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Weekly News Digest
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September 2, 2003 — 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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ebrary Launches Library Center
ebrary has launched a new Library Center to provide librarians and students with research materials, industry news, and information related to librarianship and related fields. A freely-available collection of library science material lets users search and browse through more than 30 full-text books on topics such as digital library development, general collection development, and the history of libraries and librarianship, as well as illustrated guides from the Library of Congress.The collection also includes back issues of Advanced Technology Libraries, an industry newsletter. In addition, libraries, library associations, media publications, or other groups, are welcome to make their publications or newsletters available for full interactive viewing at ebrary's Library Center. ebrary offers libraries a set of online database collections, which combine more than 30,000 authoritative books and other documents from over 150 academic, trade, and professional publishers. This includes Aggregated Collections, which span the range of academic and general subject areas, and Publisher Collections, which feature specialized content from individual academic and professional publishers. The company also offers hundreds of individual eBooks, which are sold separately from its database collections. Source: ebrary
Elsevier and ACS Agree to Link
Elsevier and two divisions of the American Chemical Society—Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) and Publications—announced that they have agreed to provide linking between their services by the end of 2003. Under the agreement:- Users of Elsevier products and services (such as ScienceDirect, MDL databases, and ChemWeb) will be able to link directly to ACS scientific journals
- Users of CAS products and services (SciFinder, STN, and others) will be able to link, via ChemPort, directly to Elsevier scientific journals.
- Elsevier journals will join ChemPort Reference Linking, enabling users of Elsevier journals access to ACS scientific journals and CAS database records. (Available in 2004)
CAS has indexed and summarized chemistry-related articles from more than 40,000 scientific journals and the Publications Division offers 31 scientific journals to scientists worldwide. Elsevier publishes more than 1,800 journals and provides access to its secondary databases via ScienceDirect, and its Web communities, such as ChemWeb. Source: Elsevier
ALA and Others Request Public Input on Homeland Security Procedures
On Aug. 26, 2003, 75 organizations representing librarians, journalists, scientists, environmental groups, privacy advocates, and others, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge calling on the Department of Homeland Security to allow public input on procedures for safeguarding and sharing information between firefighters, police officers, public health researchers, and federal, state, and local governments. The letter, which is posted on the American Library Association (ALA) site, requests that the department provide the public with a period of sufficient length (i.e., 90 days) to review and comment upon a draft version of the procedures before they are finalized.The letter expresses concern that the procedures may cut a broad swath of information out of the public domain—including such items as maps of environmental contamination—that is not classified but which may be perceived as "helpful to a terrorist or potentially helpful in responding to or preventing an unknown future attack." The signatories are also concerned that the procedures would subject millions of persons inside and outside of government to non-disclosure agreements and impose criminal penalties for disclosing information improperly. Besides ALA, some other organizations signing the letter include: American Association of Law Libraries, Association of Research Libraries, Society of Professional Journalists, Common Cause, AFL-CIO, OMB Watch, Federation of American Scientists, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Source: American Library Association
Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor
Brandi Scardilli
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