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Weekly News Digest
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October 10, 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.
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OCLC’s Geek the Library Campaign Receives Additional Funding
OCLC’s Geek the Library community awareness campaign, piloted in 2009 and 2010 and now available to all U.S. public libraries, received an additional grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The supplementary $726,000 provides ongoing campaign materials and field support for libraries currently running the campaign and allows OCLC to work with additional public libraries that sign up by March 31, 2012. Funding ensures that participating libraries can use the campaign to reach their local communities through June 2013.Since launch, hundreds of libraries across the U.S. have enrolled to run local Geek the Library campaigns—and more than 100 new campaigns have kicked off since the pilot ended. Participants are embracing the campaign, and are enthusiastically customizing content and actively involving their communities. Participating libraries receive an initial kit of Geek the Library materials, such as posters and stickers, plus additional kits as the campaign progresses, along with access to a comprehensive online guide to implementing the campaign. This resource features pages of advice for each phase of a local campaign, printable documents, art templates and images, a forum to share ideas with other participating libraries, and a blog that features ideas and updates weekly. Field managers also provide assistance in planning and roll-out, and are available to respond to questions throughout the campaign period. Geek the Library has a national campaign presence with its website, geekthelibrary.org, and social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. Geek the Library was developed based on the results of OCLC’s research published in From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America. The research and pilot campaign were also funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Source: OCLC
Thomson Reuters Launches Book Citation Index
Thomson Reuters announced the launch of the Book Citation Index, a new resource within the Web of Knowledge platform covering 25,000 books in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities. The Book Citation Index is designed to enhance the powerful discovery and analysis capabilities of Web of Knowledge by incorporating comprehensive book citation data. Researchers can search for and identify the most relevant and esteemed literature along with the 12,000 peer-reviewed journals and 150,000 conference proceedings already indexed in Web of Knowledge, enabling users to navigate the links in citations across books, journals and proceedings. Books are indexed at the chapter level, resulting in improved searches and deeper insights into the citing behavior between books and the wider world of scholarly research. The new layer of citation data created by the addition of the Book Citation Index to Web of Knowledge has implications for the entire platform and its users. Those who work primarily in the arts and humanities will benefit from increased visibility for their works, which may not have been indexed among other scholarly publications, while all researchers will have greater opportunity for collaboration as a result of increased citations. Initially, 13.5 million additional cited references will appear in Web of Knowledge as a result of the Book Citation Index launch. Content for the Book Citation Index comprises scholarly books, both electronic and print, that present fully referenced articles of original research or reviews of the literature. It has been carefully selected based on well-defined criteria to offer the most significant literature available. The index consists of 25,000 books, dating from 2005. Coverage is expected to rise to 30,000 books by the end of 2011, with 10,000 new books added each year. In addition, universities and research institutions can connect their library’s book catalog and collection of ebooks with the Book Citation Index, increasing the visibility of valuable collections and subscriptions to users, and giving libraries greater value from their invested budget. For more information on the Book Citation Index, go to http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/bookcitationindex/?. More information on the book selection process for the index is available at http://wokinfo.com/media/pdf/BKCI-SelectionEssay_web.pdf. Source: Thomson Reuters
Digital Science Announces Investment in Labtiva; Launch of ReadCube
Digital Science, a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., announced an investment in Boston-based start-up Labtiva. The company was founded by two Harvard alumni, Robert McGrath and Siniša Hrvatin, to help researchers manage their information collections more efficiently, starting with content. The company also announced the public launch of Labtiva’s flagship product ReadCube, a free, cross-platform software application that enables researchers to create and manage their personal content library on their desktop and intuitively discover new literature in their field through a recommendation system.Annette Thomas, CEO of Macmillan Publishers, announced Digital Science’s investment in Labtiva and release of ReadCube at the Frankfurt Book Fair to an audience of STM publishers and industry leaders. “Macmillan has a long history and reputation in the scientific information space—through the work of Nature Publishing Group and now, Digital Science,” said Thomas. “ReadCube provides a sophisticated yet lightweight interface for consumers of scientific content, helping to enhance the reading experience and discovery process for researchers, allowing them to keep on top of the latest literature. I firmly believe in the promise of ReadCube, and welcome Labtiva to Digital Science’s portfolio.” Labtiva joins Digital Science’s other portfolio companies, including SureChem, BioData, 1DegreeBio, and Symplectic. Together these provide a range of state-of-the-art software and services that make research more effective. For more information on Digital Science, its portfolio companies, and products, visit its product page: http://digital-science.com/products. Source: Digital Science
