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Weekly News Digest

August 4, 2022 — 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.

Google for Education Launches Classroom Add-Ons

Now, educators will be able to easily find, add, use and grade content from popular EdTech tools, right within Google Classroom. Add-ons provide a better end-to-end experience to not only save time for educators, but also simplify the digital classroom experience for students, too. …

To make EdTech tools work better together, we partnered with 18 partners to offer add-ons for Classroom. You can do things like assign a trivia game from Kahoot!, browse content from IXL’s repository by subject or grade level, and make it easy for students to access interactive Pear Deck presentations, all within Classroom. With the content and activities of these educational partners accessible within Classroom, we hope it’s even easier to diversify your lessons and help students learn in new ways.

For more information, read the blog post.

Patron Point Expands Into U.K. Market With ESS Partnership

“We are excited to expand our reach into the UK public library market through our partnership with ESS,” says Ian Downie, VP of growth at Patron Point. “Now ESS libraries can benefit from the integration and harness Patron Point’s Proven Programs to engage their communities, getting the right message to the right people at the right time.”

“Our new partnership with Patron Point will help our customers apply expert marketing activities using their library data to drive tangible service improvements and better, more personalised and actionable, engagement with their library users,” says Anthony Whitford, CTO, LMC at ESS.

For more information, read the press release (download required).

ALA Releases Statement Praising Senate's FY2023 Appropriations Bill

“We welcome the Senate Appropriations Committee’s historic proposal to bring needed investments in improving library facilities, from fixing leaking roofs to replacing ventilation systems to making accessibility renovations,” says ALA president Lessa Kanani'opua Pelayo-Lozada. “I am asking library advocates to remain engaged with their members of Congress to highlight the need for these investments as the House and Senate negotiate the final funding bills for next fiscal year.”

For more information, read the press release.

GOBI Library Solutions Ebooks Get More Visible via Integration With Talis Aspire

E-book offerings available in GOBI Library Solutions from EBSCO … are now visible in Talis Aspire for all e-suppliers with whom the customer has an active relationship via GOBI. The offerings displayed in Talis from GOBI will include the access model, whether the model is DRM-free, the customer-specific estimated net price and offerings previously purchased through GOBI.

This integration provides librarians with visibility into GOBI e-book offerings across multiple platforms in their Talis Aspire workflow, enabling them to easily and efficiently make purchasing decisions based on access model and price.

For more information, read the press release.

IOP Publishing Signs Its First Transformative OA Agreements in the U.S.

IOP Publishing (IOPP) has signed three new Transformative Agreements (TAs) that will accelerate open access (OA) publishing and extend access to high quality research in the United States (US). The three-year read and publish (R&P) agreements with Princeton University, the University of Central Florida and Connecticut College offer unlimited publishing in all IOPP hybrid and gold OA journals.

The agreements, which will commence on 1 January 2023, will see articles published under an open licence (CC-BY), allowing authors to retain copyright. As well as barrier-free publication, researchers and students affiliated with the three institutions will have reading access to all IOPP journals. …

The three new transformative ‘read and publish’ licences are the most recent in a series of TAs that IOPP has reached with research institutions and consortia around the world. IOPP has now TAs with 290 institutions in 15 countries. 

For more information, read the announcement.

67 Bricks and AIP Publishing Join Forces for Scholarly Publishing Best Practices

AIP Publishing (AIPP) and 67 Bricks are pleased to announce their partnership to engage in a series of data-driven experiments around best practices in the field of scholarly publishing. These experiments are grounded in data exploration and will tackle an array of subject areas, from operational improvements to customer experience enhancements to potential new product development. 

With the shared mission of progressing AIPP’s strategies, using innovative technology and data-driven thinking, 67 Bricks and AIPP aim to build advanced data skills and agility within AIPP’s teams. AIPP will be using 67 Bricks’ expertise and experience in software and internal culture development to accelerate their digital transformation. 

For more information, read the news item.

IMLS Awards $21 Million in Grants for U.S. Libraries and Archives

Libraries getting National Leadership Grants include the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University (to “develop the first set of best practices for archival accessioning in the United States to help archives across the country strengthen and standardize their own accessioning practices”), Seattle Public Library (for a partnership with “the University of Washington, Meridian Library District in Idaho, Charles County Public Library in Maryland, and [ALA] to develop the capacity of libraries in addressing the teen mental health crisis in the U.S.”), and the Howard County Library System (to “partner with the Howard County Office of Workforce Development and Luminus Network for New Americans to develop and provide contextualized workplace English as a Second Language classes, job search skills, and interview/job preparation training for skilled immigrants”).

Universities getting funds from Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program include the University of Texas–Austin School of Information, which will partner with other libraries in its region to “educate and mentor the next generation of Library and Information Science faculty with expertise in artificial intelligence and data science”; the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, which will partner with the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, rural public libraries, and statewide 4-H network agents to “collect and analyze information and technology needs of farming communities”; and the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science, which “will carry out a Forum project to investigate best practices for increasing the capacity of library workers in small and rural libraries to organize community-engaged archives sustainably and equitably.”

For more information, read the press release.

APA Touts the Benefits of Letting Your Mind Wander

In a series of six experiments with a total of 259 participants, the researchers compared people’s predictions of how much they would enjoy simply sitting and thinking with their actual experience of doing so. In the first experiment, they asked people to predict how much they would enjoy sitting alone with their thoughts for 20 minutes, without being allowed to do anything distracting such as reading, walking around or looking at a smartphone. Afterward, participants reported how much they had enjoyed it.

The researchers found that people enjoyed spending time with their thoughts significantly more than they had predicted. This held true across variations of the experiment in which participants sat in a bare conference room or in a small, dark tented area with no visual stimulation; variations in which the thinking period lasted for three minutes or for 20 minutes; and one variation in which the researchers asked people to report on their enjoyment midway through the task instead of after it was over. In every case, participants enjoyed thinking more than they had expected to.

For more information, read the press release.

TikTok Files a Trademark Application for a Music Service

TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, filed a trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for ‘TikTok Music’ in May. According to the filing, the service would let users purchase, play, share, and download music. It would also allow users to create, share, and recommend playlists, comment on music, as well as livestream audio and video. …

ByteDance already has experience with music streaming. In 2020, ByteDance launched a music streaming app, Resso, in India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Resso has some of the same features described in the ‘TikTok Music’ filing, such as the ability to create playlists, share songs on social media, and interact with the app’s community. …

It’s unclear whether ByteDance plans on developing a music streaming app based on the Resso framework, or if it will come up with something else entirely.

For more information, read the article.