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Weekly News Digest
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October 25, 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.
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OverDrive Education Donates Ebooks and Audiobooks to Canadian Schools Using the Sora App
OverDrive announced the following:To help Canadian schools meet demand for digital content without increasing budget, OverDrive Education has donated 100 juvenile and young adult titles to thousands of primary and secondary schools around the country. This Canada “Sora Starter” bundle is available to all Canadian schools and includes high-interest English and French ebooks and audiobooks in a variety of subjects from Canadian authors and publishers. … Titles in this free collection—along with the original Sora Starter collection which features 200+ juvenile and young adult titles—are always available with no waiting for students to borrow and read. … These titles [are] available now through September 30, 2023 in Canadian schools that use the Sora reading app. Schools not yet using Sora can try it for free and receive both collections at no additional cost. As part of OverDrive’s Everyone Reads program, new titles in a variety of subjects will be added for free into schools’ collections in the coming months. For more information, read the press release.
Adam Matthew Changes Name to AM, Reveals a New Visual Style
Adam Matthew Digital rolled out new branding, including a name change and a new logo. Now AM, the company shares that its “vision to place primary sources at the heart of education remains the same.” The team’s “passion for high-quality collections, sector-leading technology and personalised customer service won’t change.”The new brand “reflects [AM’s] commitment to innovation, inclusion and improving educational outcomes.” AM states that this change marks the next phase of the company’s journey, helping customers “discover award-winning archival collections, learn how to use them, or create [their] own.” For more information, read the blog post.
eLife Changes Its Post-Peer Review Editorial Practice
eLife announced the following:Building on its 2021 shift to exclusively reviewing preprints, [eLife] is ending the practice of making accept/reject decisions following peer review. From January 31, 2023, eLife will instead publish every paper it reviews as a Reviewed Preprint, a new type of research output that combines the manuscript with eLife’s detailed peer reviews and a concise assessment of the significance of the findings and quality of the evidence. … In the new process, eLife editors will invite expert reviewers to carry out high-quality peer review. The reviewers will produce constructive public peer reviews highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the work. They will also work together to produce an eLife assessment that captures their view of the significance of the findings and evaluates the strength of the evidence for them in language accessible to a non-expert reader. Authors will have the option to submit a revised preprint that responds to the public reviews and private suggestions made by the reviewers. eLife will then publish a new Reviewed Preprint with updated reviews and assessment. For more information, read the news item.
OverDrive Introduces the Libby Life Blog
Annie Suhy, marketing and communications specialist at OverDrive, announced the following:If you can’t tell, we really like talking about books. So much, in fact, that we’ve recently launched a brand new blog, Libby Life. … This space is chock-full of book recommendations, the latest literary trends, monthly wrap-ups from The Professional Book Nerds, Libby updates and tips & tricks, news on book clubs, and more. We even hit the open road with The Digital Bookmobile crew as they travel the country, enlightening readers with the magic of Libby. … Your patrons will find lots to love and read over at Libby Life, and you’re welcome to join them! Head on over to Libby Life to check it out and subscribe for weekly emails. For more information, read the blog post.
The Library of Congress Gains Historical Air Travel Collection
The Library of Congress (LC) acquired a collection from the Airline Tariff Publishing Company comprising 1,588 volumes of airline tariffs, rules, and routes from the company for cargo, military, passenger, and joint passenger travel domestically, internationally, and regionally. It showcases how flights were sold, ticketed, and distributed from the 1940s through 2004, when the internet was starting to change travel.The LC notes, “Since 1965, the company has collected and distributed the world’s fare and fare-related data to the global ecosystem so travel agents, airlines, global distribution systems and sales channels can sell airline tickets to the public. Before the digital age, these fares, rules and routes were published and printed at the company and distributed around the world in large bound books.” The collection joins the LC’s Science, Technology & Business Division. For more information, read the news item.
