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Weekly News Digest

July 2, 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.

EBSCO Improves Search and Retrieval on EBSCOhost Platform

EBSCO Publishing (www.ebscohost.com) has made enhancements to the search and retrieval systems in EBSCOhost. The new display and searching technology is designed to improve the user experience. The new system supports natural language searching for scientific formulas and provides users with the ability to store and show HTML markup, allowing the display of scientific formulas. The new database architecture means article names, abstracts, and key phrase headings within citations will contain scientific formulas. The first database to use the new database architecture is Inspec.

The following is an example of the new display:

Theoretical study on N₂⁺, P₂⁺, As₂⁺, NP⁺, NAs⁺, and PAs⁺: Hyperfine coupling constants for 1²Σ_(g)⁺, and electron-sping-factors for 1²Σ_g⁺/1,2²Σ_u⁺(X₂⁺) and 1,2²Σ⁺(XY⁺) states.

Bruna, P.J.; Grein, F. In: Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, Aug. 2005, vol.232, no.2, pp. 137-50, Journal Paper. (AN: 8727739).

With natural language searching, researchers will more easily find relevant information within their searches. For instance, those searching for records related to water are now able to enter "H20" to return the desired records.

EBSCO's vice president of engineering, Doug Jenkins, says this new technology will soon expand to other EBSCO Publishing databases. "The underlying search and retrieval improvements to Inspec are part of our continued investment in the EBSCOhost platform. We will extend these features to other aggregated full text products by year end."

Source: EBSCO Publishing

Gale Launches Archival Slavery Reference Source

Gale (www.gale.com), a part of Cengage Learning (www.cengage.com), introduced a new electronic resource offering an archive that chronicles slavery dating from the 16th century through the early 20th century. Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, represents the first large-scale database to make available historical books, manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals, court records, and other sources in one cross-searchable location.

The first of the four-part series, Debates Over Slavery and Abolition, explores the varying viewpoints and debates that surrounded the practice, experience, and eventual abolition of slavery in the U.S., as well as in Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. It will be followed by part 2 in 2011. Once completed, the entire four-part digital archive will comprise 5 million pages of documents.

This collection-Debates Over Slavery and Abolition, Slave Trade in the Atlantic World, Institution of Slavery, Age of Emancipation-embraces the historical study of slavery in a comprehensive, conceptual, and global way. It is designed to be a gateway into the global study of race relations, religion, education, politics, economics, and law through the lens of slavery.

Collections drawn from institutions such as the Amistad Research Center, Oberlin College, Yale University, and Oxford University allow for unparalleled depth and breadth of content. Scholarly reference materials are drawn from MacMillan Reference USA, Charles Scribner's Sons, and Gale encyclopedias, among others, and contextual commentary has been created especially for this collection. With documents from 7,242 books and pamphlets, 80 newspapers and periodicals, and more than 600,000 pages of manuscripts, teachers and researchers will have access to a comprehensive array of opposing views and perspectives in one database.

Source: Gale

LC Makes Cataloging Service Bulletin Free Online

The Library of Congress is making available to the worldwide library community free online access to the entire 31 years of the Cataloging Service Bulletin (CSB). The bulletin can be viewed at www.loc.gov/cds/PDFdownloads/csb.

The CSB is a quarterly bulletin that includes current, new, and revised information about the library's cataloging and classification practices and policies. The CSB lists revised Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules 2; Library of Congress Rule Interpretations of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules 2; changes to the American Library Association/Library of Congress Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts; changes to the Library of Congress subject headings; and includes "Cataloging Publication News," "News of Cataloging Projects," and more.

"The Library is committed to providing its products and services in a way that is sustainable, accessible and provides the greatest benefit to its customers," said Eugene Flanagan, chief of the library's office of business enterprises, which oversees the Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS).

Comprising 123 volumes, dating from summer 1978 through spring 2009, the CSB can be accessed directly in PDF from the library's CDS website. The online issues are available at no cost. In addition, the issues are available and searchable in Cataloger's Desktop, a CDS fee-based, online service that contains the most widely used cataloging documentation resources in an integrated, online system. For Cataloger's Desktop, visit www.loc.gov/cds/desktop.

Hard copies or paper versions of the bulletin are still available by paid subscription. To order, visit www.loc.gov/cds/catman.html#csb.

The Cataloging Distribution Service of the Library of Congress packages, distributes, and markets the library's cataloging records and cataloging-related publications, tools, and resources. Catalogers within the Library of Congress and in libraries around the world rely on the standards and technical publications distributed by CDS to organize their collections for effective access.

