press Proceedings – 10/03/2003

The Proceedings from the 2002 symposium, The Role of Scientific and Technical (S&T) Data and Information in the Public Sector , have been published in both print and electronic form.  Substantive reading material. 

  Information Literacy – 10/03/2003

A nod to the Princeton instructor who created this online research tips page!  [Although there are far more resources in sociology than are listed specifically here...]

  Citation Information Put to Use – 10/02/2003

Thomson ISI notes two of the ways in which citation data is employed with regard to evaluation of scientific activity.

  Information Literacy Tool – 09/30/2003

This is actually a creative approach towards training students in time management, project management and information literacy -- all in one tool.  The system directs the student in a particular discipline to the appropriate indexes for that area.

  Fiesole Collection Development Retreat – 09/28/2003

From the July 2003 Fiesole Collection Development Retreat comes this presentation by Philip Davis, Librarian, Cornell University.  Of greatest interest are these bulleted points:

  Nerac Adds New Information Resource – 09/26/2003

Nerac, an NFAIS member organization, has added BioPharm Insights to their many resources.  According to this fact sheet, BioPharm Insights tracks 1,700 biotech and pharmaceutical companies, 10,000 investigational drugs, and over $200 billion in detailed drug sales.  For more information, read the press release here.

  AAP/PSP Luncheon on Usage Statistics – 09/24/2003

The Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the American Association of Publishers (AAP/PSP) is hosting a program, How Online Usage Statistics Impact Your Organization: The Librarian and Publisher Perspective, on October 28th between 12 noon and 3 p.m.  You may want to register!

  The Scientist – 09/23/2003

The September 22 issue of The Scientist has two interesting articles:

  Web Fountain News – 09/22/2003

Gary Price's Resourceshelf featured a good deal of information last week about IBM's Web Fountain.  Today, Barbara Quint of Information Today asks if Web Fountain is the next big thing.

  A New Look at Biosis – 09/18/2003

BIOSIS launching a new look to their Web presence!

  Knowledge Domain Taxonomies – 09/17/2003

The thesaurus allows the hierarchical or taxonomic view, so that organizations can create a browsing directory for users to easily locate needed information without having to resort to the lack of precision inherent in a keyword search. Consequently, there is value in the 30 Knowledge Domain Taxonomies being offered by Access Innovations.

  NFAIS Membership – 09/16/2003

The British Library has joined NFAIS, putting it in the company of other major institutions such as INIST-CNRS, the National Library of Medicine, the National Agricultural Library, the Defense Technical Information Center and similar information agencies serving national populations.

  Interesting Reading – 09/15/2003

Global Changes in Scholarly Communication.  This is the recommended background reading for an ARL-sponsored event "Scholarly Tribes and Tribulations: How Tradition and Technology are Driving Change", to be held on October 17th. 

  Tidbit – 09/10/2003

The Open Directory project now has a category specifically oriented to federated searching. The category appears to cover all of the major library information system vendors, including NFAIS member organization, Museglobal.

  Statement from AAP/PSP – 09/09/2003

Although I could only find it posted at the Web site of SSP, the Association of American Publishers/PSP Division has released a statement with regard to access to medical information.  Open access advocates may find it of interest.

  Vivisimo Enhancements – 09/08/2003

Vivisimo adds new features.  Vivisimo's technology is in use by NFAIS member organizations Micropatent and the New England Journal of Medicine.

  Reuters Story on Database Protection – 09/08/2003

New Database Protection Bill Circulating in U.S. House of Representatives. Story quotes Keith Kupferschmid of the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA).

  Data Harmony – 09/05/2003

Data Harmony Software awarded GSA contract.  Access Innovations, Inc., a leading provider of customized database creation and information handling tools and technologies, announced today that their Data Harmony software suite is now listed on the United States GSA schedule.

  Federated Search and more – 09/04/2003

I can't imagine how I missed Roy Tennant's column on federated search tools in the June 15 issue of Library Journal. 

  Thanks to Information Today – 09/02/2003

Information Today's news bureau chief Paula J. Hane had a piece in NewsLink today which pointed me to this commentary on Microsoft Office 2003, chiefly noted for its inclusion of content from proprietary services such as Ovid, Gale and Factiva.

  NSF Cyberstructure – 08/29/2003

From the newsletter of the Association of Research Libraries: Opportunities for Research Libraries in the NSF Cyberstructure Program. This should be of interest to all in the STM information sector.

  Controlled Vocabulary – 08/28/2003

Boxes and Arrows has been doing a series of articles on controlled vocabularies.  The series is actually pretty good. 

