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Weekly News Digest

April 24, 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.

Harlequin Romances Go Digital

Beginning in April, Harlequin will offer a few of its most popular series online and ready for browsing, such as Harlequin Presents and romance titles by Debbie Macomber, Heather Graham, and Mercedes Lackey.

These new online options have aroused the interest of romance readers who are hot for digital, according to Brent Lewis, vice president of internet and digital at Harlequin, who says readers can now interact with and even share stories with the Browse the Book feature and widget functionality. Readers can still embrace the print variety, but they also can commit to virally spreading their favorite book titles on the internet through author websites, blogs, and social networks. Harlequin, which was one of the first major publishers to surrender its entire front list to digital, sold more than 130 million books in 2007, many of which scale to the top of ebook bestseller lists. Its community of 1,200 writers worldwide generates more than 120 titles each month in 29 languages.

Publishers including Bloomsbury, HarperCollins, and Hachette also use LibreDigital solutions. The Internet Digital Warehouse lets publishers deliver searchable book content in a variety of digital formats while protecting control of content and copyrights. Sweet.

Source: Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.

New Combined Company—Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters shares now trade on exchanges in Toronto, New York, and London and are eligible for inclusion in S&P/TSX and FTSE 100 U.K. indexes. Thomson Reuters Corp.’s common shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "TRI." Thomson Reuters, PLC ordinary shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol "TRIL," and its ADSs are listed on NASDAQ under the symbol "TRIN."

The company also unveiled its new branding, a new logo, and a global advertising campaign. More information on Thomson Reuters can be obtained at its new website, www.thomsonreuters.com.

Source: Thomson Reuters

Thomson Innovation Adds Business and News Information

The enhancements and new content include the following:

• News—A collection of more than 11,000 of the world’s top sources from the Dialog NewsRoom database will provide researchers with the latest  industry developments, new product launches, and strategic information.
• Products—Data on product ownership and background press releases covering product launches and news will assist researchers in product design and development, competitive analysis, and marketing and business planning.
• Company—With information about business intelligence, companies can monitor an industry’s competitive activity to view a corporation’s family hierarchy or to find contact information about the company and its executive staff members.
• Market—Global market information for 90 industries will be published in tabular format each week, including market share, rankings, forecasts, times series, shipments, and demographics.
• Research—Data on 30,000-plus organizations that support and conduct research worldwide can be used to find experts in a certain field of research, identify potential partners for collaborative research, and identify possible marketing contracts.

The new business collection can be searched separately or with patent and scientific literature on Thomson Innovation.

Source: Thomson Reuters

ProQuest Rolls Out Safari Select to Public Libraries

ProQuest (www.proquest.com) worked with Safari Books Online to develop Safari Select, an online collection of 400-plus technical ebooks now available to all public libraries. With Safari Select, distributed exclusively by ProQuest, public library patrons can search for and find answers online to hot-topic technology questions in computing, desktop applications, digital photography, home entertainment, the internet, Windows, Macs, and PCs. The e-collection offers the best-selling titles from the world’s top IT publishers including O’Reilly Media, John Wiley & Sons, Microsoft Press, and imprints from Pearson Technology Group (i.e., Peachpit Press, Addison-Wesley, Prentice Hall, Sams Publishing, and QUE). Together, these publishers generate more than 80% of all computer book sales in the U.S.

The e-collection includes the following best-selling series:

• For Dummies
• David Pogue’s Missing Manuals
• Visual QuickStart Guides
• Microsoft Press Step by Step
• Head First and Hacks from O’Reilly Media
• Scott Kelby’s Digital Photography Books
• Classroom in a Book from Adobe Press
• QUE’s Absolute Beginner’s Guides

Safari Select will add about 100 titles to its collection each year to meet the increasing quest for new technological information.

Source: ProQuest

Socialtext Adds Business Social Software Solutions to Its Wiki Platform

Socialtext version 3.0 includes the following enhancements:

• Socialtext Dashboard—This product includes personalized and customizable dashboards of internal and external social software activity. The social news feed of your colleague’s activity in wikis and beyond aids attention management. Users can generate, customize, and assemble enterprise-class and standards-based widgets with a simple drag-and-drop user experience for what the individual determines productive. Or, starting with Dashboard templates for the four solution areas, users, or central administrators, can create and deploy dashboards for groups. Socialtext Dashboard supports third-party widgets and the OpenSocial gadget standard. Socialtext 3.0 also provides significant enhancements to its open APIs for enterprise integration.
• Socialtext People—Social networking has been adapted for the enterprise. Throughout the Socialtext wiki, profiles are made visible so at any time you can pivot to the people behind the content. Profiles and a user directory make it easy for colleagues to introduce themselves and discover implicit and explicit expertise. People can subscribe to the activity of colleagues. Groupings enable users to declare interest and expertise on their profiles and other users’ profiles, making group forming as simple as adding a tag.

The two new enhancements to Socialtext are currently in beta and will be commercially available within a quarter. Further information is available on the press wiki http://socialtext.net/st-press.

Source: Socialtext

CrossRef to Launch Plagiarism Detection Service

CrossRef is partnering with iParadigms to offer its members—scholarly and professional publishers—the opportunity to verify the originality of works submitted for publication using the iThenticate service to check against a vast database of proprietary as well as open web content. Until now, there was no automated way to check submissions against previous publications because the published literature had not been indexed and "text fingerprinted" for this purpose. The CrossCheck database will include the full-text journals of leading academic publishers, and it is expected to grow very rapidly over the coming months as CrossRef member publishers sign up for the service.

CrossCheck will be available to all CrossRef members who opt to contribute their content to the database. To use the service, publishers will need to integrate the checking tool into their editorial processes and develop suitable policies and guidelines. CrossRef is working with iParadigms, member publishers, and editorial system software producers on appropriate technical information and guidelines for CrossCheck.

iParadigms’ products include Turnitin, a web-based service used by students and faculty for the digital assessment of academic work, and iThenticate, an internet service that enables companies to determine originality and check documents for misappropriation.

Source: CrossRef