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Weekly News Digest

April 8, 2025 — 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.

OCLC Makes CloudLibrary Content Discoverable via WorldCat

“CloudLibrary libraries that maintain an OCLC cataloging subscription can register their CloudLibrary collection in WorldCat. Once registered, libraries that subscribe to FirstSearch or WorldCat Visibility can enable the collection to be viewed across the web through a wide variety of strategic partnerships with search engines and other popular websites,” OCLC notes.

For more information, read the press release.

Updates on the Trump Administration, Free Speech, and Libraries

In addition, ALA created an FAQ page about the executive order targeting IMLS that answers questions such as, Is IMLS being eliminated? What does this mean for libraries? How can the executive order be stopped or limited?

As ALA continues to celebrate National Library Week, it announced “51 recipients of a new grant program serving rural and small libraries across the country” from Penguin Random House and United for Libraries. “Grant funds will assist Friends of Library groups, or nonprofit groups that support and fundraise for libraries in their communities, with priority projects, including summer reading programs for youth, outreach to seniors, bookmobile improvements, technology upgrades, Friends group development, and more. In addition to the cash grants awarded, 20 in-kind book donation grants of $500 are being awarded to 20 libraries to purchase Penguin Random House titles.”

PEN America has been issuing statements and putting out press releases nearly every day in April so far:

• PEN America, PEN Canada, and PEN Québec Jointly Call for Books and Literature to Flow Freely Across the Shared Border
• New Directive Tries to Coerce K-12 Public Schools to Adhere to Trump Administration Ideology on DEI With Threat to Withhold Funding
• PEN America on 381 Banned Books at the U.S. Naval Academy: “Books Are Not the Enemy; Ignorance Is the Enemy.”
• PEN America and Maryland ACLU Argue in Legal Filing That U.S. Education Department Policies Will Turbocharge Book Bans and Expand Censorship
• Journalists Can’t Be Subject to the Whim of the White House

On April 8, Reuters reported, “Exclusive: Musk’s DOGE Using AI to Snoop on U.S. Federal Workers, Sources Say.” The authors note, “While much of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency remains shrouded in secrecy, the surveillance would mark an extraordinary use of technology to identify expressions of perceived disloyalty in a workforce already upended by widespread firings and severe cost cutting.”

For National Library Week, ALA Assesses the State of American Libraries

The top 10 most-challenged books include All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M. Johnson, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and Tricks by Ellen Hopkins. Visit the report page to learn more: ala.org/news/state-americas-libraries-report-2025.

As for media coverage of the attacks on libraries and IMLS, The Guardian and WIRED both chimed in. Rainesford Stauffer wrote “Being a Librarian Was Already Hard. Then Came the Trump Administration” for The Guardian on April 7. Paresh Dave and Louise Matsakis wrote “The DOGE Axe Comes for Libraries and Museums” for WIRED on April 1.

EASE and ScienceOpen Collaborate to Enhance Journal Visibility and Engagement

ScienceOpen, a leading discovery platform for scholarly research, continues its exciting collaboration with the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) to enhance discoverability and engagement. This initiative includes a new dedicated conference collection showcasing contributions from the last conference in 2023 and the upcoming 18th EASE General Assembly and Conference, including also outputs for their scientific poster competition, all designed to enhance the visibility of EASE publications and promote scholarly communication.

Join Us in Oslo for the 18th EASE Conference

This year’s EASE Conference, themed ‘Editing in the Age of Misinformation,’ will be held at the Legenes Hus Conference Centre in Oslo. Featuring over 30 international speakers and 12 expert sessions, highlights include:

• Pre-conference workshops (May 13)
• Special ISMTE workshop (May 14)
• Poster exhibitions and networking events
• A grand Conference Dinner and city tour, coinciding with Norway’s National Day on May 17

This is a must-attend event for editors, publishers, and researchers dedicated to improving scholarly publishing in the digital age.

