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Weekly News Digest

February 23, 2023 — 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.

NISO Issues New Recommended Practice on Video and Audio Metadata

NISO (National Information Standards Organization) published a new Recommended Practice, Video and Audio Metadata Guidelines.

As video and audio assets become more popular and in widespread use across scholarly and professional communities globally, various “parties in the ecosystem often employ different and potentially incompatible metadata models, causing challenges for collaboration and interoperability, and impeding the dissemination, discoverability, and indexability of video and audio content.” So, NISO issued this Recommended Practice to “provid[e] a vocabulary that enables connectivity between existing standards covering key metadata elements: administrative (e.g., dates, versions, and identifiers); semantic (e.g., subject classifications and keywords); technical (e.g., media type, encoding, and bitrate); rights (e.g., rights owner, licensor, and embargo information); and accessibility (e.g., accessibility features and access).”

For more information, read the press release.

Kyndi Clarity Debuts as a Natural Language-Based Support Solution

Kyndi rolled out Kyndi Clarity, a natural language-enabled, self-service customer support solution. Customers can use it to find accurate and trustworthy information from unstructured, text-based data in just one click, meaning they don’t have to access helplines or call support teams. It is built on top of Kyndi’s Platform for Natural Language Enablement and is designed to help companies improve their first contact resolution (FCR) rate, drive customer support efficiency, and improve customer and agent experiences.

Kyndi notes, “With fewer tickets to process, support professionals can focus on more complex issues and resolve them more effectively and efficiently. New agents can also leverage Kyndi Clarity to find relevant and correct information about important company policies and multiple business offerings quickly, accelerating their onboarding.”

For more information, read the press release.  

Mellon Foundation Provides Funding for Projects Exploring Incarceration in the U.S.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is providing $125 million for a multiyear grantmaking initiative called Imagining Freedom, which will support arts and humanities organizations that work with those whose lives have been impacted by the U.S. criminal legal system. It is one of the foundation’s core Presidential Initiatives.

“As artists, writers, and scholars working inside and outside of prison have long known, the arts and humanities uniquely and powerfully counter some of the most enduring, far-reaching, and least seen impacts of mass incarceration in our country and on its individuals and communities,” says Mellon Foundation president Elizabeth Alexander. “Through Imagining Freedom, we are supporting artistic, cultural, and humanistic work that centers the voices and knowledge of people directly affected by the carceral system—recognizing their full humanity, deepening our shared understanding of the system and its effects, catalyzing us to address the damage it causes, and envisioning and enacting just responses to harm. We cannot understand who we are as a country if we don’t listen to all of the voices that make up our interdependent communities.” 

So far, grantees have included Marking Time, FICGN (Formerly Incarcerated College Graduates Network), Freedom Reads, Interrupting Criminalization, and Million Dollar Hoods.

For more information, read the press release.

OpenAI Shares Road Map for ChatGPT Output

OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, posted on its blog that it aims to clarify “how ChatGPT’s behavior is shaped and our plans for improving that behavior, allowing more user customization, and getting more public input into our decision-making in these areas.”

The blog post states that since ChatGPT launched, “users have shared outputs that they consider politically biased, offensive, or otherwise objectionable. In many cases, we think that the concerns raised have been valid and have uncovered real limitations of our systems which we want to address. We’ve also seen a few misconceptions about how our systems and policies work together to shape the outputs you get from ChatGPT.”

For more information, read the blog post.

Springshare Updates LibAnswers Chatbot

Springshare is introducing new functionality for the LibAnswers Chatbot that is set to launch with general availability worldwide by the end of February. Springshare states, “LibAnswers Chatbot can serve as the first point of contact for chat patrons, guiding them through search options, assisting with finding common FAQs and general library information, and passing them off to live chat operators whenever needed. Chatbot functionality combined with 24/7/365 Chat Cooperative Coverage gives patrons an option for self-service while providing on-demand live help whenever they need it—at any time of day or night.”

It’s not an AI-based tool, so librarians have full control of the user experience. They can use the chatbot’s analytics to assess interactions and look for areas of improvement. In addition, the chatbot integrates with other Springshare tools, such as LibCal and LibWizard.

For more information, read the press release.



Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor Brandi Scardilli
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