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Monday, February 06, 2012
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Social Review Site Goodreads Dumps Amazon’s Metadata
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by Nancy K. Herther
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As readers are adjusting to the internet for reading, buying, and selling books, they are also becoming a significant force in the publishing paradigm as they use the medium to recommend or pan books, affecting sales and, potentially, future publishing trends. One such social reviewing site is Goodreads, which has found itself at the center of the movement due to its aggressive and successful business model and due to some of the issues arising from its success. Until 2 weeks ago, Goodreads relied on Amazon book information for basic metadata on titles. However, Goodreads decided that Amazon's restrictive API agreements—not allowing for use of Amazon data on mobile apps and the inability of linking to competing bookstores—made the continuing relationship untenable.
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SAGE Journals Available Via Mobile Devices
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SAGE announced that its entire online journal collection is now available in a mobile-optimized format with the help of HighWire Press' Mobile Web Interface. Visitors to one of the more than 640 SAGE journal sites using their iPhones, Androids, or other smartphones are automatically redirected to the mobile version. Subscribers can now view content in a format designed specifically for the small screen size and functionality of their mobile devices.
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NFAIS Releases Draft Discovery Service Code of Practice
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The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) posted a draft Discovery Service Code of Practice for review and comment by March 16, 2012. NFAIS believes that discovery services have the potential to provide ease of information discovery, access, and use, benefitting not only its member organizations but also the global community of information seekers. However, the relative newness of these services has generated questions and concerns among information providers and librarians as to how these services meet expectations with regard to issues related to traditional search and retrieval services (e.g., usage reports, ranking algorithms, content coverage, updates, product identification, etc.).
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Chemistry Information Centre Berlin (FIZ CHEMIE) Up For Sale
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The public sector shareholders of Berlin's Chemistry Information Centre FIZ CHEMIE GmbH are putting their shares up for sale. It provides chemical data and abstracts for scientific and industrial communities on paper and electronically. Main shareholders are the German Federal Government and the State of Berlin, with industry associations being minority shareholders whose shares are available as well. Several scientific publishers have already shown interest in the information services produced.
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ProQuest Works to Integrate Assets and Services
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by Paula J. Hane
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Last summer, ProQuest welcomed Kurt Sanford as its new CEO. He has now had 6 months leading the company and has already made his mark with a reorganization of leadership, new customer focus, and product migrations and integrations. I had a chance to visit with him during ALA Midwinter in Dallas and get an update on the corporate strategy he is implementing and his thoughts on the industry.
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