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Weekly News Digest
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October 30, 2000 — 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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Hoover’s Introduces Competitive Intelligence and Media Monitoring Service
Hoover's Media Technologies (HMT), a business unit of Hoover's, Inc. (http://www.hoovers.com), has announced the availability of Hoover's Intelligence Monitor, an online application service that allows clients to monitor coverage of companies, people, products, and issues from a wide range of news and information sources. Hoover's Intelligence Monitor is powered by content-integration technology, and offers complete, unlimited online access to content from 33 real-time news wires; 246 newspapers; and more than 2,000 periodicals, trade journals, and newsletters. The service was introduced at the Fall Internet World trade show in New York."Hoover's Intelligence Monitor is a high-powered, low-cost Web service that allows businesses to simultaneously monitor thousands of news wires, premium publications, Web sites, databases, and document collections for mentions of the topics that are important to them," said Michael Gallagher, HMT's vice president of sales and marketing. "Hoover's Intelligence Monitor is a breakthrough service, because, for the first time, an organization can integrate all of the information sources it needs to monitor into a single, easy-to-use, outsourced application." Hoover's Intelligence Monitor includes the following client options: - Integrated monitoring of any news and research a client has already licensed, including services from Dow Jones, LEXIS-NEXIS, and Thomson Financial
- Integrated monitoring of any intranet-based database or document collection, including those indexed by Documentum, Excalibur, Lotus, and Verity
- Integrated monitoring of any Web site, including subscription and password-protected sites
- Customized e-mail alerts, enabling individual users to personalize the service to their needs
Hoover's had just announced that Hoover's Media Technologies was the new name for the recently acquired Powerize, Inc., a content integration and syndication technology company. The mission of Hoover's Media Technologies is developing and marketing information products that apply cutting-edge technologies to Hoover's own content, as well as that of third parties, in compelling online applications. Hoover's Intelligence Monitor is the newly named group's first product.Source: Hoover's, Inc.
XanEdu and McGraw-Hill Sign Deal
Bell & Howell Co. and its newest division, XanEdu (http://www.xanedu.com), have announced the signing of a comprehensive licensing and distribution agreement with McGraw-Hill Higher Education (http://www.mhhe.com), a business unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies (http://www.mcgraw-hill.com). Under the terms of the agreement, McGraw-Hill Higher Education will integrate XanEdu products and tools into its textbooks and Web sites.
XanEdu delivers premium online content and courseware products to college students and educators. Its focus is course-centric and curriculum-aligned, and is designed to provide extensive customization tools. According to the announcement, XanEdu offers access to over 3,500 full-text publications and millions of cross-relational curriculum materials, along with hundreds of thousands of original works.Ed Stanford, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education, said: "XanEdu's exceptional content and sophisticated search protocols make the company's products valuable and important for our customers. Their ease and convenience of use bring a value-added dimension of customer convenience and support. We look forward to a productive and exciting partnership that will provide a range of exclusive advantages to the higher education community." McGraw-Hill will make new CoursePack, CasePack, and LitPack products available to its faculty customers and will offer customized online versions for use with specific textbook titles. XanEdu's CoursePacks enable professors to create customized, copyright-cleared reading materials to supplement coursework or serve as core course resources. Educators can select from hundreds of CoursePacks based on standard subject curricula, developed by XanEdu's editorial team and subject experts. CasePacks support both undergraduate and graduate business studies and provide a broad selection of cases from leading developers. XanEdu LitPacks support a range of literature studies and offer a combination of literary works, scholarly articles, and contextual materials, much of which is not available in electronic form from any other source. All XanEdu CoursePack resources will be available to university faculty through McGraw-Hill's PowerWeb, an online service that accompanies several of the company's textbook titles, and McGraw-Hill's PRIMIS Online, an online database for print or electronic delivery of core course content. Faculty will also be able to access custom products built on PRIMIS Online via McGraw-Hill's free course-management platform, PageOut. Source: Bell & Howell Co.
Library Associations Disappointed in Digital Copyright Ruling
The nation's leading library associations expressed serious disappointment over the ruling issued to implement the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The ruling, issued by the Librarian of Congress, was based on the recommendation of the Copyright Office. The ruling backs the right of companies to limit access to their content made available on the Internet. According to the library associations, this will restrict access to information by the public. The American Association of Law Libraries, the American Library Association, the Association of Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, and the Special Libraries Association—representing well over 80,000 librarians and institutions throughout the U.S.—noted that they have worked hard to ensure that the long-standing principle of "fair use" continues into the digital age.Only two exemptions are now allowed to the law that make it illegal to circumvent copyright barriers. The statement in the Federal Register (http://www.loc.gov/copyright/fedreg/65fr64555.html) by James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, noted that he was: "publishing as a new rule the two classes of copyrighted works that shall be subject to the exemption found in 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(B) from the prohibition against circumvention of technological measures that effectively control access to copyrighted works set forth in 17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(1)(A) for the period from October 28, 2000 to October 28, 2003. The classes are: 1) Compilations consisting of lists of websites blocked by filtering software applications; and 2) Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage or obsoleteness." Sources: Special Libraries Association and U.S. Copyright Office
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Brandi Scardilli
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