EASE 18th General Assembly and Scientific Poster Competition

The 18th EASE General Assembly and Conference, taking place May 14–16, 2025, in Oslo, will highlight key topics in scientific communication, including the Scientific Poster Exhibition and Competition. Researchers and professionals are invited to submit posters in the following categories:

• Scientific Posters—Present key research findings.
• Scholarly Publishing Process & Innovation—Explore editorial workflows, methodologies, and best practices.
• Community Engagement & Collaboration—Showcase initiatives from editorial groups and special interest organizations.

Key Deadlines:

• April 10: Abstract submission closes
• April 17: Final poster submissions due
• May 1: Online exhibition launch
• May 16: Winners announced and presented at the conference

Winning posters will receive recognition, with a special award for the best Norwegian submission.

New ESE Journal and EASE Conference Collection on ScienceOpen

ScienceOpen is pleased to highlight two major publishing initiatives:

• European Science Editing (ESE) Journal—Now fully indexed on ScienceOpen, European Science Editing continues to advance editorial excellence in scholarly publishing.
• EASE Conference Collection—Featuring submissions from the 17th and 18th EASE Conferences, this collection ensures broad accessibility and fosters dynamic scholarly discussions.

Celebrating the Success of the ScienceOpen Webinar

On March 27, 2025, ScienceOpen hosted a successful webinar titled Expanding Your Journal’s Reach, led by Stephanie Dawson, CEO of ScienceOpen. The session provided valuable insights into how publishers and editors can utilize ScienceOpen’s advanced discovery tools to increase readership, boost citations, and enhance journal engagement. The webinar highlighted how EASE leverages ScienceOpen to enhance the visibility of European Science Editing and the EASE General Assembly and Conference Series, while also introducing attendees to interactive tools such as one-click sharing, recommendations, real-time metrics, lay summaries, and curated collections.

Keywords: ScienceOpen, European Association of Science Editors, scholarly publishing, open-access, journal discoverability, academic conference, scientific posters, editorial excellence, research visibility

About ScienceOpen:

ScienceOpen provides an interactive discovery platform offering promotional services and publishing solutions for academic publishers and researchers. Founded in 2013 in Berlin and Boston by Alexander Grossmann and Tibor Tscheke, ScienceOpen continues to drive innovation in open-access publishing.

Contact: Stephanie Dawson, CEO

Email: Stephanie.Dawson@ScienceOpen.com

About EASE:

The European Association of Science Editors (EASE) is dedicated to supporting editors and publishers in the scholarly community through training, networking, and resources that enhance the quality and integrity of scientific publishing.

Contact: EASE Secretary Email: secretary@ease.org.uk

What’s New With Cengage Group

On April 2, the company announced that “Gale Digital Scholar Lab (the Lab) [is getting] seven major tool updates that expand text and data mining (TDM) research possibilities for students, faculty and librarians. Developed based on feedback from Lab users, these updates give researchers the ability to personalize their approach to TDM with more customization, expanding the possibilities of research and creating new ways of exploring primary sources.”

On April 3, Cengage Group rolled out “updated data from its ‘AI in Education’ research series, which regularly evaluates AI’s impact on education.” It finds, “Nearly half of [higher education] instructors (45%) and almost three in five K12 teachers (55%) have positive perceptions about GenAI, despite concerns and perceived risks in its adoption.” However, the data shows differences in adoption rates: “Nearly 2 in 3 K12 teachers (63%; +12% year-over-year) say they (or their school district) have incorporated GenAI technology into their teaching process compared to 49% (+5% YoY) of HED instructors.”

On April 7, Cengage, the higher education business of Cengage Group, shared that “new AI-powered insights will be integrated into its faculty dashboard, beginning fall 2025. This new functionality, built on anonymized, real-time interactions from the Cengage Student Assistant, will provide faculty with personalized, actionable insights to help them support students, track learning patterns and enhance classroom engagement.”

On April 8, Cengage expanded the availability of its generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) tool, Student Assistant, which will be accessible by more than 1 million students this fall. “Embedded into Cengage’s online learning platform, MindTap, Student Assistant guides students through the learning process, providing access to relevant resources right when they need them with tailored, just-in-time feedback, and the ability to connect with key concepts in new ways.”

