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Weekly News Digest
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April 30, 2026 — 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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Clarivate Rolls Out the Nexus Connect Gateway Between AI Agents and Scholarly Resources
Clarivate is launching the Nexus Connect early-access program, which “provides a single, university-branded connector inside AI chat agents, giving students and researchers seamless access to scholarly resources and services. … It brings together Clarivate content and services, library resources, and services from other academic vendors into a single institutional presence. Nexus Connect joins Clarivate Nexus Extend, a browser-based academic assistant, as part of Clarivate’s growing suite of solutions designed to meet AI users where they are.”Nexus Connect’s core capabilities include the following: - Entitlement-based access: Users can discover the resources their library has licensed
- Institutional identity: The library stays visible and central, under the university’s brand
- Configurable scope: Libraries control which services are exposed and how content sources are prioritized
- Extensible architecture: Institutions can start with one service and expand over time
- Enterprise-grade security and privacy: Built to meet security and privacy standards
For more information, read the press release.
Celebrating Press Freedom Week and Preservation Week
Hard on the heels of National Library Week comes Press Freedom Week from April 27 to May 1. The Associated Press is hosting series of online discussions, including Why Press Freedom Matters (April 27), Accountability Journalism in Action: Investigating a Multibillion-Dollar Empire (April 28), When the News Is Too Much (April 29), On the Scene: What It Takes to Secure Access to the Biggest Stories (April 30), and Just the Facts: The Evolution of Covering U.S. Politics (May 1). Register for one or all sessions at apnews.com/press-freedom-week-2026.This is also Preservation Week (April 26–May 2). Librarians and archivists who are involved in community-based preservation initiatives—helping patrons preserve digital memories, build archives, and contribute to community histories—will want to register for a series of free webinars this week at preservationweek.org/free-webinars. The Library of Congress is hosting five webinars highlighting its efforts to preserve microfilm collections, offsite collections, rolled wall maps, magnetic tape recordings, and audiovisuals.
JSTOR Moves Path to Open Out of the Pilot Phase and Into an Ongoing Program
JSTOR is continuing its Path to Open OA program after the conclusion of its 3-year pilot phase. “Launched in October 2023 to test whether a collaborative model could sustainably scale open access for humanities and social sciences monographs, Path to Open includes nearly 300 participating libraries, over 50 university presses and scholarly publishers, and a corpus of titles that will reach 1,000 works by the end of 2026,” JSTOR notes. “As Path to Open enters its next phase, JSTOR will continue to expand participation and grow the pipeline of titles, while evolving the model as needed in collaboration with libraries and publishers to support a sustainable and inclusive future for open access monograph publishing.”For more information, read the news item.
ByWater Solutions Kicks Off the 2026 Koha Community Challenge
ByWater Solutions shared the following:ByWater Solutions has partnered with koha-US for another Community Challenge! This is a great way for the open source community to come together, move, and raise money for a good cause! Walk, Jog, Run, Swim, Bike, Hike, Yoga, Dance—whatever your activity of choice is—come join us for this community challenge! Be part of the open-source community sharing your daily activities, photos, and words of wisdom! The challenge will go from May 1–May 31. For more information and signup instructions, read the news item.
Lucidea on AI Literacy
Lauren Hays writes the following in “Why Digital Literacy Is a Prerequisite for AI Literacy” for Lucidea’s Think Clearly blog:Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released a framework for AI literacy. The framework includes five foundational content areas: understand AI principles, explore AI use cases, direct AI effectively, evaluate AI outputs, and use AI responsibly. There is a lot that I could write about AI literacy, but what I want to highlight in this post are the prerequisite skills listed in the framework, with a particular focus on digital literacy. For more information, read the blog post.