'8 Months On: Ukraine Still Needs Our Support' by Charlie Rapple
Charlie Rapple, co-founder of Kudos, writes the following for The Scholarly Kitchen blog:We are into the 8th month of Russia’s war against Ukraine. It is estimated that the war has caused almost USD $50bn damage to housing infrastructure, $9bn damage to business infrastructure, $4bn damage to educational infrastructure, to pick just a few Statista stats. … One in three people [are] displaced; one in six have had to flee to other countries, including 2m children. It is pretty much impossible to imagine trying to keep your business going, trying to keep earning your living, in such circumstances. ‘Solidarity’ with Ukraine has come in several guises. How has the scholarly publishing sector continued to respond? … The big publishers have released various statements (joint statement in March, other statements from Elsevier, IOP Publishing, Wiley, SAGE, ACS, RSC, Bristol University Press) about stopping sales and closing offices in Russia, making content free to Ukrainians, and making humanitarian donations. For more information on what the scholarly publishing community has been doing to help Ukraine, read the blog post.
JSTOR's DDA Program Gets Integrated With ProQuest's Rialto and OASIS Solutions
JSTOR announced the following:JSTOR’s Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) program is now available through ProQuest Rialto and ProQuest OASIS, providing a new option for academic libraries to participate in JSTOR’s ebook program while managing acquisitions through their preferred workflows. … JSTOR’s Demand-Driven Acquisition program offers more than 115,000 ebooks from 300+ scholarly publishers; all titles are available in a DRM-free access model with unlimited simultaneous use. Ebook chapters are integrated with journal articles, primary sources, and images on JSTOR’s platform, making it easy for researchers to cross-search all types of content. With a generous DDA trigger of seven item requests, and tiered savings available, the program ensures a strong value for libraries. Rebecca Seger, JSTOR’s Vice President of Institutional Participation and Strategic Partnerships, said, ‘We are delighted to expand our partnership with ProQuest to include DDA. Librarians who use OASIS or Rialto now have an easy, streamlined way to manage JSTOR’s DDA program within their existing workflows, providing time-saving efficiencies.’ For more information, read the news item.
Gale Consolidates Its Business Solutions Into a Single Updated Platform
Gale migrated “its Business Insight platforms—Gale Business Insights: Essentials and Gale Business Insights: Global—to a single new and improved all-in-one platform, Gale Business: Insights. With enhanced navigation and collaboration tools, business professionals, entrepreneurs, students and researchers can spend less time searching and more time turning their findings into practical applications.”Gale Business: Insights includes Gale reference content, business sources, and full-text periodicals. Users can view daily updates, 450,000-plus company profiles, and in-depth country and industry overviews. For more information, read the press release.
Clarivate Studies Sustainable Energy Source Research and Innovation
Clarivate published “a new report, A study of energy in transition: the role of research and innovation in the world’s shift to sustainable energy sources. It finds that innovation activity in the sustainable energy space is tailing off, as research and inventive activities for respective renewable develops at different paces. This finding is based on Clarivate data normalized for overall increases in scientific journal and patent output increases globally in all subject areas.”The report finds that solar photovoltaic and wind power have had the greatest volume of research and inventive activity in the past 3 decades, but the activity is now tailing off, indicating that these sustainable energies have had their most complex technological challenges solved. In addition, oceanic power generation is seen as one of the most promising sustainable energy sources if fully harnessed, but it hasn’t been sufficiently studied yet. Mainland China has the most research and innovation output in renewable energy sources. For more information, read the press release.
APA Rolls Out Stress in America 2022 Report
The American Psychological Association (APA) released a report, “Stress in America: 2022: Concerned for the Future, Beset by Inflation,” which “tells a story of uncertainty and dissolution” and “shows a battered American psyche, facing a barrage of external stressors that are mostly out of personal control. The survey found a majority of adults are disheartened by government and political divisiveness, daunted by historic inflation levels, and dismayed by widespread violence.”The report is based on a new survey conducted by The Harris Poll on behalf of APA. In addition to the findings, it features advice and strategies from APA psychologists. “APA is committed to empowering people to find ways to take back control and to find peace and calm in the chaos,” the organization shares. For more information and specific findings, visit the webpage.
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Brandi Scardilli
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