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Weekly News Digest
February 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.

EOS International Signs Agreement With Deep Web Technologies for Federated Search

Explorit, first developed in 2002, not only allows researchers and the public to search multiple journals from a single interface but it also delivers relevance ranking of search results with sorting and clustering of results and an alerting capability that delivers new relevant results to a user's inbox.

Abe Lederman, Deep Web Technologies president and CTO says, “The bar is high for real-time search. Users demand the most relevant results from the best information sources with the least amount of work. Bringing library OPACs and the best scholarly sources together into a single search meets those user needs.

Deep Web Technologies creates custom, federated search solutions for clients who demand precise, accurate results. The company serves Fortune 500 companies, the Science.gov Alliance, the U.S. Dept. of Energy, the Dept. of Defense, Scitopia.org, Nutrition.gov, WorldWideScience Alliance, and others.

Source: EOS International

Crocodoc Announces Embeddable HTML5 Document Viewer

Advantages of Crocodoc's HTML5 technology include the following:

• No Flash or third party software required. All that users need to view and mark up documents is a web browser.
• Familiar reading experience: Scrolling, copying and pasting, searching for text, and changing font size all behave as users expect in their web browser.
• Speed: Compared to Flash or Adobe Acrobat, Crocodoc displays documents faster, with better security and stability.
• Support for all major document types - Crocodoc supports PDFs, Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint documents, and PNG and JPEG images.
• Mobile device support: Crocodoc will be available for mobile devices in the near future.

The newly launched Crocodoc Partner Program gives application developers and content providers the ability to integrate documents seamlessly into their online offerings. Crocodoc replaces direct download links that take users off-site and require them to run Acrobat or Word; it also replaces Flash- and image-based document viewers hampered by low-fidelity, poor mobile support, and security vulnerabilities. Yammer, the enterprise social networking tool, is one of the flagship companies integrating Crocodoc technology into its service.

Source: Crocodoc

ResearchGATE Rolls Out New Design and Functionality Updates

The tools used on a regular basis such as the literature search, groups, file sharing, micro-feed, and job search are all still there, but ResearchGATE is continuously working on how it can optimize the way they are used and how their functions can improved. These changes are based on feedback from users as well as on ideas to enhance the network. Over the next few weeks, ResearchGATE will go through how the new features have been implemented into the network and how users can get the most out of them.

Source: ResearchGATE

[Editor’s Note: See also the NewsWatch column in the January 2011 issue of Information Today, “Specialized Social Networks Gain Traction.”]

EBSCO Publishing Releases 24 New Ebook Subject Sets

Subject sets are a prepackaged set of titles chosen specifically for their subject appeal. The collection development team of librarians and collection specialists use their expertise and knowledge to create collections and sets for libraries. Director of content collections for EBSCO Publishing Eve-Marie Miller says some of the recent collections were created with the international markets in mind. “While subject sets are always available to libraries worldwide, with this round of sets we specifically wanted to showcase some of our great content that appeals to an international audience. These new sets were developed in consultation with our international teams and are tailored to help meet the needs and interests of libraries around the world.”

Subject sets from EBSCO include titles published within the past 3 years, offering timely, updated information. The subject sets have no duplication among current or past offerings.

eBooks on EBSCOhost offers nearly 300,000 eBooks and audiobooks. In April EBSCO will release a preview of eBooks on EBSCOhost with a full migration to the EBSCOhost platform expected by July.

Source: EBSCO Publishing

Gale Partners With Economists’ E3 Network to Enhance GREENR Content

E3 Network scholars will contribute 10 essays targeted to college-level researchers over the course of the year. Additionally, E3 Network scholars will be writing annotated bibliographies on environmental topics that will help guide students of sustainability, economics, or public policy to the foundational literature and leading scholarship in their field. The essays and annotated bibliographies focus on student and teacher needs in the classroom, and will help students understand the complex scholarly debates in which they are just beginning to take part.

In addition, later this month Gale will provide complimentary access via the GREENR website to an annotated bibliography on green jobs created by the E3 Network. The annotated bibliography includes a list of influential publications reflecting the evolution of the relationship between green jobs and the environment, culminating in the most recent reports and analyses of green careers.

Source: Gale

Google Introduces Google One Pass for Purchasing Digital Content

Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones, and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. Importantly, the service helps publishers authenticate existing subscribers so that readers don’t have to re-subscribe in order to access their content on new devices.

With Google One Pass, publishers can customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them—offering subscriptions, metered access, “freemium” content, or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps. The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content. Payments are handled via Google Checkout.

Publishers already signed up include Media General, NouvelObs, Bonnier’s Popular Science, Prisa, and Rust Communications. Google One Pass is currently available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S.

Source: Official Google Blog