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Weekly News Digest
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March 8, 2004 — 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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EBSCO’s NoveList Releases Book Index with Reviews
EBSCO Publishing's NoveList team, in association with Baker & Taylor, announced the release of Book Index with Reviews (BIR). According to the announcement, this Web resource gives library staff a powerful new tool to engage their most important users: book readers.With BIR, readers and librarians will experience an intuitive, user-friendly interface that delivers the same flexible searching power as the EBSCOhost search engine. This searching power allows users to effectively mine the content of more than 800,000 fully searchable, full-text reviews, as well as information on nearly 4 million book titles, powered by The Title Source from Baker & Taylor. Using a four-star system, based on input from thousands of libraries and retail outlets, Book Index with Reviews provides users with the means to distinguish popular, high-demand titles. According to the announcement, readers will no longer be stymied by a long list of books with no way to determine which ones they really want. Source: EBSCO Publishing
Emerald Adopts COUNTER Code of Practice
Emerald has announced its adoption of the COUNTER Code of Practice in reporting usage data. As the use of online information resources has grown exponentially in recent years, producers and purchasers of information have been seeking a more consistent measurement of the use of these resources."We are one of the first publishers to gain COUNTER status, so it is a tremendous achievement," said Paul Evans, head of electronic marketing and support services at Emerald. "We see it as our mission to increase the quality of our service offering. Sharing usage statistics with librarians can help them make decisions about their stock and accurately target the marketing of their library resources to key user groups."
Launched in 2002, COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) is an international initiative that governs the recording and exchange of online usage data. It is designed to serve the needs of both librarians and publishers/aggregators by providing credible and consistent measurement standards. According to the announcement, Emerald customers will be able to make better-informed purchasing decisions, while Emerald and its intermediaries will be able to provide data to customers in a format they want and learn more about genuine usage patterns. Emerald recently released its 2003 usage statistics, showing more than 7 million article downloads from its database, Emerald Fulltext. This number reflects an 11-percent increase over 2002 for the same 12-month period. Source: Emerald
NHS England Purchases Database from BioMed Central
BioMed Central announced that it has signed a subscription agreement with National Health Service (NHS) England for images.MD, the online encyclopedia of medical images. NHS England's subscription, which starts next month, provides access to the entire content of images.MD for all 1.2 million NHS staff members.Scott Gibbens, project manager of the NHS Core Content Group, said: "Our decision to subscribe to images.MD for the whole of NHS England was driven by high demand from users. This product is great value for money and meets our need for a comprehensive, high-quality images database for teaching and diagnosis. As a company, BioMed Central continues to provide new, invaluable, and innovative resources along with excellent service." NHS signed up for BioMed Central membership for the whole of England in April 2003, becoming the first of a growing number of national organizations to become members. images.MD compiles more than 50,000 high-quality images spanning all of internal medicine, all derived from Current Medicine's series of illustrated atlases. Each image is accompanied by detailed and informative text written by more than 2,000 contributing experts. Source: BioMed Central
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Brandi Scardilli
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