News & Events > NewsBreaks Back Index Forward

Weekly News Digest

September 20, 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.

EBSCO and John Carter Brown Library Offer Free Historical Database

The bibliography was co-developed by John Alden and Dennis Landis, curator of European books at the John Carter Brown Library. The John Carter Brown Library is a leading repository of rare books and materials and is a center for advanced research in history and the humanities. The library was founded in 1846 and has been located at Brown University since 1901.

This new database is a valuable index for libraries, scholars, and individuals interested in European works that relate to the Americas. European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750 contains more than 32,000 entries and is a comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750. It covers the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of native American peoples. A wide range of subject areas are covered; from natural disasters to disease outbreaks and slavery.

European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750 is available on EBSCOhost. EBSCOhost databases are usually available by institution-level subscription only, but EBSCO is making European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750 available to anyone interested in European works that relate to the Americas.

While the database is freely available online at http://www.europeanamericana.com, libraries may add European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750 to their EBSCOhost profiles by contacting technical support at support@ebsco.com. European Views of the Americas: 1493-1750 will be the fourth database EBSCO has made available for free joining Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Teacher Reference Center and GreenFILE.

Source: EBSCO Publishing

Web of Science Now Available With Summon Web-Scale Discovery Service

The Web of Science cited-by data is valuable and respected by both novice and experienced researchers alike, offering easy access to related and seminal works. Web of Science cited-by counts are also being used by the Summon service to assist with relevancy rankings. With access and integration of this information into the Summon web-scale discovery service, users can be even more confident that they will get the most relevant results immediately upon performing a search.

Web of Science data has been added to the Summon service unified index, allowing researchers to quickly see search results ranked by relevance. Adding Web of Science data to the index is a further demonstration of Serials Solutions’ commitment to not force researchers to execute a federated search or wade through hybrid results to find what they need.

The Summon service enables a familiar web-searching experience of the full breadth of content found in library collections—from books and videos to eresources such as articles. It aims to bring researchers back to library content and resources by providing an easy-to-use discovery tool.

Source: Serials Solutions

New Zotero Everywhere Initiative Announced

Zotero claims to be the only research software that provides full and seamless access to a comprehensive range of open and gated resources. With a single click, Zotero users have long been able to add a complete journal article, book, or other resource to their personal libraries, including bibliographic metadata and attached files like PDFs. Until now, this powerful functionality has been tied exclusively to the Firefox browser, which not all researchers can or want to use. Zotero has now announced support for Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Internet Explorer, which account for 98% of the web’s usage share. Plugins for these browsers will soon allow users to add anything they find on the web to their Zotero libraries with a single click, regardless of their browser preferences. Rather than use the Zotero pane in Firefox, users will have the new option of accessing their libraries via a standalone desktop version of Zotero, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Zotero’s web API offers any application developer the ability to access individual and group libraries via a simple, human-readable programming interface. Until now, this API has been “read-only”—users could view their libraries but they could not change them via the web or via the API. Zotero will now open its write API to the public over the coming months. With full read/write access to bibliographic data, attached files like PDFs, and the citation formatting engine, developers will be able to integrate a full range of Zotero features into their own web, mobile, and desktop applications, and users will be able to take advantage of this functionality at zotero.org.

Zotero Everywhere responds to the constantly changing needs of Zotero’s enormous research community. Downloaded millions of times since 2006 and used by hundreds of thousands of researchers daily, Zotero has grown to the world’s largest and most diverse online research community, with nearly 50 million library items presently synced to zotero.org. In addition to sharing their own individual libraries, Zotero users have formed more than 25,000 collaborative research groups to pool references, share files, and coauthor manuscripts. By providing new ways of accessing and integrating this vast array of data, Zotero Everywhere will ensure that Zotero continues to be the catalyst for the next generation of research and scholarship.

Source: Zotero

SAGE Offers Trial of SciVee Video Platform

SAGE publishes more than 560 peer-reviewed journals. The journals included in the evaluation are Psychological Science, Psychological Science in the Public Interest and Current Directions in Psychological Science.

The evaluation focuses on SciVee PubCasts, which are synchronized video abstracts that enable a reader to see and hear a scientist discuss selected sections of their online journal article. PubCasts offer a more engaging and dynamic way to present scientific knowledge than a text-only abstract. They also have been demonstrated to promote broader interest in the author’s work and increase its impact through broader distribution and accessibility on the Internet.

“SAGE is keenly focused on developing innovative new ways of disseminating scientific information,” said Jayne Marks, SAGE vice president and editorial director, Library Information Group. “There is growing interest from both readers and authors for more video and rich media within research articles. SciVee’s pubcasts appear to be an excellent vehicle for adding this content.”

Source: SAGE

AP Experiment With Windows Internet Explorer 9 Creates Timeline Reader

“We are always looking for ways to improve the way users find and engage with news,” said Jeffrey Litvack, AP’s general manager of global product development. “This project combined a number of new tools and opportunities to push that experience further.”

The new features on Windows Internet Explorer 9 enabled AP to use HTML5 to create new layouts and animations, making the reader experience much more visual. The Timeline Reader uses Windows Internet Explorer 9’s cached content ability to save user settings as well as allow users to create a custom story queue to read chronologically, including top news, sports, entertainment, and business. AP expects the experimental project to run for about 6 months.

It can be found at http://html5.labs.ap.org. For the best experience, users should visit the site with Windows Internet Explorer 9.

Internet Explorer 9 claims to be the first browser with full hardware acceleration of HTML5, harnessing the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU), reallocating much of the graphic processing to the GPU instead of the CPU. By using the GPU, Internet Explorer 9 unlocks the 90 percent of the PC’s power that went previously untapped by Web browsers. Microsoft Corp. announced the worldwide beta availability of its new browser, accompanied by more than 70 websites and global brands that created new experiences to show off the capabilities of Windows Internet Explorer 9. Users can download the new Internet Explorer 9 Beta and experience many of these new sites at BeautyoftheWeb.com.

Source: The Associated Press and Microsoft Corp.

Oxford University Press Completes Journal Content Migration

The upgrade provides various enhancements in how articles are displayed including a cleaner and more readable page layout, improvements to image display, flexible page delivery to different devices, and easier navigation. In response to the fact that over 60% of users are linking deep into content from search engines, journal articles now display contextual information alongside content, effectively making every page a home page.

The majority of the changes are behind-the-scenes to underlying technology that is not visible to users. Services such as access control are unchanged and linking syntaxes have been migrated so that there will be no effect on library and third party linking mechanisms.

Twenty pilot sites were successfully transferred during January and February followed by the remaining 223 journals in August and September. The initial project has migrated all journal content onto the new platform. Further design and functionality enhancements will be made during the rest of 2010 and beyond.

Source: Oxford University Press