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Weekly News Digest

December 1, 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.

STN to Launch New Platform in 2012

Powerful new elements will include the following:

• Project-oriented workflow
• Combined text and structure queries
• Simultaneous query and results interaction
• Real-time analysis of results
• Virtually no system limits

Teams of information technology professionals at FIZ Karlsruhe and CAS have designed and developed the new system with active guidance and insights from a global customer advisory council. “It is exciting to be part of the development process of the new STN platform,” according to Mark Harper, patent information analyst at Sanofi and member of the STN Advisory Council. “The new system will greatly improve efficiency when searching STN, resulting from improved workflow support for patent experts.”

An alpha release to the STN Advisory Council is planned for later this year, and a release to global STN fixed fee customers will follow in 2012. The initial customer release will comprise the core databases of CAS and Thomson Reuters, a number of full-text patent files, and a suite of critical features and functions. Subsequent releases will be enhanced with additional databases and functionality. The current STN system, including STN Express and STN on the Web, will continue to be available and fully supported throughout the development of the new platform.

STN is the search tool that patent experts including the world's major patent offices depend on for precision searching and comprehensive, timely, and high-quality coverage of science and intellectual property information. STN provides access to more than 170 databases and is a premier source for the world’s disclosed scientific and technical research. STN databases can be accessed through STN Express, STN on the Web, and STN Easy. STN is operated jointly by CAS and FIZ Karlsruhe worldwide and is represented in Japan by JAICI.

Related links

www.cas.org/products/stnfamily/index.html

www.stn-international.de

Source: CAS

OverDrive Announces Ebook Device 'Test Drive' Program for Libraries

The Sony Reader Wi-Fi (Model PRS-T1) has been selected as the first “Test Drive Approved” device. Test Drive Approved device requirements include compatibility with the library’s ebook catalog, direct Wi-Fi checkout and ebook download via an onboard browser or app, and copyright protection (DRM) and lending practices that conform to rules as required by publisher permissions. Test Drive devices are selected based on durability, ease of use for library staff and patrons to setup and maintain, as well as battery life, performance, and other usability factors.

Over the coming weeks and months, OverDrive will be announcing additional “Test Drive Approved” ebook readers and tablets, including color units for use with illustrated ebook genres such as children’s titles, graphic novels, cookbooks, and other image-rich titles. OverDrive is also testing and preparing to release information for Test Drive Approved accessible devices for print-impaired readers. Accessible ebook reading devices in the Test Drive program for U.S. public libraries will support the Library eBook Accessibility Program (LEAP), OverDrive’s free service to libraries that offers accessible ebooks in partnership with Bookshare.org.

The OverDrive Test Drive program was developed in response to recommendations by The Council of State Librarians (COSLA) from its 2010 report that outlined the need for low-cost, library-friendly ebook devices that library staff could use to train and lend to patrons. Accessibility and upholding publisher rights and library policies were among the requirements listed in that report. OverDrive’s Test Drive program gives the libraries the tools needed to effectively and efficiently develop programs to select and provide their staff and patrons with such devices.

Libraries in the OverDrive network may enroll in the Test Drive program for free at www.overdrive.com/testdrive.

Source: OverDrive

Wiley-Blackwell Joins CrossMark Service Pilot

With the increase of online discoverability of different versions of a paper, it can be difficult for readers to identify what version of a paper they are looking at; it can be the submitted version, the accepted version, the published version, or it can be enhanced, amended, corrected, updated, withdrawn and even retracted. There can be many versions of a scholarly article, leading to uncertainty over what constitutes the version of record; the CrossMark logo on the publishers’ version will always alert readers to changes to a paper since its original publication.

Once the service is in place, clicking on the CrossMark logo will tell a reader the current status of a document and may also give the reader additional publication record information about the document. CrossMark will also work on PDF content that users have downloaded to their machines or devices.

The following publishers are currently participating in the CrossMark Pilot:

• Elsevier
• Oxford University Press
• The Royal Society has implemented CrossMark on 2011 issues of Proceedings B: Biological Sciences
• Wiley-Blackwell
• Vilnius Gediminus Technical University, Business: Theory and Practice

Source: Wiley-Blackwell and CrossRef

Nielsen Research Finds Metadata Helps Increase Book Sales

Nielsen’s Metadata Research leverages its bibliographic data and its historic Nielsen BookScan sales data to look at three aspects of the impact of metadata on book sales: first, how well populated was the enhanced metadata of the U.K.’s bestselling 100,000 titles of 2010, and second, which fields of enhanced metadata had the greatest impact on those sales? Thirdly, Nielsen analyzed the difference in sales before and after enhanced metadata was added to title records. The work was undertaken by Andre Breedt and David Walter of Nielsen BookScan.

