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Weekly News Digest

March 14, 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.

CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

Reuters Powers New Services for Science, Legal, Tax, and Accounting Pros

Thomson Reuters is launching a suite of news products designed for the information needs of professionals in the legal, tax and accounting, and science markets. It will combine Reuters news with the content of products like Westlaw and Checkpoint.

“There is no shortage of online ‘news’, and the sheer volume of it can hamper decision-making and limit innovation,” said Jim Smith, CEO of the Professional Division of Thomson Reuters. “By pairing the journalistic excellence of Reuters with the power of our Professional content and workflow tools, we are offering insight and authority that cut through the clutter and inspire innovation, ideas, and action.”

At Thomson Reuters News & Insight: Legal, journalists are covering litigation topics including securities and bankruptcy and are ramping up coverage of the trends and personalities driving global law. Journalists are working with editorial teams focused on building current awareness and other legal news content that Westlaw subscribers, especially litigators, use every day to inform their courtroom strategies and sharpen their arguments. This content, integrated with Westlaw Litigator case law, expert analysis, trial documents, jury verdicts and workflow tools, provides a dynamic, integrated litigation solution. A News & Insight online service, featuring exclusive journalism, research, and analysis for tax and accounting clients, is also in development and scheduled for release later this year.

Source: Thomson Reuters

Credo Reference Expands M.E. Sharpe Content

Credo Reference has signed an agreement to expand the M.E. Sharpe content offered on the Credo Reference platform. Researchers will now have access to the added content as a Credo Reference Publisher Collection and the forthcoming Subject Collections.

M.E. Sharpe publishes social sciences and humanities resources, including titles in economics, political science, management and public administration, history, and literature. Like all Credo Reference Publisher Collections, the M.E. Sharpe Publisher Collection is available for perpetual purchase or subscription.

Titles in the M.E. Sharpe Publisher Collection:

  • Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook
  • Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women
  • Civil Disobedience: An Encyclopedic History of Dissidence in the United States
  • Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties in America
  • Dictionary of Media and Communication
  • Encyclopedia of Education and Human Development
  • Encyclopedia of Religion and Violence
  • Encyclopedia of Swearing
  • Financial History of the U.S.
  • Guide to Islamist Movements
  • Handbook of Contemporary Behavioral Economics
  • Handbook of Cultural Intelligence
  • Research and Discovery: Landmarks and Pioneers in American Science
  • Science, Religion, and Society: An Encyclopedia
  • Storytelling: An Encyclopedia of Mythology and Folklore
  • World Folklore for Storytellers: Tales of Wonder, Wisdom, Fools, and Heroes

Source: Credo Reference

Organizations Support Free Online Access to CRS Reports

More than 30 organizations concerned with government openness and accountability, including ALA, ARL, and SLA, sent a letter to the U.S. Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington, urging him to appoint a Director of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) who will work with Congress to provide online free public access to the unclassified, non-confidential, taxpayer-funded reports produced by CRS.

The letter states:

The public needs access to these non-confidential CRS reports in order to discharge their civic duties. American taxpayers spend over $100 million a year to fund the CRS, which generates detailed reports relevant to current political events for lawmakers. But while the reports are non-classified, and play a critical role in our legislative process, they have never been made available in a consistent and official way to members of the public.

Predictably, to fill the public void left by the CRS, several private companies now sell copies of these reports at a price. This means that non-confidential CRS reports are readily available to lobbyists, executives and others who can afford to pay. Meanwhile, the vast majority of people lack the information necessary to even request reports from their Members of Congress.

Here is a list of the organizations that signed:

American Association of Law Libraries

American Library Association

American Society of News Editors

Association of Research Libraries

Bill of Rights Defense Committee

CAUS

Center for Democracy and Technology

Center for Media and Democracy

Center for Responsive Politics

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)

Defending Dissent Foundation

DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

Essential Information

Federation of American Scientists

Free Government Information

Government Accountability Project (GAP)

iSolon.org

Knowledge Ecology International

Liberty Coalition

MapLight.org

National Coalition Against Censorship

National Freedom of Information Coalition

National Security Counselors

No More Guantanamos

OMB Watch

OpenTheGovernment.org

Point of Order

Project On Government Oversight (POGO)

Public Citizen

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

RS&S INTERNATIONAL, LLC

Society of Academic Law Library Directors

Society of Professional Journalists

Special Libraries Association

Sunlight Foundation

University of Missouri Freedom of Information Center

Washington Coalition for Open Government

Source: SLA

EBSCO Discovery Service Boosts STM Content With IGI Global Agreement

IGI Global journals and reference books will be searchable via EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS). An agreement between EBSCO Publishing and IGI Global will allow metadata for 131 journals and more than 1,500 reference books to be added to the Base Index of EDS.

