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Weekly News Digest
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August 16, 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. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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ebrary Offers Free Ebook Collection on Cyber Bullying
According to the National Crime Prevention Council, 43% of teens have been the victims of cyber bullying in the past year. To help parents, educators, and others better understand, prevent, and take action against this growing concern, ebrary is offering a free open access collection of ebooks on Cyber Bullying. ebrary will also enable other organizations to contribute materials as long as they have copyrights.“As an internet company and content provider, we feel it is our duty to help the community better understand important issues such as cyber bullying,” said Christopher Warnock, CEO of ebrary. “By subsidizing authoritative materials from our trusted publishing partners and enabling others to upload and integrate their own critical information, we hope to provide a valuable resource for anyone who wants to address this growing problem.” ebrary’s Cyber Bullying Searchable Information Center includes such titles as Click, Click, Who's Really There?: Protect Your Family from Online Predators, Pedophiles, Privacy Loss and More, by Koh (LHK Publishing, LLC, 2006); Bullying Prevention and Intervention: Realistic Strategies for Schools, by Susan Swearer (Guilford Press, 2009); and Keep Your Kids Safe on the Internet, by Simon Johnson (McGraw-Hill, 2004). It also includes a growing selection of documents uploaded by ebrary employees from authoritative sites including the Pew Internet & American Life Project, U.S. Department of Justice, and other agencies. ebrary encourages organizations to upload their own relevant materials, right from their computers, with DASH! (Data Sharing, Fast)—a feature of many ebrary subscription ebook products. The Cyber Bullying Searchable Information Center is just one of a growing number of open access collections created by ebrary employees and customers with DASH! For a listing of additional, freely available collections please visit http://www.ebrary.com/corp/accessCollections.jsp. Source: ebrary
LexisNexis to Enrich Content with SRA’s NetOwl
LexisNexis announced that it has signed an agreement with SRA International, Inc. to implement SRA’s text analytics product NetOwl as its enterprise tool to deliver enhanced search and discovery capabilities for legal and business professionals. By integrating NetOwl’s entity, link, and event extraction capabilities into its solutions, LexisNexis will create a richer set of metadata for each piece of text-based content it offers. This enrichment will deliver a more sophisticated semantic search capability, answer filtering, and analytics to LexisNexis customers—enhancing their ability to quickly find and analyze the information they need from across large enterprise databases.NetOwl provides highly scalable advanced text analysis technology that automatically identifies and extracts key entities, links, and events from any text data source, in multiple languages. NetOwl automatically identifies and extracts more than 70 types of entities—such as people, organizations, places, addresses, or other things—from text data. NetOwl also has the unique capability to extract more than 150 types of links and events indicating complex semantic relations between entities, such as employment, as well as semantic relations among events and its participant entities. Source: LexisNexis
Convert to RFID Tags With Tech Logic’s uTagIT
Libraries converting their collection from barcode labels to RFID tags now have a portable, convenient, and cost effective solution: Tech Logic’s new uTagIT tagging system. uTagIT is a portable, compact solution for libraries, meeting their on-demand RFID tagging needs. The uTagIT system provides the convenience and ease of use to encode barcode numbers onto RFID tags. The uTagIT system streamlines the conversion process, allowing library staff to efficiently tag the library’s entire collection.The conversion process has never been easier. Just place an RFID tag on the RFID antenna and scan an item’s barcode label. Using Tech Logic’s tagging software, the barcode label number is written onto the RFID tag. The ease and convenience of uTagIT enables library staff to quickly convert the library’s collection. uTagIT comes with a hard-sided aluminum case with a handle and a netbook computer. The system is compact, portable, and light weight. The case can be moved to various locations throughout a library, making it convenient to tag items, whether tagging in a central location or in the library stacks. Features of the uTagIT system include the following: - Hard-sided aluminum case with handle
- 13.56 MHz RFID interface antenna with 0.5 – 18 in. reading distance
- Barcode scanner with flexible stand
- Dell netbook computer, including Tech Logic’s tagging software
- Optional external battery that provides an additional 3.5 – 4 hours of battery life
Source: Tech Logic
OCLC Announced Enhanced WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway
Repository managers from libraries, museums, archives and other cultural heritage and research institutions can now contribute metadata records for digital materials to WorldCat using the new, enhanced WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway, increasing visibility and accessibility of special collections, institutional repositories, and other unique digital content to web searchers worldwide.In July 2009, OCLC introduced the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway to users of OCLC CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management software. Based on the OAI protocol, the Gateway enabled CONTENTdm users to upload the metadata of their digital collections to WorldCat. Recent enhancements to the Gateway now make it possible for any OAI-compliant repository to contribute metadata to WorldCat to gain broader visibility for their digital content. The enhanced WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is freely available to institutions interested in increasing the visibility of their digital content through WorldCat, the comprehensive source for discovery of materials held by libraries, museums, archives and other cultural heritage and research institutions. Visibility is increased through WorldCat.org, the web destination for discovery of collections, and also through partnerships with Google, Yahoo!, and an active and growing library developer network. Designed for self-service use, the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway is a web-based tool that enables repository managers to customize how their metadata displays in WorldCat.org and determine their metadata harvesting schedule—monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. Additionally, it applies their institution’s “holdings symbol” to their records, thereby highlighting the unique information resources their institution is contributing to WorldCat. There are more than 25 million metadata records for digital items currently accessible through WorldCat.org, most of which were contributed as part of OAIster, a union catalog of records representing open archive resources from around the world. The number of digital records in WorldCat and their use continues to grow. Since 2006, there have been more than 600 million visits to WorldCat.org and more than 36 million click-throughs to libraries. With WorldCat.org, users are only three clicks away from an institution’s digital content. Source: OCLC
EOS International Enters Digital Library Market
Library automation vendor EOS International has announced EOS.Web Digital, designed for libraries whose collections are stored in digital, electronic formats. The application and digital content may be stored on a local network server or accessed remotely from one of the company’s global data centers.In addition to traditional library features, EOS.Web Digital has many value-added features specifically designed for electronic libraries, including: - Electronic Resource Management
- Electronic Content Management
- Content Aggregator
- Reference Tracking
- IP Authentication
- Classification Management
- KnowledgeBuilder
100% digital libraries are rapidly increasing in number each day. The term hybrid library is often used for libraries that have both physical and digital collections. Digital libraries have no specific vertical market and include academic, legal, medical, association, government, and any other type of library. Source: EOS International
Google Announces Additions to Biking Information in Google Maps
Google began adding U.S. biking directions to Google Maps in March 2010, and said it was eager to see the response from the cycling community. (Select “Bicycling” from the “more” dropdown menu on the map or click on the bicycle icon when asking for directions.) Through its partnership with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, it had detailed bike lane and trail information for 150 cities; and for the rest of the country, it recommended routes based on other data such as the size of the road, speed of traffic, and hill steepness. Through its “Report a problem” tool, any user can send corrections or recommend improvements, and receive notifications from Google when their report has been resolved.The response from users was tremendous. According to a post in Google’s Lat Long Blog, more than 10,000 people submitted about 25,000 suggestions for improvements to the bike maps. With their help, Google has now added bike lane and trail data for an additional 80 cities since its initial launch. Source: Google
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Brandi Scardilli
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