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Thursday, August 26, 2010
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Digital Lending Goes into OverDrive
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by Paula J. Hane
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I'd been hearing some buzz this summer about various improvements made by OverDrive to its services for libraries—more content, mobile apps, simplified procedures, etc. OverDrive is a full-service digital distributor of ebooks, audiobooks, music, and video that first launched its online digital warehouse in 2000. So, I caught up with the company's vice president of marketing, David Burleigh, for an extended conversation on what's new and what's coming. While OverDrive offers publishers a secure, web-based, wholesale distribution service for the sale and delivery of digital media, I didn't get into the details of that side of the business. Our discussion focused on what OverDrive offers libraries and their patrons.
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The British Library to Offer Free Access to Bibliographic Records
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The British Library (www.bl.uk) is to make its extensive collections of bibliographic records available for free to researchers and other libraries: www.bl.uk/bibliographic/datafree.html. The U.K. national library has around 14 million catalog records comprising a wealth of bibliographic data. The initiative will help expose this vast dataset to users worldwide, allowing researchers and other libraries to access and retrieve bibliographic records for publications dating back centuries and relating to every conceivable subject area.
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SpringerLink Relaunched With Semantic Linking and Content Previews
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Springer (www.springer.com) relaunched its online platform SpringerLink (www.SpringerLink.com), which hosts nearly 5 million documents, including ebooks, journals, and reference works. The redesigned site has a new and fresh concept that includes semantic linking and connects related content across ebooks and journals.
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“Geek the Library” Campaign Now Available to All U.S. Libraries
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Geek the Library (www.geekthelibrary.org), a community-based public awareness campaign, is now available for adoption by any U.S. public library. The campaign is designed to highlight the vital role of public libraries in today's challenging economic environment and to increase local library support. Geek the Library has proven ability to improve public perceptions about local library funding needs in test communities. Details about how libraries can use the campaign to increase local support are available at http://get.geekthelibrary.org.
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ProQuest Dialog Begins New Platform Rollout; New ProQuest Platform Begins Preview Period
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by Paula J. Hane
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Since the acquisition of Dialog 2 years ago by ProQuest, customers of the Dialog and DataStar services have been keeping a close watch to see what would happen. At the time, ProQuest said it would "invest aggressively in Dialog" and integrate its content. Integration and a major upgrade to the services had long been hoped for even before the acquisition, but until now, it has remained an elusive goal. This week, following 18 months of research and testing, Dialog is launching a first release of the new "ProQuest Dialog," (www.dialog.com/proquestdialog), which offers a subset of Dialog and DataStar content (currently 14 databases) intended for use by end users in the pharmaceutical/biomedical customer community. Other releases in late 2010 and 2011 will bring in the remaining content collections, including STM, intellectual property, and business intelligence, and additional functionality to meet the needs of power searchers. In addition, ProQuest Dialog is built on the same technology infrastructure as the promised new ProQuest platform and has been developed in tandem. The ProQuest platform is entering a preview period, also this week.
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