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Weekly News Digest
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March 13, 2008 — 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. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Scopus TopCited Highlights Key Articles
Scopus, the abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature and quality web sources from Elsevier (www.elsevier.com), announced that its new Scopus search application programming interface (API) technology has enabled the launch of Scopus TopCited (www.topcited.com), a new website that offers users the top 20 cited articles across 26 subject areas. Scopus TopCited provides visitors an overview of the top cited articles per subject area over the past 5 years. It also displays authors, their affiliations, and cited-by counts, and it integrates this information into Google maps.Scopus TopCited is one of the first websites to utilize the Scopus search API, which is now freely available. The search API allows Scopus content to be integrated into an application or website easily, offering users a flexible integration solution. For example, organizations can use this application to showcase their own top cited researchers and articles. In addition, Scopus subscribers will be able to access the records directly from the API-created mashup. This new technology empowers third parties to link to more than 33 million records and provides their website visitors with continuously updated data. The Scopus search API is part of the Scopus Integration Program, which is designed to help third parties add value and content to their online offerings. Developers and institutions interested in creating their own API mashups can request a developer key at www.scopus.com/scsearchapi or get in touch via the Scopus Integration Program at http://integration.scopus.com. For more information about Scopus, visit www.info.scopus.com. Source: Scopus
Open Text Livelink ECM to Offer Extended Collaboration
Open Text Corp. (www.opentext.com), a provider of enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, announced a major new collaboration offering designed to help organizations extend the power of Web 2.0 to the promise of Enterprise 2.0: Livelink ECM—Extended Collaboration. It will give customers a set of communities, social computing, and real-time collaboration tools within Livelink ECM. Livelink ECM—Extended Collaboration will be available in May.The new offering is one of several product initiatives the company will be introducing as part of a broad new Enterprise 2.0 strategy (www.opentext.com/news/pr.html?id=2018) to help customers transform their organizations with social computing tools. Open Text is taking its collaboration and web solutions offerings to a new level, providing 2.0 capabilities, including wikis, forums, blogs, tagging, moderation, communities, and real-time collaboration within an organization’s broader ECM strategy. Livelink ECM—Extended Collaboration is complemented by Open Text’s Web Solutions offerings that are well integrated with the Livelink ECM platform and other content repositories. Livelink ECM—Extended Collaboration connects people, processes, and content across an organization. The solution combines a knowledge repository with project work spaces, polls, news channels, tasks, and milestones. A set of community applications brings specialized, enterprise-ready tools, such as forums, blogs, wikis, and real-time collaboration, along with newsletter views, FAQs, and event calendars to promote shared expertise and best practices. Source: Open Text Corp.
SparkIP Adds More User-Friendly Tools
SparkIP (www.sparkip.com), an online intellectual property (IP) network for the scientific community, announced the addition of several new site features, including allowing users to directly post licensable technologies on the site and enhanced searching via the inclusion of U.S. patent applications that are fully integrated into the SparkCluster maps. Other improvements include a refreshed set of technology listings from current partner institutions.SparkIP’s database of intellectual property is designed for use by corporations, universities, government labs, patent attorneys, individual researchers and inventors, and anyone else conducting scientific research. The site is continuing to expand since its launch in October 2007 and new university/research partners have been signing on. The SparkIP online intellectual property network has more than 3.5 million patents and 5,900 actively managed licensable technologies, all represented within a visual innovation landscape of more than 40,000 SparkClusters. The site offers research tools, an IP marketplace for new technologies, and a community where users and organizations can find each other and identify collaborative opportunities. The private, Atlanta-based company was founded by engineers Kristina M. Johnson, provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Johns Hopkins; Rob Clark, dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering; and Tim Lenoir, Kimberly Jenkins Chair in New Technology and Society at Duke University. The SparkIP team is led by Ed Trimble, former founder and CEO of EzGov, Inc. Source: SparkIP
New York Public Library Unveils Transformation Plan
The New York Public Library (www.nypl.org) unveiled a $1 billion transformation plan, led by a $100 million gift from Stephen A. Schwarzman. The Fifth Avenue building—currently known as the Humanities and Social Sciences Library—will be renovated and renamed the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. It will also build two new "hub" libraries—in northern Manhattan and Staten Island—with greatly expanded hours and services. The library also plans to expand its online presence to make its unique holdings and programs accessible worldwide and to create new online communities led by its librarians and curators. Schwarzman is chairman, CEO, and co-founder of The Blackstone Group and a library trustee since 2001.
