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Weekly News Digest
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January 18, 2011 — 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.
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Oxford University Press Introduces Cross-University Platform for Monographs
Oxford University Press (OUP) has announced a new online platform for university press monograph content. Having redeveloped the Oxford Scholarship Online platform, OUP is launching University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO) and inviting the University Press community to take advantage of a fully enabled XML environment with search and discovery functionality.Responding to increased demand for online scholarly content, UPSO streamlines the research process by making disparately published monographs easily accessible, highly discoverable, and fully cross-searchable via one online platform. Research that previously would have required users to jump between a variety of books and disconnected websites can now be concentrated through a single search engine. UPSO creates an individually-branded home for monographs from each participating university press just as it has done for Oxford Scholarship Online while allowing highly intuitive tools to deep search across all the content in the program. Benefits of UPSO for academics, libraries, and partner presses include the following: - Provides the highest quality scholarly content in all subject areas
- Fully cross-referenced and cross-searchable, with clickable citations from bibliographies and footnotes, including OpenURL and DOI-linking support, and more
- Allows users to streamline research through a single online platform
- Enables libraries to reduce subscriptions to multiple smaller websites
- Can be easily integrated into library systems and updated frequently with new content
- Offers full customer support services as well as flexibility and choice in purchasing models
- Increases discoverability and usage of university press scholarly materials
- Offers university presses the unique opportunity to create an XML digital workflow and join a highly successful online scholarship platform, reaching the global academic market at low distribution costs
A pilot program with Fordham University Press is launching in March 2011, and OUP is in talks with a number of university presses for a full launch in fall 2011. A marketing destination site, explaining the full range of benefits of UPSO in greater depth, is coming in February 2011 at http://www.aboutupso.com. Source: Oxford University Press
SAGE Introduces SAGE Research Methods Online
SAGE announced the successful launch of SAGE Research Methods Online (SRMO): the essential tool for researchers. SRMO provides advanced search and discovery tools to support researchers and students as they explore relevant content across the social and behavioral sciences, covering quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods.The launch this month follows a beta period, allowing 3 months of free access to a test version of the product for potential subscribers. During the beta more than 19,000 individuals and more than 550 institutions registered for access, with several sales made globally prerelease. “SRMO takes SAGE’s legacy of Research Methods publishing into the future, using new technology to provide a tool to support the research process on a global scale,” said Ziyad Marar, global publishing director, SAGE. “Onto a core base of content, SAGE has developed new, innovative functionality to support students and scholars as they tackle questions around methods concepts, research design and the use and application of methods in their research.” More than 120,000 pages of SAGE’s book and reference material on research methods are available through SRMO. Key tools include a visual ‘methods map’, enabling exploration of the connections between more than 1,400 unique methods, theories, and terms; and the SRMO List function which enables users to store and share selected content. Feedback during the beta period has been incorporated into the final product, including improved search results display; an enhanced Methods Map design; and simplified registration. Source: SAGE
OCLC and The Combined Regions to Launch Public Library National Union Catalogue in UK
OCLC and The Combined Regions (TCR) have announced plans to launch Britain’s first freely accessible national public library union catalogue. Containing the bibliographic data from 80% of the U.K.’s public libraries, the service will make it possible for web users to simultaneously search 9 million bibliographic records and 50 million holdings.Leveraging information already indexed in WorldCat, the world’s largest online resource for finding library materials, this customized union catalogue will provide a view of holdings contributed by the 149 local authorities with a current full package subscription to UnityUK, the U.K.’s only nationwide network for resource sharing. The initiative will make bibliographic data more discoverable on the open web. Indexing of WorldCat data through search engines such as Google and Yahoo! will vastly improve awareness of public library resources and drive significantly increased traffic back to local libraries. Requiring no other expenditure than a current full package UnityUK subscription, the service increases visibility for public library holdings - positioning them as primary sources of information alongside other web resources. A recent agreement drafted by OCLC with input from The Combined Regions securing the provision of UnityUK and making important provisions for its future as a national platform for resource discovery and inter-lending paved the way for the development of this new union catalogue. Both organizations share an ambition to achieve wider access to public libraries. This agreement is a vital step towards that goal. The first phase of this project is to produce an initial 'proof of concept' which will be available for review by those UnityUK libraries with a full package subscription in March 2011. The Combined Regions (TCR) is a company limited by guarantee, whose members are regional library organizations and national libraries. It was formed in 1994 with the mission to produce a national electronic union catalogue, Unity. The catalogue has undergone several transformations, and reached the milestone of full U.K. coverage when it merged with LinkUK in 2006 to become UnityUK, developed and operated by OCLC. Source: OCLC
