|
|
Weekly News Digest
 |
March 31, 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.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
|
Gale’s Biography Resource Center Adds New Collection
Gale’s Biography Resource Center has a new optional add-on module. The Lives & Perspectives Collection module includes nearly 160,000 concise and in-depth biographies drawn from reference sources such as American Men & Women of Science as well as nearly 40 titles recently published under the Macmillan, Scribner, and Gale imprints, including the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Governments of the World, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, and many others. The new collection is designed to support the need for multidisciplinary perspectives. Gale (www.gale.com) is part of Cengage Learning (www.cengage.com), formerly Thomson Learning.More than a standard recounting of a person’s life, the in-depth biographies in this collection offer unique viewpoints and provide scholarly overviews of some of the most notable and influential figures in history, world culture, science, religion, health, government, and more. The substantial number of biographies made available in the Lives & Perspectives Collection brings coverage of many new individuals to Biography Resource Center. Featuring a redesigned interface and functionality enhancements, the Biography Resource Center is a comprehensive database of biographical information on more than 340,000 people from throughout history, around the world, and across all disciplines and subject areas. It combines more than 440,000 biographies from more than 1,000 volumes of more than 135 respected Gale sources with full-text articles from more than 325 magazines and newspapers, nearly 19,000 vetted websites, and more than 27,000 images. More than 50 volumes of new and updated content are added to the database each year. Source: Gale
Ovid Launches Its New Search Platform
Ovid (www.ovid.com), part of Wolters Kluwer Health(www.wkhealth.com) and a provider of customizable electronic researchinformation for the medical, healthcare, and academic markets, announced thelaunch of the latest release of OvidSP, its search and discovery platform. Newfeatures include MARC records, non-English language interfaces, and more. AllOvidSP customers now have access to the latest release.
New features and functionality implemented as part of therelease include MARC Records. This feature allows users to download MARCrecords for all books and journals that their institutions subscribe to onOvidSP. The new release also introduces the first round of Non-English LanguageInterfaces in support of users’ preferences to search in their local languages.French-, Spanish-, and German-language interfaces are now available. Otherimportant enhancements are focused on improving the user interface based on theworkflow of end users. For example, Annotation Exports offer the ability toexport search results annotations to a bibliographic citation manager. OvidSP was first released on Oct. 25, 2007. The platformincorporates Ovid’s precision search technology and robust mapping toolsdesigned to deliver answers to important scholarly research questions faster,simpler, and more effectively for all types of users, from beginners to expertsearchers. Source: Ovid
Autonomy Augments Its Pan-Enterprise Search Platform
Autonomy Corp. plc (www.autonomy.com) announced theavailability of new advanced features for its Pan-Enterprise Search platform,IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer). Pan-enterprise search transcendscompany divisions, operating systems, language barriers, and file types. Thecompany says that IDOL is "the only FRCP-compliant enterprise search platformavailable in the market, delivering a single unified and vendor-neutralplatform for searching all file formats and media-types for legal and businesspurposes." (Federal Rules of Civil Procedure)New advanced features include the following: - Drag-and-Drop Personalization—Users can drag contentof interest into a custom box.
- IDOL Deep Video Indexing (DVI) AdvancedFeatures—DVI tackles the challenge of asset identification and managementthrough new methods and technology.
- Geo-Cluster Maps—Provides visualization tools to represent document density per location, thus allowing the administrator to quickly assess usage patterns and make informed decisions about load balancing.
- Intent-Based Ranking—Uses algorithms to determine a user’s intent when querying. This new feature ranks results not simply based on popularity, keyword matches, or other legacy algorithms, but it automatically tailors the results to the user’s purpose and the specific query, making search more effective and efficient.
- Interlinking—By automatically identifying subareas of the document for which there are relevant links, IDOL creates a seamless delivery of related information to the user.
- Multidimensional Index & Query Throttling—By using a multidimensional index, IDOL precludes bottlenecks and unbalanced peak loads during the indexing and query process.
