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Weekly News Digest

August 31, 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 Enhances Overlap Analysis Tool

EBSCO (www.ebsco.com) released new enhancements to Overlap Analysis reporting, which is offered exclusively on EBSCO's A-to-Z platform. Librarians now have tools for comparing coverage overlap in library e-collections.

EBSCO A-to-Z is a web-based tool for organizing and providing links to a library's e-resources with comprehensive reporting for analysis and evaluation of a library's complete e-collection. Librarians are already familiar with the multiple reports A-to-Z offers, including reporting on usage, link-outs, and knowledgebase changes; A-to-Z also offers Overlap Analysis reporting that features the only available at-a-glance evaluation for library collections. A-to-Z's enhanced Overlap Analysis reporting eliminates guesswork-library collections can be compared simply and clearly on one page with the option to export directly into Microsoft Excel.

The addition of the new functionality to A-to-Z's Overlap Analysis reporting enhances the already effective comparison that A-to-Z offers librarians for identifying overlaps and unique coverage in e-collections:

• Filter reports by coverage dates to focus the analysis on the all-important current content
• Easily identify unique and overlapping titles with the simplified summary report format
• View "Years of Unique Coverage" on the title-details drill-down report, allowing librarians to see at a glance what titles in which packages offer the most unique coverage
• Export reporting to Excel quickly and efficiently with one step

Source: EBSCO

Nominations Sought for 2009 AIIP Tech Award

The Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP; www.aiip.org) announced that nominations are now open for the 2009 AIIP Technology Award. The deadline for nominations is Sept. 20, 2009. The awards will be presented to the winners at Information Today, Inc.'s Internet Librarian conference (www.infotoday.com/il2009) on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2009, in Monterey, Calif.

You are welcome to nominate any company or individual that produces information products (databases, web organizers, internet sites) to enter the competition. There will be two categories: one for web-based services and another for desktop software. Successful entries in each category will be new or revamped products or technologies that help information professionals with their day-to-day operations in locating, analyzing, and organizing information. The product must be related to the information field; AIIP does not consider accounting, word-processing, database or spreadsheet, or other programs not directly related to locating, analyzing, or organizing data appropriate for this award.

Details about the award and a downloadable form for nominations can be found online at www.aiip.org/techawardnominations. Please send the nomination form to Iuliana Pop, AIIP awards committee chair at icar-consulting@rogers.com. The 2008 winner of the AIIP Technology Award was 10-K Wizard, for its Regulatory Database product, with honorable mention to PBWiki, for its online wiki application, and to Tableau Software's Desktop Tableau, for its visualization software.

Source: AIIP

IFR Intelligence Reports Now Available on Sony Reader

Thomson Reuters International Financing Review (IFR), an online news and market analysis service, introduced the Sony Reader as a new platform for downloading market intelligence reports. With each report sold, the company will provide clients with a free Sony Reader preloaded with the content. The free Sony Reader campaign will run throughout the month of September.

 "Thomson Reuters is constantly seeking new opportunities to deliver targeted information to our clients in ways that allow them to access the content they want, when they want it," says Maria Molland, managing director of new ventures at Thomson Reuters. "By providing our industry-leading reports via Sony Readers, we're offering clients yet another way to get at the real-time insight they need on a convenient and easy-to-use platform."

These reports, traditionally published in hard copy, vary in length from 50-70,000 words. Currently, the offer is only for the reports "Investing in Inflation" and "Opportunities in Distressed Debts and Assets"; others will be added. The list price for each report is £695 (about $1,100 U.S.). A company representative says it is "always looking for additional platforms and new partners. We will look forward to receiving feedback from clients on the attractiveness of providing future reports on the Sony Reader, Kindle or other platforms."

Source: Thomson Reuters (www.thomsonreuters.com)

Google Books Offers Downloads in EPUB Format

Google Books (http://books.google.com) is now offering downloads in EPUB format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It's supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you'll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format.

The company used the Google Books blog to make the announcement (http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2009/08/download-over-million-public-domain.html).