Hoover’s Announces Agreement With LinkedIn
Hoover’s, Inc. announced that it has signed an agreement with LinkedIn, the professional network, to integrate elements of LinkedIn’s functionality into Hoover’s online business information platform. This blend of capabilities is designed to allow Hoover’s customers to more efficiently prospect by leveraging existing connections within the Hoover’s workflow.Ultimately, the LinkedIn integration will provide business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals with a seamless interface to leverage their own LinkedIn networks within the context of Hoover’s business data, which is powered by D&B’s DUNSRight quality process. (Hoover’s is a D&B company.) By incorporating LinkedIn into its core platform, Hoover’s plans to deliver a clear advantage to sales professionals who want to fully work their relationships to identify their best prospects and find an “in” at those businesses. “Social media is becoming mainstream for B2B sales professionals,” said James Rogers, vice president of marketing at Hoover’s. "According to HubSpot research, more than two-fifths of companies using various social media marketing channels have acquired a customer from those channels. For B2B firms in particular, LinkedIn was identified as the most effective social media outlet for customer acquisition. Based on these numbers and our own customer data, it was natural for us to bring business networking into the Hoover's environment.” Hoover's expects the LinkedIn integration to be complete in Q1 2011. Source: Hoover’s, Inc.
SAGE Launches New Online Network, Socialsciencespace
SAGE announced the launch of a new online network, Socialsciencespace, which brings together researchers, funders, societies, think tanks, policy makers and government to explore, share, and debate the major issues in social science. Launched in association with major learned societies and professional bodies from around the world, socialsciencespace acts as a hub for all groups connected with social science research. Initial contributions feature leading figures from academia and beyond, including the Academy for Social Sciences; Institute for Education; the Metropolitan Police; the National Institute of Health; and the Institute for Government.The network features blog posts on key issues such as funding and ‘impact’; a forum to share discussion; a resource center with free videos, reports and slides, and events listings for social science conferences and seminars across the world. All content is freely accessible and the site is free to join. SAGE is an international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. On Nov. 1, 2010, SAGE announced the launch of two new social networking sites for the academic community: crimspace for criminology and criminal justice, and communicationspace for media studies and communication. These followed the success of the research methods network, Methodspace, which SAGE launched in March 2009. Source: SAGE [For more information on specialized social networks, see the NewsWatch column in the January 2011 issue of Information Today, p. 8.]
PRG Publishes 'The Survey of Library Database Licensing Practices'
Primary Research Group has published The Survey of Library Database Licensing Practices, ISBN 157440-160-2. The 115-page report looks closely at how 70 academic, special, and public libraries in the U.S., the U.K., continental Europe, Canada, and Australia plan their database licensing practices. The report also covers the impact of digital repositories and open access publishing on database licensing.Among the many issues covered: database licensing volume, use of consortiums, consortium development plans, satisfaction levels with the coverage of podcasts, video, listservs, blogs and wikis in full text databases, spending levels on various types of content, such as electronic journals, article databases, and directories, perceptions of price increases for various types of subject matter, legal disputes between publishers and libraries, contract language, impact of mobile computing, and other issues. Data is broken out by size and type of library. Among the study’s findings are the following: - The libraries in the sample spent a mean of $1.259 million USA for content licensed in electronic or joint electronic print format in 2010.
- Libraries in the sample were more interested in seeing videos and podcasts indexed in databases than listservs, wikis, blogs, or other cybermaterials.
- Consortium contracts account for a mean of 43.72% of libraries’ total licenses for electronic content.
- 17% of higher education libraries in the sample have paid a journal processing fee for an author.
- Prices for journals and market research rose the most in the past year.
- Libraries in the sample required a mean of 7.74 hours of legal assistance in contract disputes though the range was 0 to 200 hours.
- Less than 10% of higher education libraries use ebook lending services, and all were very large libraries.
- Nearly 43% of libraries with annual licensed electronic content spending of greater than $1.2 million annually track patron use of open access journals.
- Digital repositories now account for 17% of the journal articles obtained when libraries need an article that is not in their own collection.
The report is available for $89.50 from Primary Research Group or through major book distributors. Site licenses are also available. Source: Primary Research Group (with a hat tip to ResourceShelf for spotting it)
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Brandi Scardilli
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