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Weekly News Digest
January 24, 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. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks. CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

Mergent Metadata to be Added to EBSCO EDS

Mergent’s Annual Reports Database includes more than 300,000 annual reports from global publicly traded companies and is continually updated throughout the year. Metadata from Mergent’s collection will also include archived annual reports dating back 10 years. Additional collections from Mergent may be added to the Base Index of EDS in the future.

Founded in 1900, Mergent has become a leading provider of business and financial data on global publicly listed companies. The company is based in the U.S. but maintains a strong global presence, with offices in New York, Charlotte, San Diego, London, Tokyo, and Melbourne.

Mergent joins a long list of publishers and other content partners who are taking part in EDS to bring more visibility to their content, such as, the British Library, Baker & Taylor, NewsBank, Readex, LexisNexis, JSTOR, Alexander Street Press, Oxford University Press, American Psychological Association, ABC-CLIO, ingentaconnect, Government Printing Office, ECONIS and for mutual customers Web of Science and H.W. Wilson—a growing list of information sources available to EBSCO Discovery Service users.

At present, the EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers. Although constantly growing, today the EDS Base Index provides metadata for nearly 50,000 magazines and journals, approximately 825,000 CDs and DVDs, nearly six million books, more than 100 million newspaper articles, more than 400,000 conference proceedings, and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source types.

Source: EBSCO Publishing

Free AllBusiness.com Download Center

Examples of available downloads include a standard format for a business plan, a press release package, a template for a marketing plan, and a job description for a senior account manager. You can use the downloads as is, but because they come as standard Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents, it’s easy to customize them to fit a company’s particular needs. You just have to register to join AllBusiness—also quick, easy, and free, and with additional benefits including access to seven different email newsletters and the ability to join the discussions on its popular blogs.

Source: AllBusiness.com

OCLC Releases New Report on Perceptions of Libraries

The OCLC membership report explores the following:

• Technological and economic shifts since 2005
• Lifestyle changes Americans have made during the recession, including increased use of the library and other online resources
• How a negative change to employment status impacts use and perceptions of the library
• How Americans use online resources and libraries in 2010
• Perceptions of libraries and information resources based on life stage, from teens to college students, to senior Americans.

The membership report is based on U.S. data from an online survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of OCLC. OCLC analyzed and summarized the results to produce Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community, which is available for download on the OCLC website free of charge. Print copies of the report are available for a nominal fee to cover the cost of printing and shipping.

Cathy De Rosa, OCLC global vice president of marketing, principal contributor to the membership report, said changes in the information landscape and the impact of the economic downturn made it important to update the 2005 survey findings.

“Five years is at least one information generation in the digital information age,” said De Rosa. “To put the pace of change in perspective consider that in 2005 there was no Twitter (launched July 2006), Facebook hadn’t opened up to the general public (September 2006), and the first iPhone was still two years away (January 2007).”

OCLC encourages feedback and discussion about the new membership study at https://www3.oclc.org/app/members_report/.

To see other OCLC membership reports, visit http://www.oclc.org/reports/default.htm.

Source: OCLC

Credo Reference Enhances Topic Pages With H.W. Wilson Databases

The range of H.W. Wilson’s reference databases, covering a wide variety of subject disciplines with indexing of periodicals, books, art, cinema images, and biographies, can now be integrated with Credo Topic Pages, which were designed to provide contextualized, orderly access to authoritative content. Each of the approximately 9,000 Credo Topic Pages is a starting point that assembles topical material from resources within and outside the library. Libraries that include the additional content will now see their subscribed to WilsonWeb collections right on the Topic Pages.

Source: Credo Reference

EBSCO Publishing Rolls Out World Politics Review

World Politics Review includes more than 3,000 original articles written by a network of more than 400 contributors from around the world—subject-matter experts in journalism, research organizations, academia, government, and elsewhere. The resource is used by academic researchers with a serious interest in international relations, foreign affairs, world politics and geostrategy as well as foreign policy professionals working primarily within government, military, academia, intelligence, and diplomacy.

Content from WPR is fully linked to other full-text resources from EBSCO, enabling users to easily access the relevant analysis and match it to other full-text commentary and information. World Politics Review publisher Hampton Stephens says World Politics Review provides expert geopolitical analysis for a global audience. “World Politics Review is designed to allow users to both closely follow and deeply understand the events, issues, and trends that constitute international affairs. We do this by combining the analytical depth of a scholarly journal with a continuous publishing frequency and a variety of content formats. Being able to search WPR content alongside EBSCOhost resources provides additional context for researchers, and is an exciting extension of our capabilities and mission.”

In addition to access on EBSCOhost, subscribers will have full access to content on the World Politics Review website.

Source: EBSCO Publishing

EasyBib.com and OCLC Collaborate on Library-Branded Citation Service

EasyBib is an automatic bibliography composer, used by more than 23 million unique visitors in the past year. More than 500,000 new citations are added each day during peak periods of use, such as at the end of university terms. Students simply search or enter bibliographic data of a particular source and EasyBib formats the citation, alphabetizes the works cited list, and exports it to word processing software. Students can also use EasyBib’s notebook feature to dynamically organize their research information associated with their citations.

EasyBib, a WorldCat.org partner site, already generates a robust traffic stream to libraries through WorldCat.org, using the WorldCat Search API to power book search citations. Jointly designed by OCLC and Imagine Easy Solutions, EasyBib Library Edition will provide an opportunity for libraries to reach students where they already go for help with citation formatting. The Library Edition will offer a variety of features designed to extend library reach and usage, such as:

• Library-branded interface
• Links to library home page and catalog
• Search box for easy discovery of additional resources at your library and beyond
• Integration with virtual reference services
• IP redirects to your library’s customized version
• Deep links into a library’s OPAC
• Integration with the OpenURL Gateway.

OCLC will be the exclusive provider for EasyBib Library Edition, and a provider for EasyBib School Edition, EasyBib’s standard institutional service. OCLC is currently working with a set of member libraries that will serve as test sites for the beta service of Library Edition, which is expected to be available in the U.S. and Canada by spring 2011.

Source: OCLC