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Weekly News Digest
June 18, 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. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks. CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

LC and NEH Celebrate Millionth Page in Chronicling America Program

This online resource will eventually contain 20 million pages of historic American newspapers dating from 1836 to 1922. In addition to the digitized pages, Chronicling America offers educational essays on every title represented and a directory of all newspapers published in the U.S. dating from 1690 to the present.
 
In celebration of the milestone, Marcum announced that the LC has uploaded to its popular Flickr site 52 images from weekly 1909 editions of the New York Tribune's illustrated Sunday supplement. The richly illustrated supplements were printed at a time when the use of the halftone technique was still relatively novel in newspapers. The site includes links to high-resolution images at persistent URLs on Chronicling America. Additional images will be added in coming weeks. More information and a link to the new Flickr set can be found at www.loc.gov/blog/?p=552. 

Source: Library of Congress

Elsevier, NextBio Sign Partnership to Enrich ScienceDirect Content

While most scientific information on genes, pathways, diseases, tissues, and compounds is available online, it currently resides in various, disconnected locations. Enhancing ScienceDirect with NextBio's biomedical ontology framework enables life sciences, health sciences, and chemistry researchers to analyze ScienceDirect content and search ScienceDirect peer-reviewed literature together with publicly available research data from PubMed, clinical trials, experimental data, and news articles, on one single platform. The new enhancement will become available on ScienceDirect and will be accessible to subscribed users in summer 2009.

Source: Elsevier

Dialog to Distribute Innography

Innography's intellectual property business intelligence application provides a unique way of viewing search results to uncover patterns and trends at a glance. For example, it correlates patent data with financial, litigation, and other key business information, instantly generating a variety of unique visualizations so users can perform strategic market trending, competitive analysis, and other IP-related activities. Using this comprehensive perspective, it streamlines tasks such as patent disclosure and prior art research, freedom-to-operate analyses, inventory maintenance, competitive assessments, gem finding, and more. Plus, it reveals underlying connections between data that might otherwise be missed, stimulating new ways of identifying potential market opportunities. Bottom line: It is designed to allow users to do more in less time.

Source: Dialog, LLC

SLA’s Click University Offers Free Credo E-References to Members

"SLA is committed to providing our members with benefits and resources that allow them to provide their organizations with the best information available," said SLA CEO Janice R. Lachance. "Free electronic access to important reference material is only one of the steps we have taken this year to make sure that SLA membership is an especially good value for information professionals during these challenging economic times."

As part of its strategy to improve on an already successful member benefit, the Click U team is implementing free access to this collection for SLA members only. The SLA collection from Credo provides members with information and resources that will allow them to access high-quality reference materials and resources free of charge from their desktops. The free titles available include the following:

• BUSINESS: The Ultimate Resource-Dictionary of Business and Management
• Dictionary of Information and Library Management
• Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms, Barron's Business Dictionaries
• Collins Dictionary of Economics
• The Ultimate Business Library, Wiley
• The Columbia Encyclopedia
• The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style
• Dictionary of Law
• Encyclopedia of the European Union
• Black's Medical Dictionary, 41st edition
• Encyclopedia of Ethics
• Collins Concise Dictionary of Quotations

Source: SLA

New Online Content From the Middle East

"We will launch a new business this summer-Acumen Media Intelligence-targeted to corporations with branches or interests in the Middle East. With East View's help, AskZad and Middle East Monitor have been localized to include an English user interface, pricing models, and access methods that are in line with North American and European academic, corporate, and government users."
 
Since 1989, East View Information Services has built and represented content emanating from Russia; the former Soviet Union; Asia; and, beginning in 2008, the Middle East. East View will give the public its first official view of the AskZad platform at the Special Libraries Association meeting in Washington, D.C., June 14-17.

In summer 2009, Acumen Media Intelligence will launch with a focus on media monitoring and analysis for business. Arabia Inform is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt, with offices in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Doha, Qatar.

Source: East View Information Services

New White Paper on Special Libraries’ Recession Survival Strategies

The survey, conducted on J.J. Keller's behalf by Free Pint Ltd. (www.freepint.com), was promoted to subscribers of ResourceShelf, a FreePint-published resource of web-based resources used by information professionals in North America and around the world. A J.J. Keller-sponsored mailing that was sent to all subscribers invited participation in the survey this spring.

Most of the 308 respondents reported that they work in professional services, in organizations with more than 5,000 employees; a significant portion of respondents work in academic libraries and nonprofit organizations. The survey revealed the following:

• Making do with free resources is the most important tactic for coping with reduced content budgets.
• Using technology and/or automation is most relevant for coping with staffing changes.
• Doing more with less is the information professional's new mantra.
• Helping library users become more self-sufficient is key.
• Promoting their information center's vital contributions to management is a must.

Those who participated in the survey received a complimentary copy of the white paper. A free copy can also be obtained by visiting J.J. Keller's new webpage for information professionals, http://jjkeller.com/infopros. J.J. Keller will be exhibiting at SLA 2009, the Special Libraries Association's centennial convention, June 14-17 in Washington, D.C. Those attending the event are invited to stop by booth 10 and share their feedback on the survey and resulting white paper. Copies of the white paper will also be available at the booth.

Source: J.J. Keller & Associates, Inc.