Source: Library of Congress

ProQuest Buys Back NAPC Microfilming Assets

ProQuest (www.proquest.com) has acquired assets related to the microfilming of newspapers, collections (such as groups of books, manuscripts, and historical documents), and dissertations from National Archive Publishing Co. (NAPC; www.napubco.com), formerly a key supplier of microfilm services to ProQuest. ProQuest sold the microfilming assets to NAPC in 2005. (For details, see our NewsBreak at http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/ProQuest-Sells-Periodical-Microfilm-and-Coursepack-Businesses-to-Newly-Formed-Company-16086.asp.) ProQuest expects to integrate the assets smoothly, providing full service to its customers who rely on microfilm as the definitive archive for preservation and storage of important historical documents.

ProQuest has had a close working relationship with NAPC because of the latter's commitment to and experience with superior microfilm manufacturing processes. NAPC was founded in 2005, when ProQuest sold its microfilm manufacturing operation to focus its efforts on digital information, which the company saw as a key growth area. While ProQuest's digitization initiatives have indeed grown, the company remains committed to microfilm as the gold standard of preservation.

In January, ProQuest released the web-based microfilm viewing service, Digital Microfilm, which enables microfilm images to be viewed online rather than only in the library on special equipment. The Digital Microfilm process works by scanning microfilm and supporting the resulting digital copy on a hosted site. Users see the content as if they were looking at microfilm through their computer screen, with a browsable, full-page image of the newspaper that can be explored.  Content is supported with additional data such as title, year, month, day, and page-making it easy to skip through "reels." In this online environment, the user can view enhanced, high-resolution gray-scale images; scroll through issues; zoom; crop; print; save; and email images. For more information, visit www.proquest.com/en-US/catalogs/databases/detail/digital_microfilm.shtml.

Source: ProQuest

Really Strategies Acquires DocZone.com

Really Strategies, Inc. (www.reallysi.com) announced the acquisition of DocZone.com, a software-as-a-service XML content management provider (www.doczone.com). DocZone.com is known for its affordable DITA-based technical publications solution that is easy to configure and use. The acquisition will complement Really Strategies' RSuite product line, offering publishers, media companies, and technical publishers an array of pricing and implementation models that fit their business needs.

With the addition of DocZone.com, Really Strategies has an established customer base in several new markets, including Fortune 500 technology and manufacturing companies. The acquisition was led by Brook Venture Partners. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. With more than 100 clients in the publishing, media, and technical publications markets, the combined company will be headquartered in Audubon, Pa., with a strong European presence to serve a global client base.

Really Strategies, Inc., a privately held company founded in 2000, provides content solutions and services to publishers, media companies, and other content-centric companies. From content creation to delivery, Really Strategies helps bring strategy, content, and technology together to analyze, architect, and implement appropriate tools and technologies. Its solutions encompass XML editorial tools, XML repositories, content management systems, and editorial and production systems. Its services include workflow re-engineering; technology evaluation; DTD and Schema development; business, functional, and technical requirements development; and electronic product development strategy.

Source: Really Strategies, Inc.

New Version of Knowledge Management Software: lexiCan 3

vetafab Software GmbH of Darmstadt, Germany, has released a new version of its Windows application lexiCan. According to the developer, the upgrade improves productivity and collaboration. Individuals and teams use lexiCan to manage information and knowledge for projects in business management, research, and idea gathering. The developer also introduced a new read-only client, lexiCan Reader, which allows users to publish content such as guides, manuals, references, support databases, and knowledgebases within a network with one click, making publishing as easy as editing. The software remains simple; no special training is required.

Similar to a personal Wikipedia, lexiCan allows users to build articles using texts, pictures, tables, links to websites, and files. Using the title as a reference, articles can be accessed in seconds, even in voluminous collections, overcoming the daily burden of clicking through folder hierarchies as done in Windows Explorer. Unlike Wikipedia, lexiCan purely works as a desktop application based on Microsoft's .NET framework, enabling user convenience, such as setting links per drag and drop or dropping emails from Outlook into a description. lexiCan features full-text search that includes embedded files. The developer points at several other intuitive retrieval features, such as an automated view on pictures, embedded files, and tags. Articles can have multiple tags, which lexiCan displays as a list or a cloud. The article tree can be structured in the application's Outline section.

lexiCan uses well-known software interface conventions. The application's "Word-like" text editor allows exporting content or entire projects to Word processing applications. With the upgrade, the application has received new import and export features, including export to PDF. Project information can now also be passed on through a lexiCan reader client. And the application can now travel with the user, as lexiCan can run from a USB memory stick (Microsoft's .NET framework is required).

lexiCan is available for Windows versions 98, Millennium Edition, 2000, XP, and Vista. The standard edition for up to 30 articles per project is available as a free download from www.lexican.net and can be used with no time limit (no personal data required, no advertising). The lexiCan Pro Edition license can be acquired online for $ 49.90. The first version of lexiCan was launched in Germany in 2006 and is expanding globally. lexiCan 3 is now available in English.

Source: vetafab Software GmbH