Europeana Adopts New Data Exchange Agreement
Europe’s digital library, museum and archive, and the first major adopter of the Public Domain Mark for works in the worldwide public domain—has adopted a new Data Exchange Agreement. The agreement, which data providers and aggregators will transition to by the end of 2011, authorizes Europeana to release the metadata for millions of cultural works into the public domain using the CC0 public domain dedication. All metadata for cultural works accessible via the Europeana portal, including previously-delivered metadata, will then be available for free and open re-use.Additionally, the new agreement requires data providers to make best efforts to correctly identify content that is public domain as being public domain. Last October, Europeana announced plans to use the PDM as the standard mark for works free of known copyright that are shared via the Europeana portal, playing an important infrastructural role in the EU’s efforts to ensure that all works shared online are marked with rights information. Europeana has also published non-binding Usage Guidelines that users of the metadata are asked to follow, including a specific request that users “actively acknowledge and give attribution to all the sources” of the metadata. Sources: Creative Commons and Europeana
ProQuest Microfiche Collection Linked to Digital Texts
Advances in the ProQuest research environment have streamlined access to a major literary collection assembled by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Scholars and students who rely on Gates’ ground-breaking Black Literature, 1827-1940, a microfiche collection, can now quickly identify and connect to tens of thousands full-text, digitized versions of articles found through ProQuest’s Black Studies Center and Historical Black Newspapers.In the late 1980s, Gates began the development of Black Literature, opening what he called the “hermetically sealed library of African American periodical literature after a century of neglect.” The collection captures novels, short stories, poems and reviews—scattered throughout 110 black periodicals and newspapers—and has been widely acclaimed for its ability to uncover early or little known works by some of history’s most influential authors. Despite the importance of the works, students’ and scholars’ only online access to this vast body of American literature has been a digital index, with full-text residing on microfiche. However, ProQuest used the digital index as ignition, enabling deep links that could seamlessly connect scholars to full-text, digital versions of articles archived in Black Studies Center and ProQuest Historical Black Newspapers. In fact, 27,000 works contained in Black Literature are now available for exploration through these online resources. Source: ProQuest
CCC Introduces New Content Licensing Services
Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), a not-for-profit organization and provider of licensing solutions, launched a suite of new services to simplify the licensing of content between rightsholders and enable republication: the Permissions Acquisition Service and the Republication License. These services were developed in response to the proliferation of new digital formats and rights standards, which have led to a dramatic increase in the types and numbers of permissions publishers need prior to going to market with publications containing previously published content. As a result, permissions acquisition has placed a significant burden on publishers’ staffs, as well as their production schedules. The Permissions Acquisition Service provides a team of experienced rights acquisition specialists who acquire the permissions needed to reuse content in new titles or expand the reuse rights when republishing backlist titles in new editions, formats, or languages. This service offers detailed reporting that equips publishers with powerful planning tools, enabling the publisher to manage projects with confidence. CCC provides a record of the rights acquired for future reference and streamlines payment to a single invoice. The Republication License is an opportunity for both vendors and acquirers of republication rights to participate in a smart, streamlined licensing solution that eliminates the time-consuming, expensive back-and-forth of rights negotiation. In creating this balance, CCC’s long history of successful rights brokerage is uniquely powerful. The Republication License enables rightsholders to acquire and grant rights directly on copyright.com. This self-service model balances the needs of buyers and sellers of republication rights, avoiding the costly and labor intensive nature of these transactions. Sellers benefit from pricing flexibility and automation to more efficiently manage operations. Source: Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
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Brandi Scardilli
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