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Weekly News Digest
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February 14, 2017 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
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GPO Outlines Future Priorities
Davita Vance-Cooks, the director of the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO), gave a presentation on the agency’s future priorities to the House of Representatives’ Committee on House Administration during the Feb. 6, 2017, Priorities of the House Officers and Legislative Branch Entities for FY 2018 and Beyond hearing. According to the press release, these priorities include the following:- Sustaining employee engagement
- Modernizing the publishing of Congressional products
- Developing a new cost accounting system emphasizing transparency
- Strengthening our partnership with the Nation’s Federal depository libraries
- Automating GPO’s print procurement process
- Releasing govinfo from beta and retiring FDsys
- Beginning production of the next generation U.S. Passport
For more information, read the press release.
AAAS and Gates Foundation Promote OA Publishing
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined forces to promote OA publishing and advance scientific communication. Their agreement allows authors funded by the Gates Foundation to publish their research using a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license in several of AAAS’s Science journals. Any article published in one of these journals by a Gales Foundation-funded author is immediately available to read, download, and reuse. AAAS and the Gates Foundation plan to collaborate on initiatives such as webinars and outreach in developing countries.For more information, read the press release.
Knight Foundation Invests in OpenNews
According to Talking New Media, the Knight Foundation made a $1.1 million investment in the OpenNews network, which launched under Mozilla’s leadership and is now an independent organization. The Knight Foundation released a report on the history of OpenNews, including its accomplishments and future plans. Its funding will support OpenNews’ new operational structure and various activities.For more information, read the press release.
ProQuest Gives Free Database Access to Displaced Researchers
ProQuest created a program for students, faculty, and researchers who have been separated from their institutions due to changes in immigration policy. They will be able to arrange for free access to ProQuest’s databases by emailing ContinueMyResearch@proquest.com. This allows them to continue their work uninterrupted. They can also request free RefWorks accounts so they can collaborate with colleagues around the world.“ProQuest is an open and inclusive organization that takes its role in supporting research and learning very seriously,” says Kurt Sanford, ProQuest’s CEO. “We’re doing whatever we can to mitigate the interruptions facing our community of students and scholars around the world.” For more information and email instructions, read the press release.
ANSI Applauds Copyright-Protection Ruling
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) announced its approval of a recent U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruling that a group of other organizations’ standards would not enter the public domain when being incorporated by reference into federal regulations, therefore keeping their copyright protections.“The decision represents a victory for the standards community and prevents Public.Resource.Org from posting standards developing organization (SDO)-copyrighted codes and standards to its public website,” according to the press release. “The ruling supports ANSI members and the standards ecosystem, and enables the plaintiffs to continue to develop high-quality voluntary consensus standards that support federal, state, and local agencies. These standards help assure health, safety, and quality of life for millions of individuals worldwide.” For more information, read the press release.
AWS Facilitates Better Meetings With Amazon Chime
Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched Amazon Chime, a unified communications service to make meetings more efficient. Customers can start or join high-quality audio and video meetings with one click, synchronize their chats, and share screens and content across desktops and iOS and Android devices. There is a visual roster of all attendees, and anyone can mute a noisy line. Organizations don’t need to provide an upfront investment to use Amazon Chime, and it doesn’t require complicated deployment or maintenance.For more information, read the press release.
Innovative Rolls Out Encore Improvements
Innovative launched Encore version 4.6, which includes new options for helping patrons and students find specific materials quickly. For example, all facets, as well as some new-to-this-release custom facets, now have check boxes that allow users to choose multiple terms within a facet to filter search results. Encore Duet was updated to add the ability to search directly within a specific publication from the initial results display (as long as the search term exactly matches a publication title). Other enhancements include updates that comply with accessibility guidelines, and patron features such as notifications of upcoming card expiration dates.For more information, read the press release.
Adam Matthew Launches Race Relations Archive
Adam Matthew debuted Race Relations in America, a collection of records from the Race Relations Department of Fisk University. It includes speeches, reports, audio recordings, and surveys that cover race relations in the U.S. from 1943 to 1970.For more information, read the press release.
Digital Science Brings Its Product Suite to Carnegie Mellon
Carnegie Mellon University became a key customer and development partner of Digital Science, agreeing to implement a suite of products from the Digital Science portfolio (including those focused on altmetrics, grant, and research data) to create a solution for capturing, analyzing, and showcasing its research. The university is developing platforms that will work together to encourage interactive research among its community members. It will use Symplectic’s Elements as its definitive source of research information, figshare for institutions as its institutional data repository, Dimensions as its grants database, and other Digital Science tools.For more information, read the press release.
Exact Editions Adds MuseumsEtc Content
MuseumsEtc, which publishes books for museums and galleries, rolled out a digital subscription package of 60-plus books on the Exact Editions platform of web, iOS, and Android apps. The titles cover topics such as interpretation and learning and museum management and strategy, and the collection will be updated as new books are released. Exact Editions features advanced searching and linking capabilities in each digital publication. Readers can search across a book or across the whole collection.For more information, read the press release.
Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor
Brandi Scardilli
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