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Weekly News Digest
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August 12, 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.
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Zendy Introduces an App for On-the-Go Research
The Zendy digital library has launched the Zendy app for iOS and Android devices. “With the power of ZAIA, your AI research assistant, within Zendy App, you can now carry 40+ million scholarly articles wherever you go,” the blog post shares. “At Zendy, we’re on a mission to make academic content accessible, discoverable, and now mobile. The Zendy App takes that mission a step further, offering a seamless mobile experience that gives students, researchers, academics, and professionals the freedom to access powerful AI tools directly from a mobile phone.”For more information, read the blog post.
AI Lawsuit Updates
Ashley Belanger writes the following in “AI Industry Horrified to Face Largest Copyright Class Action Ever Certified” for Ars Technica:AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to ‘financially ruin’ the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement. … Also backing Anthropic’s appeal, advocates representing authors—including Authors Alliance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, and Public Knowledge—pointed out that the Google Books case showed that proving ownership is anything but straightforward. Amalia Huot-Marchand writes the following in “Meta Settles With Conservative Activist Over AI Chatbot Lawsuit” for The Hill: Meta Platforms settled a defamation lawsuit with Robby Starbuck, who claimed that Meta’s artificial intelligence (AI) falsely accused him of participating in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. There is no publicly available information on the details of the settlement except that Robby Starbuck, a conservative activist opposed to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, will work with Meta to remove ‘ideological and political bias’ from the company’s AI. Karin Larsen writes the following in “B.C. Author Leads ‘David Against Goliath’ Lawsuits Alleging Big Tech Used Writers’ Works to Train AI” for CBC News: A best-selling Vancouver author has launched a class-action lawsuit against Nvidia, claiming the multi-trillion dollar tech company illegally used his and other Canadian writers’ works to train artificial intelligence large language models (LLM). … Besides Nvidia, MacKinnon is the representative plaintiff in three similar class actions filed in B.C. Supreme Court that individually name Meta/Facebook, Anthropic and Databricks Inc. as defendants. All four class actions will require court certification to move forward.
LexisNexis Legal & Professional Expands Its AI-Powered Solution
LexisNexis Legal & Professional introduced a U.S. customer preview of Protégé General AI, which expands “the personalized agentic AI capabilities of Protégé for secure access to general-purpose AI models from multiple providers within the Lexis+ AI workflow solution.” It’s “a unique, privacy-encrypted solution that eliminates the need to switch between tools. With a simple toggle, customers can expand their use cases and conduct a wider range of tasks including Advanced Reasoning and Deep Research for high-complexity legal issues or simple topic exploration, everyday tasks, brainstorming, and conversational responses to legal questions.”For more information, read the press release.
Reddit Takes a Stand Against AI
Jay Peters writes the following in “Reddit Will Block the Internet Archive” for The Verge:Reddit says that it has caught AI companies scraping its data from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, so it’s going to start blocking the Internet Archive from indexing the vast majority of Reddit. The Wayback Machine will no longer be able to crawl post detail pages, comments, or profiles; instead, it will only be able to index the Reddit.com homepage, which effectively means Internet Archive will only be able to archive insights into which news headlines and posts were most popular on a given day. For more information, read the article.
