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Weekly News Digest

April 20, 2009 — 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.

Semantico Offers Rapid Versions of Its Online Publishing Platform

Semantico, Ltd. (www.semantico.com), a provider of services and technology for online publishing, announced a reshaping of its service offering around the introduction of "rapid" versions of its online publishing platform, SIPP (Semantico Information Publishing Platform) and its identity and access management system SAMS (Semantico Access Management System). The new rapid offerings will enable dramatically shortened implementation times and lower cost without sacrifice of quality. The move has been undertaken in order better to meet the needs of publishers struggling to fund the development of their online offerings in the current financial climate. The company is also introducing a number of "crunch-buster" service additions with its core offering.

Semantico continues to focus on high-end custom digital publishing solutions but now offers, in addition, lower entry points for its richly featured publishing solutions and faster time-to-market. The basis of the rapid offering is a streamlined, "Pareto principle" implementation that provides the vast majority of the functionality publishers look for in an online publishing platform and a clear upgrade path.

SIPP is now offered in three flavors: SIPP Rapid, SIPP Rapid+, and SIPP Classic. All come bundled with the corresponding version of SAMS (SAMS Rapid, SAMS Rapid+, or SAMS Classic), providing a fully integrated access management solution. Each offers an upgrade path allowing additional functionality and enhancements to be added at a later date. SAMS is also offered in all three flavors as a stand-alone solution, which can be easily integrated with an existing publishing platform using SAMS Gateway.

Source: Semantico, Ltd.

UNESCO and Partners Launch World Digital Library

UNESCO (www.unesco.org) and 32 partner institutions have launched the World Digital Library (WDL; www.wdl.org), a website that features unique cultural materials from libraries and archives from around the world. The site includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, films, sound recordings, prints, and photographs. It provides unrestricted public access, free of charge, to this material.

The launch took place at UNESCO headquarters at an event co-hosted by UNESCO director-general Koïchiro Matsuura and Librarian of Congress James H. Billington. Directors of the partner institutions were on hand to present the project to ambassadors, ministers, delegates, and special guests attending the semi-annual meeting of UNESCO's executive board.

Billington first proposed the creation of a World Digital Library to UNESCO in 2005. In addition to promoting international understanding, the project aims to expand the volume and variety of cultural content on the internet; provide resources for educators, scholars, and general audiences; and narrow the digital divide within and between countries by building capacity in partner countries. (We first covered the WDL in a NewsBreak in November 2005, when Google made a $3 million contribution to the Library of Congress: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbReader.asp?ArticleId=16060.)

The World Digital Library functions in seven languages-Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish-and includes content in more than 40 languages. Browse and search features facilitate cross-cultural and cross-temporal exploration on the site. Descriptions of each item and videos, with expert curators speaking about selected items, provide context for users and are intended to spark curiosity and encourage both students and the general public to learn more about the cultural heritage of all countries.

The World Digital Library was developed by a team at the Library of Congress. Technical assistance was provided by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina of Alexandria, Egypt. Institutions contributing to the WDL include national libraries and cultural and educational institutions in Brazil, Egypt, China, France, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Mali, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Qatar, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Sweden, Uganda, the U.K., and the U.S.

Source: Library of Congress

Lightning Source Announces Espresso Book Machine Pilot Program

Lightning Source (www.lightningsource.com), an Ingram Content company focused on enhancing book sales for publishers with innovative, low-cost, and minimum-risk print-on-demand solutions, announced the launch of an Espresso Book Machine (EBM) title pilot with On Demand Books (www.ondemandbooks.com), proprietor of the EBM. Participating publishers in the pilot include John Wiley & Sons, Hachette Book Group, McGraw-Hill, Simon & Schuster, Clements Publishing, Cosimo, E-Reads, Bibliolife, Information Age Publishing, Macmillan, University of California Press, and W.W. Norton.

The pilot, being offered initially to a small group of publishers that currently work with Lightning Source, will enable these publishers to enhance the availability of their titles at point-of-sale EBM locations. Approximately 85,000 titles from these publishers will be available for purchase at EBM locations in the U.S. in May 2009.

