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Weekly News Digest

June 3, 2010 — 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.

Gale and Detroit Zoological Society Partner to Distribute Science Content

Gale, part of Cengage Learning, and the Detroit Zoological Society announced an agreement to distribute animal conservation and animal welfare related content through Gale's Grzimek's Animal Life web resource. It will now feature articles, multimedia files, photographs, and illustrations provided by the Detroit Zoo and will provide a link to additional information on the Zoo's website. The new content will be accessible to library users and to Detroit Zoological Society members (Supporter level and higher) and Zoo employees.

An interactive, media-rich knowledge portal, Grzimek's Animal Life provides information on nearly 4,000 species, covering topics such as evolution, habitat, behavior, conservation status, and more. Continuously updated, the content provides a true educational experience, where users can find answers to specific questions, discover new details about animals they are familiar with, and learn more about little-known animals in new and exciting ways.

Source: Gale

enTourage Systems to Add Wolters Kluwer Legal Education Content to Ebook Store

enTourage Systems, Inc., creator of the first "dualbook"-the enTourage eDGe-announced that it has partnered with Wolters Kluwer Law & Business to enhance enTourage Systems' ebook store with legal educational material. The eDGe is a dual-screen hybrid e-reader, tablet netbook, notepad, and audio/video recorder and player in one. Its E Ink and LCD screens work together to make ebooks more interactive and multimedia rich.

Working with Wolters Kluwer Law & Business will allow enTourage Systems to add 175 leading titles for the legal sector to its ebook store, including educational casebooks, course books, and study aids, which will be integrated by fall 2010. This is the first time Wolters Kluwer Law & Business has partnered with a device manufacturer of this kind to offer its material in this interactive style.

The enTourage eDGe is made up of two screens, an E Ink screen to read e-books, take notes, and draw diagrams, and an LCD screen for web surfing, video viewing, and Microsoft Office document creating and editing. The two screens work uniquely together to load gray-scale images in color on the LCD screen, open hyperlinks in ebooks or attach web pages to passages. A built-in camera and microphone capture audio and video content that users can store and play back later. The enTourage eDGe runs on the Google Android operating system and backs up all content on enTourage Systems' servers. The device folds a full 360 degrees and orients its displays horizontally or vertically, to view as a book, single screen, or prop up laptop style. The enTourage eDGe was one of the first consumer electronics to use Marvell Smart technology, which enhances the performance of mobile devices.

In addition to the content from Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, enTourage Systems' ebook store includes more than 200,000 trade titles, e-textbooks, major magazines, newspapers, and periodicals, as well as more than one million free public domain books digitized by Google. The ebook store is a key component to the enTourage Systems ecosystem, providing a controlled user experience that also includes document back-up and sharing between devices. enTourage has also partnered with Elsevier Science and Technology, Encyclopaedia Britannica, F.A. Davis (nursing and health care content), and Oxford University Press.

Source: enTourage Systems, Inc.

Serials Solutions Developing Access Control Service

Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest, is developing Serials Solutions Access Control Service, a hosted authentication and proxy service. Access Control Service will simplify the process of accessing library resources from remote locations, combine data management with access control, and eliminate the current requirement for IT resources to implement and manage this service. 

Available later in 2010, Serials Solutions Access Control Service will authenticate users, verify their entitlement to electronic resources, and then, connect them to the library's subscribed content providers. Further, libraries will be able to consolidate management of their e-resource subscription data and its access control through the Serials Solutions Client Center, which will include a user authentication component and a Software as a Service (SaaS) proxy.

Serials Solutions Access Control Service is part of the company's overall mission to provide simple solutions to everyday issues that surround e-resources. For more information about pricing or how this service can work for your library, contact Serials Solutions at info@serialssolutions.com or visit http://www.serialssolutions.com/how-can-we-help-you/.

Source: Serials Solutions

Barnes & Noble Announces PubIt! Digital Publishing Platform

Barnes & Noble, Inc. announced its intentions to open up a self-publishing portal this summer called PubIt! The easy-to-use digital publishing and distribution platform is designed to offer qualified independent publishers and authors of self-published works expanded distribution, visibility, and protection.

The announcement marks Barnes & Noble's latest move to continue to build one of the world's largest digital catalogs, spanning ebooks, journals, periodicals, and other types of reading material. PubIt! titles will be distributed through BN.com and Barnes & Noble's eBookstore, which currently offers more than one million digital titles to millions of dedicated customers in-store and online.

Independent publishers and writers will appreciate PubIt!'s simple and competitive royalty model and compensation process, the details of which will be available in the coming weeks. Content owners' intellectual property will be well-protected with Barnes & Noble's digital rights management technology and offered in the industry standard EPUB format that allows publishers' works to be enjoyed by millions of Barnes & Noble customers on hundreds of the most popular computing, mobile, and ebook reading devices.

Whether online or on-the-go, Barnes & Noble customers will have access to PubIt! titles with the opportunity to browse, sample, buy, and download the digital content in seconds to their devices with free BN reader software. Using Barnes & Noble's Read In Store technology, nook customers can also browse the complete contents of PubIt! titles while in Barnes & Noble stores.

Source: Barnes & Noble, Inc.

LC and Columbia University to Develop Geospatial Data-Preservation Clearinghouse

The Library of Congress (LC) and Columbia University announced an agreement to create a web-based clearinghouse of information about best practices for preserving significant geospatial data. The Library's National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) will fund development of the clearinghouse at the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia's Earth Institute. CIESIN will launch a beta version of the clearinghouse later this year.

Digital maps, satellite images, and other forms of geospatial data are critically important for responding to disasters, protecting the environment and a host of other matters. But much of this information is in danger of being lost, because of evolving technology and other threats.

The clearinghouse is a direct outcome of a meeting held at the Library with representatives of the geospatial stewardship community in November 2009. At the meeting, experts discussed ways to frame a national preservation and access strategy for geospatial data that is at high risk of loss. Discussions centered on ideas for practical steps that could be undertaken quickly and would have broad impact on capabilities for long-term data management.

A recurrent topic was the limited ability to learn about data-stewardship advances, including new tools, methods, and services that have potential for broad adoption. Participants were in agreement that leveraging best practices was essential to cope with explosive data growth in a cost-effective manner. There was also consensus that a web-based information service would be the best way to address the need.

Source: Library of Congress

Baker & Taylor and LibreDigital Offer Publishers One-Stop Digital Media Services

Amid surging demand and interest in ebooks, Baker & Taylor, a provider of digital media services to publishers, and LibreDigital , Inc., a developer of digital publishing solutions, announced an expanded agreement to partner for the delivery of ebooks-creating a one-stop, comprehensive suite of services for publishers. The pair's enhanced digital services platform spans all forms of digital media-books, newspapers, and magazines-and all digital devices and applications, including the Baker & Taylor-powered Blio e-reader software, developed by K-NFB Reading Technology, and Apple's iPad.

As part of the agreement, Baker & Taylor will offer its more than 30,000 publishing partners a full range of digital services from LibreDigital. Those services and technologies, which include LibreMarket and LibrePublish, help publishers across all segments to increase the visibility and sales of their published works.
 
LibrePublish allows publishers to store and secure digital content in any form and deliver it on-demand to any marketplace or device. LibreMarket helps publishers to engage consumers and cultivate fans on social media sites, such as Facebook, while delivering the analytics necessary to ensure they are meeting the needs of readers.

Source: LibreDigital, Inc.