EqualyzAI Launches Groundbreaking Technology to Bridge Global AI Divide

LAGOS, Nigeria – April 8, 2025 – EqualyzAI, a pioneering African-centric AI startup, today unveiled its suite of revolutionary AI solutions designed to democratize AI innovations for Africa, ensuring AI can think and make decisions in African languages. The company’s mission tackles one of technology’s most significant equity gaps: ensuring AI can understand, process, and make decisions in African languages and contexts. EqualyzAI’s breakthrough technology addresses the critical exclusion of over 1.5 billion people from meaningful AI engagement.

While major AI platforms struggle with non-Western languages and cultural contexts, equalyzAI has developed the world’s first AI models built from the ground up with African linguistic patterns and cultural nuances at their core. One of its pioneering products, uLearn, an agentic AI product for education, was recently showcased as a great example of the use of Meta’s large language model (Llama2) to build high-impact solutions as endorsed here.

Founded by awardwinning experts, Dr. Olubayo Adekanmbi and Dr. Ife Adebara, EqualyzAI is committed to ensuring African languages, cultures, and contexts are central to the global AI evolution.

“Our mission goes beyond technology—it’s about fundamental digital inclusion,” said Dr. Olubayo Adekanmbi, EqualyzAI co-founder and a Gates Foundation Global Grand Challenge winner. “When today’s AI systems can’t understand your language or context, you’re essentially locked out of the AI revolution. EqualyzAI ensures African languages, cultures, and contexts are central to global AI evolution.”

At the heart of EqualyzAI’s hyperlocal Agentic AI possibilities approach is how it builds foundational datasets that its localized AI learns from. It has mastered a people-first, linguistics-guided, and data-owner-informed practice through its Pan-African data collection network. The startup has realized that many African-centric AI models today rely on scraped online data, religious texts, radio broadcasts, and generic datasets, which fail to capture undocumented conversational styles, dialectal variations, and accent patterns. 

EqualyzAI has developed an inclusive data collection, validation, and enrichment ecosystem for a sustainable data pipeline through a crowd-validated approach, where it engages and incentivizes native speakers across communities to generate and validate audio by dialect; read and record words in local dialects; review and improve translation accuracy; translate complex code-mixed sentences; label images to enhance multimodal AI capabilities; and others. 

The company’s innovations come at a pivotal moment when AI accessibility directly impacts economic opportunity, educational advancement, and healthcare outcomes. EqualyzAI’s solutions enable:

• Businesses to engage with African consumers in their native languages
• Educational institutions to create AI-powered learning materials in local dialects
• Healthcare providers to improve medical communication across language barriers
• Government agencies to analyze citizen feedback in multiple languages
• Financial services to deliver inclusive banking solutions to underserved populations

“What sets our technology apart is that our Small Language Models consistently outperform much larger global models when it comes to African languages,” explained Dr. Adebara, EqualyzAI co-founder and a UNESCO award recipient for her pioneering work in computational linguistics. “For example, our AfroSLM 1.0 beats Google Translate and other popular LLMs in contextual translation of finance-related conversations in Nigerian languages.”

At the event, EqualyzAI demonstrated its cutting-edge AI solutions designed to address critical challenges in Africa while promoting linguistic diversity. Key innovations include:

Equalyz Crowd: A platform designed to collect hyperlocal datasets needed to build AI solutions that can be trained to understand and speak many African languages, ensuring inclusivity and representation.

AfroSLM 1.0: A Small Language Model (SLM) optimized to improve financial literacy in Yoruba and Hausa, empowering users with accessible financial education in their native languages.

uLearn: an interactive learning tool helping teachers generate lesson plans, notes, and quizzes in both English and local languages, transforming education across Africa.

AgentZero: our street-smart customer service chatbot understands emerging slang and informal expressions in delivering relevant and practical customer service.

LLMiner, a tool that helps organizations and governments extract actionable insights from years of archived audio, video, or scanned documents. By structuring these datasets into “query-able” tabular data, LLMiner enables seamless, conversational-styled data interaction—just like chatting with a friend on WhatsApp!

EqualyzAI’s approach represents a significant shift from current AI development methodologies, which have largely overlooked the linguistic diversity of Africa’s 2,000+ languages. By building models from the ground up with African languages in mind, equalyzAI is creating a more inclusive and equitable AI landscape.

