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Weekly News Digest
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May 2, 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.
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Old Bailey Proceedings Boosts Records Online
More rich detailed historical sources have been added to the Proceedings of the Old Bailey online (www.oldbaileyonline.org). The digitized collection now covers the years 1674 to 1913 with nearly 200,000 cases in its fully searchable text that represents the largest body of texts "detailing the lives of nonelite people," according to the site. In addition to the new trial documents, the site has been redesigned with a variety of new search enhancements, including advanced keyword and structured searching.Now, 197,745 criminal trials at London’s central criminal court are accessible, as well as digital images of the court documents that originally appeared in the pages of Old Bailey Proceedings and Ordinary of Newsgate’s. Detailing the trials of robbers to sheep thieves, the cases had to be manually retyped, along with the use of optical character recognition (OCR) to bring the pages to digital life. Despite the age and defects in some of the originals, the collection has recreated the documents with an accuracy rate of more than 97%. The project is a collaboration of the Open University and the universities of Hertfordshire and Sheffield that was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the Big Lottery Fund. Directors of the project include Professor Tim Hitchcock (the University of Hertfordshire), Professor Clive Emsley (Open University), and Professor Robert Schumacher (University of Sheffield). Source: Old Bailey Proceedings
New Enhancements Broaden Rightsphere’s Reach
Rightsphere, the rights advisory and management tool from Copyright Clearance Center (CCC; www.copyright.com), recently added several enhancements to help customers manage complex rights and licenses with speed and precision. The CCC credits corporate information managers and librarians with supplying the necessary input to help drive these changes to the marketplace.The latest round of enhancements include the following innovations: - Date-delimited rights so administrators can specify rights for a certain period (i.e., from 1978 to 2003) or for a relative period (i.e., for the past 12 months)
- More preloaded rights categories to give administrators more flexibility and accuracy for their licensing agreements, including sharing content in PowerPoint presentations or creating posters that feature excerpts from copyrighted articles
- Company policy statements on content use for end users when they check for permissions
- An enhanced user interface for Rightsphere’s Agreement Manager that records the rights and terms for licensing agreements
Since Rightsphere was first launched in 2006, global leaders in the pharmaceutical, aerospace, and consumer goods industries have adopted the web-based application. As a result, general counsels, information managers, and corporate librarians can now automate rights management on a granular level to maximize the value of site licenses and share nuances of corporate content use policies at the point of use to staffers worldwide. As a hosted service, Rightsphere provides customers such as AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, and Pfizer with automatic upgrades as enhancements are added. Source: Copyright Clearance Center
Earth Day Now: A Way to Stay Green Year-Round
Although Earth Day on April 22 has come and gone, reducing our individual and group carbon footprints is a quest for many all year-round. That’s why the Ad Council (http://adcouncil.org), Datran Media (www.datranmedia.com), and Zinio (www.zinio.com) collaborated on a sustainable digital media campaign called Earth Day Now to raise environmental awareness in the U.S.The campaign is environmentally savvy, digital, and paperless; it gives millions of Americans access via email to conservation tips and ways to care for the planet. Although Datran Media has supported the Ad Council in promoting important national issues since 2005, this year it will devote its energy to Earth Share, a federation of nonprofit environmental organizations in the U.S. Among the messages to be distributed is an Earth Share public service announcement via Datran Media Communities publications, enewsletters, and web communities, including MyGreenClick.com and MyCarbonClick.com. To boost the Ad Council’s reach into the marketplace, Zinio will organize an extension to the Earth Day Now campaign by enclosing support from industry service providers including the Email Experience Council (EEC), the email marketing arm of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA); Datran Media; Yoga Journal; Vegetarian Times; and VIV Magazine. Members will be offered an Earth Day Celebration Package that includes a free subscription to VIV Magazine (a digital, interactive magazine for women), free access to Zinio’s digital classics library with more than 100 literary classics, and free issues (online only) of Yoga Journal and Vegetarian Times. Source: Zinio
CSA Illustrata Adds Deep Indexing From Springer Journals
ProQuest (www.proquest.com) and Springer Science + Business Media are collaborating on a project to enhance CSA Illustrata with deep indexing from Springer’s journals. Researchers, librarians, and reviewers will soon be able to use indexing tables, figures, and other illustrations from Springer journals to select relevant research and links to articles in CSA Illustrata library’s electronic subscriptions. This is especially critical for biology and environmental sciences that use images on a frequent basis.CSA Illustrata: Natural Sciences will concentrate on the deep indexing of lead articles in the 11 Springer journals, ranging from the Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology to Water, Air, & Soil Pollution. CSA Illustrata, which was originally released in early 2007 with a Natural Sciences module, offers a patent-pending process of deep indexing. It gathers relevant data and research findings by identifying tables, charts, and other illustrations from journal articles and then indexing them for retrieval through a common search. Since its launch, CSA Illustrata has continued to grow; it will soon exceed deep indexing of more than 2 million tables and figures from leading scholarly journals.
CSA Illustrata will also add a technology module this summer to its offerings to improve research power and efficiency. Topics in CSA Illustrata: Technology will include aerospace, engineering, high technology, and materials science. Source: ProQuest
OECD.Stat Adds New Features
OECD.Stat (www.oecd.org), which was launched in December 2007, just released several innovative new features to its platform. These enhancements are part of OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) continuing work to improve accessibility and use of its databases.OECD.Stat is billed as "the single online platform where users can discover and access a wide range of statistical databases from the OECD." The new beta version includes a new browser, faster navigation, and new functionality to improve the user experience and options to compare and manipulate data. The new browser lets users search or browse for the exact data they require by using a detailed list of content themes that can be viewed or hidden to increase viewing space. Now, each table in OECD.Stat can be customized so users can mix and match variables and combine data from different sources to compare and analyze statistics from several countries. Rows and columns in each table can be changed to view data in a variety of formats including dynamic graphs that bring data "alive" visually. These enhancements are part of a larger project to boost services of the OECD statistics in the OECD iLibrary that will replace SourceOECD later this year. OECD’s mission for its 30 member countries is to bring together the governments that are committed to democracy and market economy worldwide to support sustainable economic growth, raise living standards, maintain financial stability, and assist other countries in their economic development. Source: OECD
Leading Artists Create New Themes for iGoogle
Searchers who want to customize their Google (www.google.com/artistthemes) homepages now can select from a collection of new themes created for iGoogle by nearly 70 artists from around the world. With iGoogle, users can personalize their homepages and web experiences with a changing palette of diverse themes reflected by the personalities of the artists who created them. Searchers can sample the artistry of Oscar de la Renta, Jeff Koons, Philippe Starck, Dale Chihuly, Anne Geddes, Akira Isogawa, among others, or for those who can’t pick just one, there’s a sampler theme that rotates through all of the participating artists’ themes.Source: Google
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Brandi Scardilli
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