IGI Global is an international publishing company specializing in scholarly research publications and databases covering all aspects of information science technology utilization and management. The metadata from IGI Global will greatly expand the international STM resources available to EDS users.

Metadata that will be available via EDS include IGI Global’s peer reviewed journals—providing a focus on information/computer science & technology applied to business and public administration, engineering, education, medicine and healthcare and social sciences. The agreement also includes their diverse collection of reference books. The reference books will supply cutting-edge research in information science, business science, medical information science, and engineering science from authors and editors from all over the world.

IGI Global joins a long list of publishers and other content partners who are taking part in EDS to bring more visibility to their content. EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box—searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.

Source: EBSCO Publishing

New Pew Research Center Report: Local News Is Going Mobile

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has released a new report on people using mobile devices—smart phones and tablets—to get local news and information. The report, “How mobile devices are changing community information environments,” says that local news is going mobile. Nearly half of all American adults (47%) report that they get at least some local news and information on their cellphone or tablet computer.

What they seek out most on mobile platforms is information that is practical and in real time: 42% of mobile device owners report getting weather updates on their phones or tablets; 37% say they get material about restaurants or other local businesses. These consumers are less likely to use their mobile devices for news about local traffic, public transportation, general news alerts, or to access retail coupons or discounts.

Compared with other adults, these mobile local news consumers are younger, live in higher income households, are newer residents of their communities, live in nonrural areas, and tend to be parents of minor children. Adults who get local news and information on mobile devices are more likely than others to feel they can have on impact on their communities, more likely to use a variety of media platforms, feel more plugged into the media environment than they did a few years ago, and are more likely to use social media:

  • 35% of mobile local news consumers feel they can have a big impact on their community (vs. 27% of other adults)
  • 65% feel it is easier today than 5 years ago to keep up with information about their community (vs. 47% of nonmobile connectors)
  • 51% use six or more different sources or platforms monthly to get local news and information (vs. 21%)
  • 75% use social network sites (vs. 42%)
  • 15% use Twitter (vs. 4%)

Tablets and smartphones have also brought with them news applications or “apps.” One-quarter (24%) of mobile local news consumers report having an app that helps them get information or news about their local community. That equates to 13% of all device owners and 11% of the total American adult population. Thus, while nearly 5 in 10 get local news on mobile devices, just 1 in 10 use apps to do so. Call it the app gap.

Many news organizations are looking to mobile platforms to provide new ways to generate revenue in local markets. The survey suggests there is a long way to go before that happens. Currently, only 10% of adults who use mobile apps to connect to local news and information pay for those apps. This amounts to just 1% of all adults.

This survey is being released as a part of the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2011 State of the News Media Report. These results come from a national phone survey of 2,251 American adults (age 18 or more) in English and Spanish. Some 750 of the interviews were conducted on cellphone. The margin of error for the full sample is +/- 2 percentage points.

Source: Pew Research Center

Two University Press Ebook Initiatives Announce Merger

Project MUSE Editions (PME) and the University Press e-book Consortium (UPeC) have joined forces. The result of this merger—the University Press Content Consortium (UPCC)—will launch Jan. 1, 2012. The partnership allows ebooks from an anticipated 60-70 university presses and non-profit scholarly presses—representing as many as 30,000 frontlist and backlist titles—to be discovered and searched in an integrated environment with content from nearly 500 journals currently on MUSE.

The merger is part of a multimillion-dollar commitment to the ongoing growth and expansion of Project MUSE, according to director Dean Smith. “By leveraging the MUSE brand and investing in technology that ensures the program's future performance, we can grow at a rapid pace while continuing our 15-year tradition of providing quality scholarly content at a fair price.”

Representatives of UPeC and PME worked closely with librarians over the past 2 years to develop a scholarly ebook model that benefits both libraries and presses. Incorporating extensive research and feasibility analysis from both groups, the UPCC Collections will be sold exclusively by MUSE in comprehensive and subject-based collections, with minimal digital rights management. (It will not sell titles individually, though presses will still be able to sell ebooks individually to libraries and readers.)

The University Press e-book Consortium emerged in 2009 to explore the feasibility of a university press-based ebook initiative. Five press directors serve as UPeC principals: Steve Maikowski (http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/mm10sp-maikowski.pdf), New York University Press; Alex Holzman, Temple University Press; Marlie Wasserman, Rutgers University Press; Eric Halpern, University of Pennsylvania Press; and Donna Shear, University of Nebraska Press. UPeC planning and development was supported by two grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Project MUSE is a provider of digital humanities and social science periodical content; since 1995, its electronic journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide.

Source: Project MUSE



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