- Quantum Clustering—Using quantum mathematics to calculate states/concepts within data, conceptual information is more easily and accurately identified. Quantum wave functions are generated around the data, leading to global, stable results without relying on sampling.
Source: Autonomy
NTIS Launches Improved Search Engine
The National Technical Information Service (NTIS), part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, has launched an improved search engine at its www.ntis.gov site with features such as the following:1. Enhanced retrieval speed with search functionality for categories, collections, and source agencies: - The NTIS search engine now more powerfully finds the information searchers need.
- The advanced searching capabilities allow for an even greater focus on appropriate content for a search.
2. Expanded access now includes the ability to search, retrieve, and select from almost 3 million NTIS records: - No more restrictions on access to NTIS titles.
- Customers are provided a Product File of related purchased titles
- Now searchers can find anything in the NTIS collection from 1964 to the present and order many in a choice of format (printed copy, downloads, CD-ROM, or microfiche).
3. Efficient response to search requests by keyword, titles, dates, authors, and NTIS product numbers: - Now searchers are empowered to search the NTIS collection the way that best fits their information needs.
- Experienced researchers will appreciate the Boolean searching features.
- All search results include a brief product description and easy access to the cart for making a purchase.
- Search Help has step-by-step instructions and graphics (www.ntis.gov/search/index.aspx ).
Searchers are asked to provide feedback to NTIS on the improvements. Source: NTIS
Rocketinfo Launches New Version of News Search Engine
Rocketinfo, Inc. (www.rocketinfo.com), a provider of news monitoring, analysis, and search technologies, announced the release of a new version of its flagship online news search engine and portal, Rocketnews.com. Rocketnews offers easy to configure, user-defined feeds from a database of more than 60,000 sources. The relaunch of Rocketnews is the first in a series of new product releases Rocketinfo has planned.Rocketnews originally launched more than a decade ago as one of the web’s first news search engines and aggregation portals. In addition to performing searches for current news stories and browsing major news categories, visitors to Rocketnews will now experience a number of technology enhancements and feature additions. Rocketinfo’s "contextual search" is easier for the user to define and has faster response times, while delivering more relevant information and context. Thousands of news sources have been added to the Rocketnews database. Rocketnews introduced the Topic Discovery Engine, which expands a contextual search to include blog posts, photos, video clips, and research data besides updated and historical news. The Topic Discovery Engine examines all 60,000 news sources. It collects, analyzes, and categorizes news stories and then updates category pages, topic pages, and related RSS feeds. Topic pages, a new feature at Rocketnews, highlight popular news topics by displaying related news stories, blog posts, photos, and noteworthy quotes. Source: Rocketinfo, Inc.
Outsell Issues Forecast Report on Libraries
Libraries are successfully changing their models to stayabreast of the new information world paradigm, according to Outsell’s "2008Library Market Size, Share & Forecast Report," which analyzes the globalmarket for information spending in all types of libraries. Outsell, Inc.(www.outsellinc.com) forecasts a 3.1% compound annual growth rate for contentspending from 2007–2010, from $22.5 billion to $24.7 billion.The report includes deep, rich data examining the global market for content among government, public, academic, school, corporate, and other special libraries. Among reported trends and findings are the following: - While overall library investments are increasing, the proportional share devoted to almost all content segments is shrinking. The one exception is education/training allocations, which have increased from 4% in 2004 to 11% in 2007.
- Self-publishing and syndication technologies are facilitating the rise of user-generated and institutionally generated content that, in many cases, displaces commercially published content. Libraries of all types are creating original content for their users.
- Today’s digital age is reflected in where libraries are putting their dollars. Most content spending (21%) is going toward scientific and technical content. That’s followed by educational information (11%), news (11%), and legal/tax/regulatory (10%). The remainder is distributed among such information types as HR, marketing and IT research, and credit and other business information.
Outsell is a research and advisory firm focused on the publishing, information, and education industries. Companies that would like to purchase the report should go to http://outsellinc.com/store/products/719?refid=pr719.Source: Outsell, Inc.
Send correspondence concerning the Weekly News Digest to NewsBreaks Editor
Brandi Scardilli
|