  Miscellaneous Items – 08/27/2003

Thomson Scientific acquires TechStreet.com.  From the press release: "Said Mike Tansey, Chief Executive Officer of Thomson Scientific, "Adding Techstreet to Thomson means that we can be the one stop resource for technical and intellectual property information for engineering research and development delivering patents, journal literature, and standards information." 

  Department of Defense Reinforces DTIC's Role – 08/26/2003

The DOD Director of Defense Engineering and Research has reinforced the role of DTIC as a central facility for the collection and dissemination of scientific and technical information for the Department of Defense.  From the memorandum:  "A key product of the DOD Science and Technology program is knowledge.  This product is made more valuable with reuse."

  Free Biocomplexity Resource – 08/25/2003

CSA and NBII Launch Biocomplexity Thesaurus.  From the press release:   This free, Web-based thesaurus is a major new resource for the biocomplexity and bioinformatics communities and for the public-at-large. It can be accessed via the NBII portal .

  Ovid Technologies – 08/22/2003

Ovid Technologies content has been integrated into Microsoft Office 2003.  From the press release: "End-users can now select terms directly from their Microsoft Office documents and use the "look up" feature to instantaneously launch a Journals@Ovid search session; content is integrated within a user’s desktop environment to provide one-click access to critical medical information."

  Wave of the Future – 08/21/2003

This was referenced at the Coalition of Networked Information.  It is the proceedings from the NSF Post-Digital Libraries Futures Workshop, held earlier this summer at Cape Cod. Between thirty and forty papers and powerpoint presentations are available on the site, as are presentations that emerged from the working group discussions.  Very interesting reading!

  Digital Rights Management – 08/20/2003

Two interesting articles on digital rights management (DRM):

  Linking One to the Other – 08/19/2003

A series of announcements over the course of the past three weeks regarding implementation of links between high-profile information resources, including:

  OCLC Releases Algorithm – 08/18/2003

OCLC to make available specific algorithm to convert bibliographic databases to FRBR model.  Essentially, this algorithm will bring together as a single link multiple records to the same work in a set of search results.  The press release offers a fuller explanation.

  Discussion of the Sabo Bill – 08/15/2003

I learned of this paper (WORKING DRAFT ONLY) discussing the Sabo Bill from a listserv discussion sponsored by the Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP).  The paper is by Samuel Trosow, an assistant professor on the faculty of information and media studies as well as the faculty of law at the University of Western Ontario. 

  Fall Meetings – 08/13/2003

Schedule these meetings into your calendar!

  Biodiversity Informatics – 08/12/2003

USGS Co-chairs Biodiversity Conference.  According to this story in Federal Computer Week, this meeting brings together such significant international groups as IABIN and GBIF.  These groups are in the forefront of creating a global information network that will provide access to data and research studies in the field of biodiversity.

  CAS introduces new service – 08/11/2003

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has launched a new service, Science IP (www.scienceip.org), building upon CAS' greater than twenty-year commitment to providing personalized search services to the patenting community.

  Powering Wiley's InterScience and more – 08/08/2003

NStein's software to power Wiley InterScience pilot project. According to the press release, the project involves improvements to "the search and retrieval experience of Wiley InterScience's customer base."

  Balanced Reporting – 08/06/2003

Several information community weblogs and listservs have already pointed to the August 4 article in the Washington Post regarding free access to medical research.  However, the article that appeared in EMBO Reports actually renders a better picture of the complexities of the issue. 

  Maximizing Access – 08/05/2003

Given current emphasis on open access initiatives, it is heartening to note that both Elsevier and the Optical Society of America are providing access to their journals at no cost to the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics.  The Abdus Salam ICTP operates under the aegis of both UNESCO and IEAE.  For more about the initiative, see this article.

  Information Visualization – 08/04/2003

Partnering with OmniViz, a company involved with information visualization tools,  ISI ResearchSoft has developed an analytical tool in conjunction with the full suite of bibliographic management applications. 

  Interview with David Lipman, NLM – 07/31/2003

The work being done at the National Library of Medicine (NLM)gets wonderful visibility from this interview with David Lipman, Director of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI).  The piece appears in the BioMedCentral newsletter, Open Access Now.

  MetaData and Web-based Search – 07/30/2003

Tim Bray of Antarctica fame offers some interesting thoughts on metadata as practiced by the major Web search engines.  Also, if you haven't seen this earlier in the month, you may want to read this interesting piece from The Economist on information visualization.

  ISIHighlyCited – 07/29/2003

Sighted at Resourceshelf:  From Search Engine Watch, Chris Sherman provides a write-up of the ISI Highly Cited tool.

  MuseGlobal As Best Interface – 07/28/2003

MuseGlobal rated Best Common User Interface Product

  CSA and BioOne – 07/24/2003

CSA and BioOne Announce New Affiliation.  CSA will create a bibliographic layer for the journals available in the BioOne service.  CSA will also be their distributor outside of North America!  For those unfamiliar with BioOne, it is a Web-based aggregation of high-impact research articles from 62 journals in the biological, ecological and environmental sciences. 

