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Monday, November 08, 2010
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Some Progress But Not Enough: GAO Issues Update on the EPA Library Network
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by Barbie E. Keiser
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Thirty-three months after its assessment of the 2007 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) library reorganization was issued ("EPA Needs to Ensure That Best Practices and Procedures Are Followed When Making Further Changes to Its Library Network," GAO-08—304, Feb. 28, 2008), the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) released its Report to Congressional Requesters (GAO-10-947) on the EPA library network, "EPA Needs to Complete a Strategy for Its Library Network to Meet User Needs," dated Sept. 30, 2010. GAO's 2008 report condemned the EPA for not following best practices and procedures when deciding to close five of its libraries, reducing hours of operation in four of them, changing the nature of operations in another, and not adequately informing stakeholders about the impact that those changes might have on their work.
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OCLC and EBSCO Announce Expanded Data Exchange
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OCLC and EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) expanded their partnership to enhance the discovery experience for users of WorldCat Local and the EBSCO Discovery Service through an expanded data exchange agreement. This agreement is designed to create more value for libraries that subscribe to services from OCLC and EBSCO.
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SirsiDynix Announces SirsiDynix Portfolio Digital Asset Management
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SirsiDynix announced the official release of the SirsiDynix Portfolio digital asset management tool. It builds upon SirsiDynix Enterprise search and discovery, adding digital asset management capabilities, optical character recognition (OCR) technology, Open Archives Initiative compatibility for web harvesting, and a security-conscious content management system. An upgrade to the Hyperion management system, the Portfolio platform offers improved asset management and compatibility.
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JSTOR and Serials Solutions Partner to Enhance Discoverability of Resources
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Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest LLC, announced a pilot project that will allow students and researchers at institutions subscribing to the Summon web-scale discovery service to automatically find their library's Summon service search box when they use JSTOR. In addition to the content available on JSTOR, users will easily be able to search the breadth of their particular library's collection for additional materials, enabling faster, simpler research. The collaboration furthers the Summon service's mission to make library content easier to discover by researchers and students.
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HTML5-Powered E-Readers for the Browser
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by Paula J. Hane
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Starbucks recently announced the launch of its Starbucks Digital Network, in partnership with Yahoo! The offer of free Wi-Fi in its U.S. stores caught my eye, but I was even more interested in the free content (some normally subscription-based), which was billed as a "collection of hand-picked premium news, entertainment, and lifestyle content along with local insights and events." But wait, there was even more hidden in the press release: There were free ebooks from major publishers, courtesy of the Bookish Reading Club and New Word City. But here's the sentence that propelled me to investigate this matter further for this article: "A new HTML5 reader, powered by SkyShelf from LibreDigital, allows customers to read books in the browser on their laptops, tablets and many smartphones."
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