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Weekly News Digest
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March 25, 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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LexisNexis Legal & Professional's Nexis Data Lab Helps Streamline Analytics
LexisNexis Legal & Professional rolled out Nexis Data Lab, a data-mining and analysis tool that students and academic researchers can use to search the Nexis news archive. It streamlines the analytical experience and shortens the time needed to create datasets so the data can be analyzed faster—by allowing the searching, refining, analyzing, and visualizing of thousands of documents in minutes. In addition, professors and peer reviewers at academic journals can use it to replicate exact studies and verify the findings.“With Nexis Data Lab, we deliver a system that’s fully administered on our end and has a very simple yet powerful workspace,” says Todd Larsen, president of Nexis Solutions. “With just a few clicks, users can perform data discovery and analysis to surface precise answers to their specific research questions—and even discover trends they might not have uncovered through traditional methods.” For more information, read the press release.
'Censorship of Federal Environmental Agency Websites Under Trump: What We Learned and How to Protect Public Information Moving Forward'
Gretchen Gehrke, Marcy Beck, Eric Nost, and Shannan Lenke Stoll write the following in a Union of Concerned Scientists blog post:Over the last four years, the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) has documented and analyzed changes to federal environmental websites. What our team found was alarming: unprecedented steps by the Trump administration to manipulate information about environmental issues and laws, marked particularly by patterns of removing public information prior to environmental proceedings and censoring climate change-related information on websites. Websites are how federal agencies communicate with the public, and changes to them can impact public participation in environmental regulatory processes. The information that’s available—or unavailable—on federal websites matters for the health of democracy and the environment. Yet there is currently little policy guidance for the governance of information found on federal agencies’ websites. The findings in EDGI’s latest report Access Denied: Federal Web Governance Under the Trump Administration and academic paper Visualizing Changes to US Federal Environmental Agency Websites, 2016–2020 show why this needs to change. For more information, read the blog post.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies Examines the Experiences of the Trans Community
SAGE published The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, a two-volume set with more than 300 entries exploring transgender people’s experiences across various subjects, cultures, and life stages. It “takes an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to examine discrimination, correct misconceptions, and increase trans awareness.” For example, it covers healthcare discrimination, the Stonewall riots, and key individuals such as Jazz Jennings and Chaz Bono.The 300-plus contributors come from the social and behavioral sciences and humanities fields. They include Monica F. Helms (creator of the trans pride flag), Rachel Crandall-Crocker (creator of the International Day of Transgender Visibility), Kylar Broadus (founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition), Mara Keisling (founder and executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality), and Marquis Bey (author of Them Goon Rules: Fugitive Essays on Radical Black Feminism). “We aimed to consider trans people’s experiences in diverse contexts and systems, as well as across different life stages, and transitions,” says Abbie E. Goldberg, the encyclopedia’s co-editor and the director of women’s and gender studies at Clark University. “We are hopeful scholars will read and incorporate the information into their thinking, writing, and teaching and that policymakers and activists draw on the many important topics in this encyclopedia as the basis for their transformative work.” For more information, read the press release.
'EFF to Supreme Court: Users Must Be Able to Hold Tech Companies Accountable in Lawsuits When Their Data Is Mishandled'
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) “urged the Supreme Court to rule that consumers can take big tech companies like Facebook and Google to court, including in class action lawsuits, to hold them accountable for privacy and other user data-related violations, regardless of whether they can show they suffered identical harms.” The press release continues:EFF filed a brief … with the Supreme Court in a case called TransUnion v. Ramirez. In the case, TransUnion misidentified plaintiff Sergio Ramirez and over 8,000 other people as included on the U.S. terrorist list. As a result, Ramirez was flagged as a terrorist when he tried to purchase a car. TransUnion is fighting to keep the other consumers it tagged as terrorists from suing it as a group with Ramirez. The company argues that they don’t have standing to sue under the law and shouldn’t be part of the ‘class’ of plaintiffs in the lawsuit because they weren’t harmed in the same way as Ramirez. Facebook, Google, and tech industry trade groups are siding with TransUnion. They filed a legal brief pushing for even more limitations on users and others impacted by a wide range of privacy and data integrity violations. The companies argue that users whose biometric information is misused or are improperly tracked or wiretapped should also be denied the opportunity to sue if they did not lose money or property. Even those who can sue must all have been harmed in the exact same way to file a class action case, the companies argue. For more information, read the press release.