New Executive Order Aims to Reshape Federal Grant Processes
The Associated Press (AP) article, “Trump Executive Order Gives Politicians Control Over All Federal Grants, Alarming Researchers,” reports the following:An executive order signed by President Donald Trump [on Aug. 7] aims to give political appointees power over the billions of dollars in grants awarded by federal agencies. Scientists say it threatens to undermine the process that has helped make the U.S. the world leader in research and development. The order requires all federal agencies, including FEMA, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, to appoint officials responsible for reviewing federal funding opportunities and grants, so that they ‘are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.’ Reuters elaborates as follows in “Trump Signs Executive Order Targeting Spending on Grants”: The order criticized DEI programs, assistance for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, and transgender initiatives. It said federal grants shall not be used to fund ‘any other initiatives that compromise public safety or promote anti-American values.’ … Rights advocates have raised concerns about Trump’s federal funding threats, saying they harm free speech and academic freedom and amount to political interference that can undo decades of progress. The Hill states in “Trump Signs Order Giving Political Appointees Oversight of Federal Grants,” “The text of the order cites federal grants that have been given to universities that are used to cover ‘facilities and administrative costs.’ It also points to a federal grant that supported gain-of-function research, which came under scrutiny amid the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.” POLITICO notes in “Trump Executive Order Requires Sweeping Review of Federal Regulations,” “It represents an extension of the Trump administration’s work during the first term to dismantle regulations, including his 2017 executive order implementing a ‘two-for-one’ rule requiring two existing regulations to be removed for every new one created. This included significant rollback of environmental, financial and labor regulations.” Stephen Abram shared a post on his blog, Stephen’s Lighthouse, titled “New Executive Order on Federal Grants: What Is It, What to Expect and How to Respond.” It says in part, “It’s not just a procedural update. It marks a structural transformation of how federal discretionary grants are designed, reviewed, distributed, and even rescinded. The order claims to target inefficiency and waste. In practice, it codifies political control over public funding, narrows eligibility based on ideology, and introduces new restrictions on how grants are managed, evaluated, and sustained.”
NISO Releases Findings From a Survey on AI's Impact on Content Discovery
The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) published “Generative Artificial Intelligence and the NISO Open Discovery Initiative,” which is “a report on the 2024 AI in web-scale library discovery services survey undertaken by the NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Standing Committee.”NISO shares, “To better understand the specific areas of interest and concern among participants in the discovery ecosystem, the ODI conducted a survey of constituents in September–October 2024, following several months of planning. The findings from that survey, detailing the hopes and fears of libraries and content providers regarding the impact of AI on content discovery, are detailed in the report. The report also covers the specific areas of work that the ODI will be taking on in response over the months to come.” For more information, read the press release.
LinkedIn Launches a Mini Sudoku Game
LinkedIn rolled out a new game: Mini Sudoku. It’s “the latest addition to our lineup of thinking-oriented games,” LinkedIn notes. “Nikoli—the small Japanese puzzle magazine that handcrafted sudoku 41 years ago—worked alongside Thomas Snyder, 3x World Sudoku Champion, to bring this new, quickplay version to life—giving long-overdue recognition to the origins of this iconic puzzle while creating new moments for members to take a break and connect with their network.”For more information, read the news item.
Wiley Reaches 1,000 Scholarly Journals on Its Research Exchange Platform
Wiley announced a milestone: “1,000 scholarly journals have successfully transitioned to its Research Exchange platform, representing more than 50% of the company’s journal portfolio.” Research Exchange integrates submission, AI-powered screening, and peer review workflows into a single system.“Reaching 1,000 journals on Research Exchange represents a pivotal moment in our ongoing commitment to evolve with the research community and demonstrates how we’re innovating with integrity and efficiency at the forefront,” says Liz Ferguson, Wiley’s SVP of research publishing. “Our modern and intuitive platform aims to significantly alleviate the administrative burden of publishing for researchers so they can focus on what they do best—delivering life-changing findings that move our world forward.” For more information, read the press release.
Google Provides College Students With Access to AI Tools
Google announced the following:Millions of college students around the world are getting ready to start classes. To help make the school year even better, we're making our most advanced AI tools available to them for free, including our new Guided Learning mode. We’re also providing $1 billion to support AI education and job training programs and research in the U.S. This includes making our AI and career training free for every college student in America through our AI for Education Accelerator—over 100 colleges and universities have already signed up. For more information, read the article.
The Big Ten Open Books Project Unveils Indigenous North Americans Collection
The Big Ten Academic Alliance expanded its Big Ten Open Books project with a second 100-book collection, this one centered on Indigenous North Americans. The organization notes, “The high-quality scholarly works included in the collection have all been previously published in print by the partnering university presses and are now being made openly available in digital form to read and reuse at no cost to the reader or author.”The collection covers “the history, culture, religion, and resilience of Indigenous populations from the 15th century to present day. Events of Indigenous diplomacy, evolution, education, and contributions to North American history are highlighted in this collection.” The first collection was Gender and Sexuality Studies, launched in 2023. More collections are planned for 2025–2026 on the topics of African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans; health disparities and disability culture; and human environmental impact. For more information, read the news item.
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Brandi Scardilli
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