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Weekly News Digest
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February 18, 2021 — 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.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Adam Matthew Digital Unveils a New Module of Its Sex & Sexuality Archive
Adam Matthew Digital released Module II of its Sex & Sexuality archive, titled Self-Expression, Community and Identity. Materials come from institutions such as the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California Libraries, The National Archives in the U.K., and Rare Books & Special Collections at the University of Sydney Library. Adam Matthew Digital notes, “While Module I focused on sexologists and the work of the Kinsey Institute, Module II features a wide variety of personal papers and organisational records through which to explore the history of human sexuality from the perspective of the individual and wider community from the grassroots level.” Major themes include community organization and activism, published and amateur erotica, and the AIDS pandemic.“The official records of pressure groups and community organisations, diaries and correspondence, photographs, objects, erotic fiction, papers of noted sexologists and more, sourced from archives in the US, UK, and Australia can be used as a lens through which to view changing attitudes around the world from the nineteenth century to the modern day,” says Hannah Phillips, Adam Matthew Digital’s head of editorial production. For more information, read the news item.
'Where Are We: The Latest on Library Reopening Strategies' by Erica Freudenberger
Erica Freudenberger writes the following for Library Journal:As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc across the country (and around the world), public libraries are continually recalibrating and reinventing services, plans, and procedures to keep up with a roiling landscape. The pandemic has brought inequities—systemic racism, economic and food insecurity, mental and physical health issues, and digital equity disparities—into sharp focus. Public libraries have been on the front lines, negotiating how to address those ever more urgent issues and provide essential community services while keeping staff and the community healthy. … The pandemic has created an endless loop of ambiguity, where planning is often derailed as the coronavirus surges, mutates, and continues to spread. Kim Porter, director of Indiana’s Batesville Memorial Public Library, made the shift from reactive to proactive planning. Instead of thinking long-term, she focuses on ‘taking the next right step.’ … Shifts in service have required additional or reallocated resources, even as city and county budgets face dropping property tax revenues and strain to cover testing, treatment, mitigation for schools, and help for the many suddenly unemployed residents. Many libraries have had to lay off or furlough employees; often the first to be impacted are part-time staff and pages, and others have seen a reduction in benefits. … Some of the changes, like curbside service, virtual programs, and an increase in digital resources interest, will be with us long-term. These new models include not only patron-facing services, but changes to library infrastructure. For more information, read the article.
RBmedia Buys Booka's Spanish Audiobook Publishing Business
RBmedia acquired Spanish audiobook producer Booka’s audiobook publishing business and full catalog of Spanish-language titles. (Booka retains its professional services audio production business.) Authors with Booka titles include Juan Gómez-Jurado, Fernando Gamboa, Jorge Magano, and Marc Reklau.“With Booka as a cornerstone, we will build our Spanish-language audio publishing to include premier global properties—both fiction and nonfiction—while also capturing the distinct local and regional authors required to serve all Spanish listeners,” says Troy Juliar, RBmedia’s chief content officer. For more information, read the press release.
eLife Creates Dedicated Hub for Coronavirus Research
eLife partnered with the Novel Coronavirus Research Compendium (NCRC), “a publicly available resource from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, US, that rapidly curates and reviews emerging scientific evidence about SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.”eLife shares the following: eLife is now working with the NCRC to integrate the Compendium into Sciety, a new platform developed by a team within eLife. Sciety is a growing network where the latest biomedical and life science preprints are transparently evaluated and curated by communities of experts in one convenient place. eLife will set up a dedicated section for the NCRC on Sciety that displays feeds of articles curated by the Compendium’s community and links to a summary of each article hosted on Sciety. These summaries include information such as the article title, DOI link, abstract, version history and evaluations by other communities. Readers can use the NCRC’s dedicated section as a landing page to find the Compendium’s preprint reviews and keep up to date with its latest evaluations. For more information, read the news item.
Ex Libris and Knowledge Unlatched Join Forces for Streamlined OA Workflows
Ex Libris’ Esploro research information management solution is now integrated with Oable, Knowledge Unlatched’s OA workflow management solution, to help institutions manage article-processing charges (APCs)—including tracking APC submissions, approvals, and budgets via Alma—and facilitate easier OA publishing with a single end-to-end workflow.“There is an increasing need for the interoperability of data and systems,” says Olaf Ernst, Knowledge Unlatched’s chief solutions officer. “We have launched Oable as a solution enabling institutions to seamlessly approve, pay, and manage open access activities on campus. Partnering with Ex Libris is an important step in supporting the goal of making the open access publication process a better experience for researchers and institutions around the world.” For more information, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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