Additionally, EqualyzAI shared its recent white paper, titled “How Small Language Models (SLMs) Are Revolutionizing Localized AI Innovations for Social Good in Africa.” The paper explores the transformative potential of SLMs in addressing Africa’s unique challenges and advancing AI accessibility.

About EqualyzAI

EqualyzAI is an African-centric AI startup dedicated to building AI solutions that solve real-world problems in emerging markets. Founded by Dr. Olubayo Adekanmbi and Dr. Ife Adebara, EqualyzAI is committed to ensuring African languages, cultures, and contexts are central to the global AI evolution. The company specializes in developing hyperlocal multimodal datasets in collaboration with native language speakers to create truly inclusive agentic AI innovations. For more information, visit equalyz.ai.

Media Contact:

Stacia Kirby, U.S.-1- 206-478-5841

stacia@kirbycomm.com

EBSCO Updates DynaMedex, Unveils Business Searching Interface, and Adds Digital Magazines

On April 1, EBSCO Clinical Decisions announced the availability of Dyna AI for individual subscribers of DynaMedex. It shares, “Leveraging generative artificial intelligence, Dyna AI delivers evidence-based information to clinicians at the point of care with unprecedented speed and accuracy, now accessible without an institutional subscription.  Available on any device, Dyna AI ensures clinicians receive reliable and trusted answers whenever and wherever they need them. Initially launched in July 2024, the mobile capability was introduced in October 2024.”

On April 2, EBSCO Information Services introduced Business Searching Interface, which “offers a unique search experience with enhanced navigation, new features and an aesthetic appearance, leading researchers to better insights and decision-making.” It is designed to help business students, faculty, and researchers with their search experience; they can “explore topics with access to leading business journals across various fields and discover featured content including executive interviews, ahead-of-print articles, business news and industry surveys.” Additionally, the interface “facilitates the examination of individual companies, allowing researchers to browse case studies, country reports, industry reports and SWOT analyses.”

On April 3, EBSCO Information Services expanded its digital magazine archive with three new databases: Southern Living Magazine Archive (450 issues exploring Southern culture, traditions, and travel destinations), Travel + Leisure Magazine Archive (451 issues of travel news, practical tips, and comprehensive guides to destinations around the world), and Food & Wine Magazine Archive (360-plus issues covering gourmet dining experiences from around the world, food and drink culture, recipes, and culinary expertise). Each is available for one-time purchase so libraries can maintain long-term access to the archive.

Webrecorder Archives 'Mirrors' of U.S. Government Websites

Webrecorder says an example is the archive of the USAID website at usaid.govarchive.us. “We’ve reserved the *.govarchive.us domain and subdomains to be able to dynamically add more archives of US Government sites from our collections to this system,” Webrecorder continues. Currently available are cdc.govarchive.us, fema.govarchive.us, epa.govarchive.us, and climate.govarchive.us.

For more information, read the blog post.

Springer Nature Introduces an AI-Based Research Integrity Tool

“The irrelevant reference checker tool has undergone multiple rounds of testing and validation to ensure it provides a precise and reliable assessment of references across academic disciplines, and training and development of the tool will be ongoing.  Human oversight will always remain in place, in line with Springer Nature’s AI Principles,” the company notes.

“As the use of AI to generate fake research papers becomes more effective, reference checking provides a key opportunity to identify these unethical efforts. The addition of this tool to our existing checks will help us to catch many unethical submissions that would otherwise progress to take up editors’ and peer reviewers’ time,” says Chris Graf, director of research integrity at Springer Nature.

For more information, read the press release.

International Labour Organization Publication Moves to OA and Joins Open Library of Humanities

“The decision to partner with OLH, an open-access publisher, aligns with the ILR’s mission to make research on labour standards, institutions and the world of work more accessible and engaging for a global audience. It will also strengthen the ILR’s role as an essential resource for researchers, policymakers and practitioners, enabling them to engage more easily with the latest developments in the field of work and employment,” the International Labour Organization states.

For more information, read the news item.