'CyberSecurity Collaborative and Cybereason Launch CISO Stories Podcast'
Cybersecurity Collaborative and Cybereason partnered to create the weekly podcast series CISO Stories, which is available on the major podcast platforms. The press release shares the following:[CISO Stories] takes a deep dive into critical security topics with top leaders, representing a wide array of industries, who share their insights and expertise with the broader security community. [CISO Stories] is co-hosted by Todd Fitzgerald, VP of Cybersecurity Strategy at Cybersecurity Collaborative, and Sam Curry, Chief Security Officer at Cybereason, and is published Security Weekly’s podcast network serving more than 30,000 subscribers with nearly 3 million downloads in 2020. Each week the hosts will unpack the extraordinary perspectives and exceptional experiences of CISOs and other front-line cybersecurity leaders. Guests on the show include well known security leaders, such as Dawn Capelli, CISO at Rockwell Automation; Ari Schwartz, of the Cybersecurity Coalition; Tony Sager, Former COO for Information Assurance at the NSA and SVP at The Center for Information Security; Roland Cloutier, Global CISO at TikTok; Steve Katz, Executive Advisor Deloitte, and more. For more information, read the press release.
The CASE Act's Copyright Claims Board Needs to Fill Three Officer Positions
To begin its implementation of the Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement (CASE) Act of 2020, the U.S. Copyright Office posted on its NewsNet notification system that it is seeking three copyright claims officers to serve on the Copyright Claims Board—“an alternative forum housed within the Copyright Office that parties may use to resolve certain disputes regarding copyright claims with a relatively low economic value (small copyright claims).”Candidates must have substantial familiarity with copyright law; one officer will have alternative dispute resolution experience, and the other two will have experience in the evaluation, litigation, or adjudication of copyright infringement claims. The Librarian of Congress will appoint the officers based on the recommendation of the Register of Copyrights: one for a 4-year term, one for a 5-year term, and one for a 6-year term. For more information, read the NewsNet alert (issue 887).
The University of California–Riverside Implements Yewno Discover
The University of California–Riverside, a university with a high research output, is now using the Yewno Discover platform via Ex Libris’ Primo VE interface. Yewno Discover ingests and reads full-text content that it then stores in a knowledge graph. According to Yewno, “Users can navigate a front-end representation of the knowledge graph to explore millions of concepts and supporting scholarly materials. In a single session, users can learn what would otherwise require multiple hours of honing topics, locating resources, reading, processing and evaluating information. The system is entirely web-based and can be used whether learning remotely or within the physical library.”“With the exponential growth of content, the value of information curation and discovery multiplies,” says Tiffany Moxham, associate university librarian for content and discovery at the University of California–Riverside. “Yewno allows users at all stages of the research journey to navigate intuitively and easily through the myriad of content available.” For more information, read the press release.
ProQuest's 'Panel Tackles the Need for Advancing Diversity and Inclusion in STEM'
When You Picture a Scientist, Who Do You See? is a free virtual event hosted by ProQuest, Scientific American, FILM PLATFORM, and ro*co films on March 24, 2021, at 3 p.m. EDT (registration is required). Laura Helmuth, Scientific American’s editor in chief, will moderate, and participants will include Jennifer Doudna (a Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner), Raychelle Burks (a chemist at American University), Jane Willenbring (a geologist at Stanford University), and Eva Pietri (a research psychologist at Indiana University-Purdue University–Indianapolis).The event aims to give participants “a better sense of understanding of—and passion for—advancing diversity in STEM fields and beyond,” and “the discussion will focus on the experience of each panelist as leaders in their field, the obstacles they overcame, and positive solutions for advancing equity.” For more information, read the press release.
'Apple Adds COVID Vaccine Sites to Maps to Help Users Find Appointments'
Jason Cipriani writes the following for ZDNet:Apple … announced its latest effort to help with the COVID pandemic in the US. iPhone, iPad and Mac users can now ask Siri for help with finding a local COVID vaccine clinic. Alternatively, you can also open Apple Maps and search for the same information. The data comes from VaccineFinder, with results including a link to the website where you can book an appointment, along with the hours of the clinic. Apple says that the current data set has over 20,000 different vaccination locations throughout the US, with more locations being added soon. For more information, read the article.
Modern Campus Buys nuCloud to Facilitate the Use of Interactive Campus Maps and Virtual Tours
Modern Campus acquired nuCloud, a provider of interactive campus maps and virtual tours for colleges and universities, to help it “to revolutionize the student experience and deliver what today’s modern learner demands: a massively personalized learner-to-earner journey.” nuCloud offers a SaaS-based application that helps institutions build ways for students to experience their campus without visiting in person, including with illustrations from various angles and perspectives, customizable layouts and map markers, and maps that blend with current website designs.The press release states, “NuCloud customers will benefit from the integration of nuCloud within the Modern Campus personalization engine, and the expansion of capabilities provided by Modern Campus Omni CMS, the only purpose-built content management system (CMS) for higher education.” For more information, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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