WIPO Marks World IP Day Under the Theme IP and Sports: Ready, Set, Innovate
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) celebrated World Intellectual Property (IP) Day on April 26 with the release of the “WIPO Technology SPARK” report, which shows that “innovation and IP use in the sports industry is booming. Between 2016 and 2025, more than 65,700 sports-related inventions were recorded, alongside over 1.25 million trademarks and more than 70,000 designs.” More insights include the following:- In the decade through 2025, sports-related patents increased by 7.6% annually, compared to 4.4% growth for all patent filings. Sports trademark registrations grew by 6.1%, nearly double the overall rate, while designs rose by 8.3%, also far above the global average.
- Asia is the top source of patents and designs, representing 63% and 76% of filings respectively, followed by North America (22%) while Europe stands out in trademark activity (43%), reflecting the dense landscape of sports brands and clubs in Europe.
- While golf, swimming and racket sports stand out as the most patent-intensive disciplines, driven by continuous improvements in equipment, materials and performance technologies, gym and fitness technologies lead in design filings, highlighting the importance of product design and user experience in consumer-facing markets.
- The top sports-related trademark owners illustrate the cross-industry commercial pull of sports, with top trademark owners including Disney, Apple and Amazon, alongside recognized sports brands such as NBA, WWE and Decathlon.
For more information, read the press release.
The Company of Biologists Adds Its Journals to ResearchGate
ResearchGate partnered with The Company of Biologists to bring the publisher’s full portfolio of peer-reviewed journals into ResearchGate’s Journal Home platform.“The partnership also includes the addition of the powerful Open Access Agreement Upgrade (OAAU) from launch,” the press release shares. “Open access is central to this partnership. With the full portfolio launched through Journal Home, the ability to discover and access The Company of Biologists’ journals will be increased. Additionally, through the OAAU, they will be able to also continuously reach researchers who are eligible to publish open access through their institutional agreements, increasing awareness of available OA funding pathways and driving greater uptake across the portfolio.” For more information, read the press release.
Libby Adds a Literary Role-Playing Game (LitRPG) Bestseller to Its Catalog
OverDrive’s Libby signed an exclusive digital distribution agreement with bestselling author Matt Dinniman to bring his Dungeon Crawler Carl series to libraries around the world. “Libraries using Libby will also gain access to Dinniman’s complete English ebook backlist under the agreement, including his four standalone novels, the ‘Dominion of Blades’ series and ‘The Shivered Sky’ series. The announcement comes ahead of the highly anticipated eighth installment in the ‘Dungeon Crawler Carl’ series, scheduled for release on May 12, 2026,” OverDrive shares. This series “has become one of the most recognizable titles in the LitRPG genre, with over 7 million copies sold. The series has developed a large and engaged following and is frequently requested by library patrons as interest in LitRPG continues to grow.”For more information, read the blog post/press release.
The Atlanta University Center Consortium Adopts JoVE Business
JoVE expanded “its collaboration with the Atlanta University Center [Consortium] through the adoption of JoVE Business.” JoVE shares, “The partnership reflects strong faculty interest in using visual learning resources to support business education and improve student learning outcomes across the consortium’s institutions. JoVE Business is designed to help educators present core business concepts in a clear, engaging, and accessible format.”For more information, read the press release.
Gale Unveils Part III of Its Eighteenth Century Collections Online Archive
Gale introduced Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Part III (ECCO III), “the latest installment of its acclaimed ECCO series. The third collection adds 1.7 million never-before-digitized pages to the current 32-million-page archive, expanding eighteenth-century studies for researchers across disciplines to explore global perspectives across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Australia,” Gale shares.Gale continues, “ECCO III builds on the previous installments, adding greater depth by ensuring broad coverage of works from this period and expanding access to rare and previously undigitized materials. The additional works, which include early books, serials, newspapers and selected ephemera printed before 1801, significantly enhance interdisciplinary research. ECCO III includes advanced tools for discovery and analysis, along with text and data-mining capabilities for both novice and advanced researchers.” For more information, read the press release.
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Brandi Scardilli
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