Upon the completion of a successful pilot, publishers that print and distribute books with Lightning Source will have the option to participate in the EBM channel. Complete channel automation is expected in the first half of this year, and rollout of the program to publishers globally is expected to follow shortly thereafter.

The EBM, which was named a TIME magazine 2007 "Invention of the Year," is essentially an ATM for books. Placed primarily in bookstores and libraries, the machine automatically prints, binds, and trims perfect bound paperback books on-demand, at point of sale. On Demand Books will be demonstrating the new Espresso Book Machine 2.0 model at the upcoming London Book Fair. More information on the Espresso Book Machine and Lightning Source can be found on the Lightning Source and On Demand Books websites.

Source: Lightening Source

Hoover’s Integrates LinkedIn Contacts

Hoover's, Inc. (www.hoovers.com), a D&B company, announced it has added LinkedIn contact data to its subscriber site. This new addition provides seamless integration between Hoover's information on 31 million companies and 37 million people with LinkedIn's professional network of business contacts (www.linkedin.com). The addition is designed to give Hoover's subscribers an additional avenue for professional networking. When viewing a targeted company or person on the Hoover's site, customers can now instantly view contacts in that company that are already in their own LinkedIn network.

"We realize, especially in this economy, that closing a sale or business deal can be heavily reliant on finding and using the right connections within your professional network," said Peter Poulin, Hoover's executive vice president of marketing and business development. "This LinkedIn integration builds upon our commitment to providing customers with the best ways to discover how to connect to the companies and business decision makers on our site."

Hoover's subscribers can learn how many people they are connected to at any given company through the LinkedIn Connections integration and can access those individuals' LinkedIn profiles with a single click.

Source: Hoover's, Inc.

RefWorks Launches RefMobile

RefWorks-COS (www.refworks-cos.com), a business unit of ProQuest, LLC (www.proquest.com), announced the launch of RefMobile, a new interface that enables students and researchers to use the RefWorks web-based research management service from anywhere, via web-enabled mobile phones, smartphones, and personal data assistants (PDAs). The RefMobile interface gives users immediate access to the most commonly used RefWorks functions, including searching their entire RefWorks databases, viewing references by folders, adding and removing references from folders, creating new folders, and adding comments to Notes fields.

Users can also efficiently import new references to their RefWorks account using the new SmartAdd feature. With SmartAdd, users simply enter basic identifying information for a publication, such as ISBN, digital object identifier (DOI) number, partial title, or author and publication year, and SmartAdd searches the internet for the reference and imports it to RefWorks.

In addition to the mobile interface release, RefWorks-COS also made a number of other feature enhancements, including the ability to include OpenURL links in bibliographies. Any RefWorks output style can now be configured to include dynamically created OpenURL links in bibliography formatting, using the Output Style Editor. A complete listing of all the new features available in the April release can be found at www.refworks.com.

Source: RefWorks-COS

Free Computer Science Portal From FIZ Karlsruhe

FIZ Karlsruhe (www.fiz-karlsruhe.de) now offers its computer science portal io-port.net, which was launched for the first time 3 years ago (www.io-port.net), free of charge with a new database interface and numerous new search functions. The database contains bibliographical metadata, links to electronic full texts, and, for most of the references, article summaries or abstracts written by scientists.

io-port.net is a freely accessible database with more than 1 million computer science publications. The database covers the time range of 1931 to the present. The company says this makes it the most comprehensive source of data on the historical development of computer science. Documents from different sources are offered in a standardized format through one common search interface (duplicates have been removed):

• CompuScience produced by FIZ Karlsruhe
• DBLP (Digital Bibliography & Library Project) offered by the University of Trier
• LNI (Lecture Notes in Informatics) and other publications by Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) e.V.
• IEEE Computer Society Digital Library
• LNCS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) by Springer-Verlag GmbH
• Publications from other publishers (e.g., Elsevier GmbH, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Blackwell Verlag GmbH, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, IOS Verlag, World Scientific Publishing Co., and Taylor and Francis Group)

The new search interface enables both intuitive access and more refined searches using search fields. A specific search language is available for complex database searches. The data are thoroughly edited so that Open URL functions can be integrated.

Source: FIZ Karlsruhe