  Tenopir's LJ column and more – 07/23/2003

Carol Tenopir's July 15 column in Library Journal points out the tremendous work done by H.W. Wilson in revamping a system in response to customer feedback.

  Publishers Policies and Practices – 07/22/2003

Readers may want to take a look at the executive summary from the ALPSP report, Scholarly Publishing Practice.  The UK based organization, the Association of Learned and Professional Scholarly Publishers, provides some very interesting insights from their survey of 275 journal publishers. For example:

  IEEE Provides Release Notes for Xplore 1.5 – 07/18/2003

NFAIS Member Organization IEEE is providing Release notes for IEEE Xplore, v. 1.5.  This online service provides full text access to transactions, journals, magazines and conference proceedings from IEEE.  One important announcement is that the service is being indexed by Google!

  Eusidic and NFAIS Conferences – 07/17/2003

EUSIDIC meets this fall in Prague, October 19-20, 2003.  Their conference theme is "Building Customer Loyalty: The Branding Imperative." The program features speakers from Dialog, CSA and the British Library. 

  International Council for Science and more – 07/16/2003

Campaign launched by International Council of Science (ICSU) in anticipation of the World Summit on the Information Society.  From the press release:  "Universal access to scientific knowledge, decision making and governance, policy issues for scientific information and improving education and training are the four key themes..."

  NLM, Elsevier White Paper and more – 07/15/2003

National Library of Medicine Classification Updated.  From the announcement:  The new edition contains 133 new MeSH concepts and nearly seven hundred index entries were brought into closer compliance with MeSH.

  News Items – 06/16/2003

JSTOR has identified 5 trends in the links that have been created between their service and other prominent electronic services. The full story appears in their June 2003 newsletter. One important item is that links that are created "on the fly" tend to have a lower success rate in resolution than do pre-formulated links.

  Ovid Linksolver and New Customized Service – 06/11/2003

Although this press release announcing Ovid Linksolver is dated as of April 2003, the product itself was formally released this week at SLA.  See the write-up below for an outline of key features.

  Intellectual Asset Management and SLA – 06/09/2003

Excellent piece from CIO Magazine regarding intellectual asset management systems in the publishing community. Might be good for starting a conversation at SLA!

  Enhancing Content, Retrieval – 06/06/2003

FIZ-Karlsruhe focuses on added value and comprehensive services.  From the press release:  The high-quality content of the approximately 220 databases available on the sci-tech information network STN International is complemented with an increasing number of sophisticated search, analysis, report and administration features.

  Project Counter – 06/05/2003

A status update on the COUNTER Code of Practice.  Click to see the current list of vendors compliant with the Code but the update indicates a bevy of publishers and vendors about to meet the relevant criteria for compliance.

  Interview with Mike Tansey – 06/04/2003

The Spring 2003 issue of Research Information includes this interview/profile of Mike Tansey of Thomson Scientific. In the article, Tansey is quoted as saying,  "On the commercial side we are seeing an increased emphasis on intellectual asset management, looking at ownership of science and intellectual property. Historically this has been the lifeblood of the pharmaceutical industry, but we are seeing movement in different areas. We will continue to provide greater visibility of the landscape in terms of who has patents in what areas from a competitive intelligence and strategy standpoint."

  Coverage in the Media – 06/03/2003

A number of interesting press releases from NFAIS members and media coverage of NFAIS events:

  User education – 06/02/2003

Dr. Carol Tenopir writes about the future of databases and lists four key topics that occupy the minds of vendors these days.  The article quotes Eric Shively of CAS and Terry Owen of CSA. [Both organizations are members of NFAIS]

  Strategic Drugs Database Launched – 05/30/2003

From Current Drugs, a Thomson company, comes this announcement.  From the press release, dated today:  Current Drugs, part of The Thomson Corporation, today announced the launch of the Strategic Drugs database (SDdb), a business analysis and planning solution for strategists in the international bio-pharmaceutical industries.

  Patent Revenues – 05/28/2003

Barry Mahon of ICSTI pointed his members to this story in The Scientist regarding a survey done by the Association of University Technology Managers.  From The Scientist:  "US and Canadian universities, teaching hospitals, and research institutions generated nearly $1.1 billion in royalties and fees from discoveries licensed to commercial companies in FY2001.  Note:  There is a public version of the survey available in PDF file format (go to the Media section of AUTM's web site and click on 2001 survey information)."

  Open Access Title from the American Physiological – 05/27/2003

The American Physiological Society unveils an Open Access choice for authors of Physiological Genomics.

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