Jonathan Nowell, president of Nielsen’s book information businesses, presented the initial findings at The Publishers Launch conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “Our initial findings build a compelling bank of evidence that as little as 40% and as much as 80% of a title’s sales may depend on having rich, timely, and appropriate metadata.”

Nowell said: “So far our research has been conducted only on print titles. I would expect a much higher impact on e-books, where discovery is harder and metadata, at this point in time, is generally less rich, less timely and less appropriate. The message to publishers in the global world of selling content has to be ... Invest in your metadata and disseminate it as widely as possible."

The next steps in Nielsen’s research program are to look at the impact of metadata on sales by genre and by format. Once complete, Nielsen will publish a white paper and a summary of these findings will be presented at Digital Book World in New York in January 2012, where Nowell will be speaking.

Source: Nielsen Book

NLM Enhances Drug-Naming Standard for Electronic Health Records

NDCs are product identifiers assigned by U.S. manufacturers and packagers of drugs. They are published on medication labels and packages and are often used in pharmacy inventory control and in dispensing and billing for drugs. If a single manufacturer issues the same medication in packages of different sizes (25 tablets, 50 tablets, etc.), each size has a different NDC. If more than one manufacturer produces the same medication, each assigns different NDCs. 

In contrast, the RxNorm vocabulary creates standard names and identifiers for the combinations of ingredients, strengths, and dose forms (such as Aspirin 325 MG Oral Tablet) that exist in drugs marketed in the U.S. This is the information doctors typically include when they write a prescription because they often can’t know the specific product that will be used to fill it. All medication products that contain the same active ingredients, the same strengths, and the same dose forms have the same RxNorm standard name. This standard name is connected to other information in RxNorm that can be used within EHR systems to improve patient safety.

Accurate and complete connections between NDC product codes and RxNorm standard names and identifiers have many potential uses within an individual patient’s EHR. These include the use of an NDC on a medicine bottle to speed standard data entry or to trigger an alert written in the RxNorm standard that could prevent a medication error.

At present, there is no single source that contains the NDCs for all medications currently marketed in the U.S. RxNorm has included NDCs provided by the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Multum and Gold Standard drug information sources for a number of years. Starting with the Feb. 7, 2011 release, RxNorm included a revised, filtered version of the NDC data that segregates obsolete NDCs from those currently in the marketplace. It also included First DataBank’s set of NDCs. Since August 2011, it has included the NDCs from Red Book.

Other useful data that Red Book is providing to RxNorm includes better linkages between branded drugs and their NDCs, information about whether or not drugs are still on the market, and Drug Enforcement Agency Class for controlled drugs. This additional information is instrumental in the production of the Current Prescribable Subset of RxNorm.

Source: U.S. National Library of Medicine

FindLaw Launches Legal Pulse

FindLaw Legal Pulse offers tangible user benefits: The news is up-to-date, comes from a rich variety of sources, and is tailored to audiences with legal interests. However, it is more than a simple news aggregator. It also provides an immersive experience that features the following:

• Additional legal-focused content from the FindLaw network
• A dynamic social media presence with blog posts and a real-time Twitter commentary stream from attorneys around the country
• A system that dynamically customizes content to a user’s interests. When a site visitor searches for news on a specific subject, FindLaw Legal Pulse serves up related topics, allowing the user to dig deeper into the matter.

“As its name suggests, the main thrust of FindLaw Legal Pulse is to monitor the legal world's pulse,” said Kevin Ahlvin, director of business marketing, FindLaw. “But it also allows users to explore a rich mix of complementary information and features. In that sense, it fits with our mission to educate consumers on legal issues. FindLaw.com is already a go-to destination—it has received an average of 5.1 million visits per month so far in 2011—and we are excited to add another resource for consumers.”

FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business, is an online legal website offering free legal information for consumers and is home to the largest online directory of lawyers, allowing consumers to find an attorney by practice area and location.

Source: Findlaw.com