By adding support for EPUB downloads, we're hoping to make these books more accessible by helping people around the world to find and read them in more places. More people are turning to new reading devices to access digital books, and many such phones, netbooks, and e-ink readers have smaller screens that don't readily render image-based PDF versions of the books we've scanned. EPUB is a lightweight text-based digital book format that allows the text to automatically conform (or "reflow") to these smaller screens. And because EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices, works you download from Google Books as EPUBs won't be tied to or locked into a particular device. We'll also continue to make available these books in the popular PDF format so you can see images of the pages just as they appear in the printed book.

For more information about EPUB, visit the website of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), the trade and standards association for the digital publishing industry, at www.idpf.org.

Source: Google Books

Sony Announces Wireless Ebook Reader and Library Finder

Sony Electronics, Inc. announced the third member of its new ebook Reader family, the Reader Daily Edition, a wireless model with 3G connectivity (www.sony.com/reader). The Daily Edition, priced at about $399, joins the Reader Pocket Edition for $199 and the Reader Touch Edition for $299 that were announced earlier in August, along with the company's adoption of support for the EPUB open ebook standard. (For details, see the NewsBreak: http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Sony-Announces-New-Ebook-Readers-and-EPUB-Standard-Support-55729.asp.) Sony also announced the Library Finder, an application to enable users to access their local library's collection of ebooks via the Sony eBook Store.

The Reader Pocket Edition and the Reader Touch Edition are available immediately, and the Reader Daily Edition will be available this December in time for the holidays at Sony Style stores and SonyStyle.com.

The Reader Daily Edition gives consumers wireless access via AT&T's 3G mobile broadband network to Sony's eBook Store from just about anywhere in the U.S. Book lovers will be able to browse, purchase, and download books as well as select newspapers and magazines when and where they want. There are no monthly fees or transaction charges for the basic wireless connectivity, and users still have the option to side load personal documents or content from other compatible sites via USB.

All three models feature E Ink Vizplex electronic paper display that emulates the look of ink on paper. Sony's eBook Library software 3.0, which now includes support for many Macs as well as PCs, makes it easy to transfer and read any Adobe PDF (with reflow capability), EPUB, Microsoft Word, BBeB (BroadBand eBook) files, or other text file formats on the Reader.

Sony, working with OverDrive (www.overdrive.com), a digital distributor of ebooks and to libraries, will now offer visitors to the eBook Store by Sony easy access to their local library's collection of ebooks with the new Library Finder application. Thousands of libraries in the OverDrive network offer ebooks optimized for the Sony Reader, and visitors can now find these libraries by typing their ZIP code into the Library Finder. Through the selected library's download website, visitors can check out ebooks with a valid library card, download them to a PC, and transfer them to their Reader. At the end of the library's lending period, ebooks simply expire.

Source: Sony

Information Today, Inc. Acquires the Search Engine Meeting

Information Today, Inc. (www.infotoday.com), a technology-focused magazine publisher and conference organizer, has acquired the Search Engine Meeting from Infonortics Ltd. of Tetbury, U.K. (www.infonortics.com). The Search Engine Meeting has been held for 14 straight years in a variety of locations.

The conference, generally held in April, draws together those interested in building better search engines-such as search engine designers and developers-and those interested in deploying advanced search technologies within their organizations. Attendees typically represent the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Most have strong technical orientations.

"We believe this conference is an ideal complement to our existing conference, which is called Enterprise Search Summit," says Tom Hogan, president and CEO of Information Today, Inc. "The Search Engine Meeting is the conference to attend to get cutting-edge information on the latest search engine trends and developments."

Harry Collier of Infonortics said, "When it was time for me to step down as the organizer of this conference, I was hoping that it would land in the hands of a company that is known for producing high-quality events in this field. Information Today certainly fits that criterion."

The last several Search Engine Meetings have been held in Boston, and Information Today, Inc. will be announcing its plans for 2010 dates and venue shortly.

Source: Information Today, Inc.