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Weekly News Digest
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April 18, 2019 — 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. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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RBdigital Gets Video Resource on Living Well
Recorded Books introduced Learn It Live to the RBdigital platform for library patrons, who get unlimited access to it for 7 days. In this new video resource, authors and instructors from around the world provide interactive, live and recorded courses on topics such as health and wellness, spirituality, and career development—e.g., cooking, nutrition, child care, financial wellness, diabetes prevention, fitness, yoga, mindfulness, meditation, and stress reduction.“Health and wellness is an incredibly popular content category so we are excited to offer Learn it Live to library patrons as well as students at colleges and universities,” says John Shea, chief product and marketing officer of RBmedia (parent company of Recorded Books). “We will continue to expand our RBdigital content in this and other areas to meet the evolving needs of our customers and their user bases.” For more information, read the press release.
ALA Elects Its 2020–2021 President
Julius C. Jefferson Jr., section head of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) at the Library of Congress and an active ALA member for the past 15 years, will be the 2020–2021 ALA president. He serves as president-elect until the end of ALA’s annual conference in 2020. (Wanda Brown is ALA’s 2019–2020 president.)He says in a statement, “Together we will collaborate to strengthen our core values of equity, diversity, and inclusion; advocacy; leadership and professional development; and information policy, and address the internal and external challenges. … It is my vision that together we will transform ALA into a modern library association, ensuring that libraries remain at the center of public engagement and enrich the lives of the communities we serve.” For more information, read the article.
EBSCO Provides Music Research Database
EBSCO Information Services rolled out Music Index with Full Text, a tool that offers music scholars access to more than 170 full-text journals from 30-plus countries and other resources that cover every aspect of classical and popular music, including specific musical instruments. Dating from 1970, there is cover-to-cover A&I for 600-plus periodicals, performance reviews, sound recordings, and videos in more than 20 languages. Subjects include film scores, music and society, music business and management, music history, and music theory.For more information, read the press release.
Gale Unveils Religions of America Archive
Gale released Religions of America, a digital archive that covers religions and religious movements created in or reshaped by the U.S. from 1820 to 1990, including Pentecostalism, Mormonism, Neopaganism, and Wicca. Researchers can use it to study religions’ impacts on modern American society and politics.Cross-searchable with other Gale Primary Sources archives and integrated with Gale’s Digital Scholar Lab, it features periodicals, newspapers, manuscripts, pamphlets, newsletters, and other materials divided among five groups: The American Religions Collection; The Shaker Collection; The FBI Files on Jonestown, Moorish Science Temple of America, and the Branch Davidians; The Hall-Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda; and Utah and the Mormons. For more information, read the press release.
SPARC Publishes a Report on the Academic Publishing Industry
SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) released a landscape analysis report on the changing academic publishing industry that is freely available for download.SPARC writes, “This report was commissioned in response to the growing trend of commercial acquisition of critical infrastructure in our institutions. It is intended to provide a comprehensive look at the current players in this arena, their strategies and potential actions, and the implications of these on the operations of our libraries and home institutions. It also outlines suggestions for an initial set of strategic responses for the community to consider building out in order to ensure community control of both this infrastructure and the data generated by/resident on it.” For more information, read about the report.
Book Riot Confronts Sexual Harassment in Libraries
A recent Book Riot article by Kelly Jensen looks at “what has come of sexual harassment, professional discourse, education, and change in the year and a half since” the 2017 #MeToo movement began. Jensen continues, “Sexual harassment in libraries … was routinely downplayed, ignored, or outright rejected as a reality of the job. That harassment, prevalent in part because of the interaction those who work in these institutions have with the public and in part because of the workplace cultures themselves, surprised many while also not surprising others.”For more information, read the article.
Exact Editions Adds a Batch of New Titles
Exact Editions has added six new titles from the Mark Allen Group to its digital platform, available to both individuals and institutions. They are Opera Now, a 30-year archive of 250-plus issues; Classical Music, with 100 back issues for professional musicians and others in the music industry; International Piano, for piano enthusiasts and professionals; Choir & Organ, covering the choral and organ worlds; Music Teacher, a classroom resource for music education practitioners; and Teaching Drama, for teachers, playwrights, and practitioners looking for practical strategies and lesson plans.Positive News, also new to the platform (for individuals and institutions around the world), is published by “the first media organisation in the world to be dedicated to quality, independent reporting about what’s going right.” Daryl Rayner, Exact Editions’ managing director, says, “The mission of Positive News is of utmost importance in the current journalistic and political climate. It’s an excellent publication and we’re excited to watch the archive grow with more positive news stories.” For more information, read the Mark Allen blog post and both press releases.
Credo Seeks Early Adopters for Instruct: Health Science
Credo created an early-adopter program for Instruct: Health Science, its new Learning Tools resource. Librarians can use it to teach and assess both undergraduate-level and graduate-level skills such as information literacy and critical thinking using tutorials, videos, and other instruments both in the classroom and online. Topics include Databases and Search Techniques, Interpreting and Evaluating Evidence, and Evidence-Based Practice. The content was designed with input from health science librarians and was beta-tested at more than 20 institutions.“Librarians who sign up for our early adopter program will benefit from immediate access to these resources in addition to having the opportunity to add their voice to content and design of the final version to be released later this year,” says Ian Singer, Credo’s general manager. For more information, read the press release.
Ithaka S+R Survey Studies Faculty Attitudes
The Scholarly Kitchen shares that Ithaka S+R rolled out the latest version of its “Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey.” It “has tracked the changing research, teaching, and publishing practices of higher education faculty members on a triennial basis since 2000.” The blog post “highlight[s] some of the key findings around open access that we expect will be of interest to the scholarly communication community. Notably, we find a widening disconnect between faculty attitudes, on the one hand, and reported practices, on the other, related to open access publishing.”For more information, read the blog post.
Emerald Publishing Takes Pledge to Support Employees' Mental Health
Emerald Publishing signed the Time to Change Employer Pledge as a “commitment to supporting employee wellbeing and mental health” and to further the goal of “changing the way people think and act about mental health problems in the workplace.”The press release notes that “Emerald is committed to breaking down barriers and encouraging conversation around mental health issues through initiatives such as our ‘Let’s talk about’ campaign—an internal programme that has seen various employees share their personal mental health journeys. We also have a dedicated annual wellbeing week and are committed to providing vital resources such as Mental Health First Aiders, an employee assistance programme and a safe space to talk for all our employees.” For more information, read the press release.
OverDrive Shares the Results of a Study on the Rise of Audiobooks
OverDrive’s new survey shows that “technology has helped Americans find more opportunities to consume books. The shift towards digital content has allowed readers to continue to enjoy books anytime, anywhere on any device—even despite constant demands for attention from the outside world. The study found that over the past year, 43 percent of respondents have read ebooks and 34 percent of respondents have listened to audiobooks—and 87 percent of those respondents are consuming audiobooks while doing other activities.“The study also shows that millennials (ages 23-38) and adult members of Gen Z (ages 18-22) are driving the audiobook market with 48 percent selecting an audiobook while 24 percent of the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers utilize this digital technology to read.” For more information, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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