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The plan, which will take at least 5 years to realize, represents the greatest change to the New York Public Library system since its founding more than 100 years ago. The purpose of the plan is to transform the library so that it can better serve a growing public, one that is accessing information in rapidly changing and diverse ways. The library’s 5-year goal is to double the number of unique users who take advantage of its rich collections, wide-ranging programs, inspirational reading rooms, and online offerings. The plan, which calls for a total investment of approximately $1 billion, was adopted by the library’s board following a comprehensive 18-month study by trustees and staff.Demand for the New York Public Library’s services has soared in the past 2 years. In fiscal year 2007, the NYPL received more than 16 million visits to its 89 locations (2 million more visits than in 2006), and its website received more than 25 million visits (an increase of 5 million visits over 2006). According to recent surveys, each year more than one million residents of the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island—one third of the population—use their local libraries. Source: New York Public Library
IBM Upgrades Enterprise Search Software
IBM (www.ibm.com) introduced a new version of its OmniFind enterprise search software, IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition 8.5, which brings together information access capabilities like taxonomy, classification, and content analytics to provide more meaningful results. It addresses the need to tap both social software and traditional enterprise search of data such as email, voice recordings, manuals, customer service reports, images, videos, blogs, and podcasts.The enhancements are designed to help customers rapidly gain insight and value from their business information, which is the aim of IBM’s cross-company Information on Demand strategy. The company says that the OmniFind advancements make it the industry’s first enterprise search engine to support the latest Lotus collaboration and social software, allowing early adopters of Lotus tools, such as Lotus Quickr and Lotus Connections, to further improve productivity, business networking, and knowledge sharing. The new version also includes an easy-to-use interface that refines and graphically displays relevant search results; full global language support for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean; and support for the latest versions of Red Hat Linux, Windows Server, IBM FileNet Enterprise Content Management software, and the IBM Lotus Collaboration Suite. In addition to delivering extensive enterprise search and information access capabilities, OmniFind Enterprise Edition also serves as a platform for semantic search and content analytics solutions such as entity analytics, sentiment analysis, threat analysis, and global name recognition, which are designed to help customers address industry-specific information management challenges. These solutions, combined with OmniFind Enterprise Edition, help organizations uncover new insights, patterns, and trends in text-based information that can be used to manage risk, reduce costs, and maximize customer service opportunities. For more information visit: www-306.ibm.com/software/data/enterprise-search/omnifind-enterprise. Source: IBM
Factiva Gains Text-to-Speech Capability
Dow Jones & Co. (www.dowjones.com) introduced a new "text-to-speech" capability in Dow Jones Factiva (www.factiva.com) that allows users to listen to the news. With one click, users can now listen to a news article rather than read it, freeing them to do other things. Currently available in beta format (and not yet offered in a mobile version), a "Listen to Article" link appears at the top of any full-text article with fewer than 4,000 words. The listen capability is available in English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish languages and automatically defaults to reading in the interface language previously selected by the user. To test the Dow Jones Factiva listen capability and to hear the press release, click here.The listen capability is a web-based service provided by VoiceCorp (www.voice-corp.com) that converts text into speech on-the-fly. It is made available wherever full-text articles are found, including alerts, search results, and newsletters. Once the link is clicked, the listen capability uses a Flash player to read the article. The addition of the text-to-speech feature further builds on Dow Jones’ goal of integrating various forms of multimedia content into Dow Jones Factiva. In August 2007, Dow Jones Factiva added relevant video and audio information, including business news, CEO interviews, executive speeches, shareholders meetings, product reviews, and other business content. Dow Jones Factiva searches across more than 14,000 authoritative sources, including the exclusive combination of The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones, and Reuters newswires. Source: Dow Jones & Co., Inc.
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Brandi Scardilli
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