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Weekly News Digest

March 26, 2012 — 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.

ebrary Announces New Strategic Approach to Ebook Acquisition

“Several converging factors have made strategic ebook acquisition possible: The number of books published electronically is at an all-time high; there are now a number of different acquisition models, and solid usage data is available since ebooks have been on the market for more than a decade,” said Kevin Sayar, president and general manager of ebrary. “We believe that these factors can provide libraries with a new, strategic way to provide researchers with access to more ebooks affordably and efficiently.”

Diversification is a key component of ebrary’s approach to strategic ebook acquisition. It is not one size fits all. Similar to a stock portfolio, libraries that diversify their acquisition models can see a better return on their investment.

For example, academic libraries can affordably serve the needs of their entire organizations by:

• Subscribing to Academic Complete, a growing and highly affordable base collection of more than 71,500 authoritative ebooks with unlimited, multiuser access
• Leveraging Academic Complete’s usage statistics to strategically determine where it makes sense to expand the collection using other models
• Supporting high-use subjects with patron-driven acquisition. This model provides access to hundreds of thousands of additional titles that are only triggered for purchase if used.
• Supplementing lower use programs with short-term loans, no commitment to purchase
• Purchasing essential titles outright
• Uploading and integrating their own digital repositories with DASH! (Data Sharing, Fast)

All ebooks acquired under any model are seamlessly integrated on the ebrary platform and are available on or offline via a dedicated mobile app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPad touch. The ebrary platform also includes rich functionality for making the research process quick and efficient. Titles can be purchased directly through ebrary’s ordering system, which combines administrative functionality in a single interface, or through their existing print acquisition workflow through book vendors such as YBP.

Source: ebrary

CLOCKSS Archive to Preserve American Mathematical Society Epublications

Elizabeth Huber, associate executive director for publishing at AMS, said, “The AMS recognizes the important role of a strong archiving policy in maintaining the scholarly record and sees this as a major part of its efforts to move forward in the use and distribution of digital formats.” CLOCKSS executive director Randy S. Kiefer added, “By archiving with CLOCKSS, AMS, one of the top publishers of advanced mathematics in the world, has ensured the survival of the mathematical research in their publications for a wide audience now and in the future.”

The 30,000-member American Mathematical Society was founded in 1888 to further the interests of mathematical research and scholarship. It serves the national and international community through its publications, meetings, advocacy and other programs.

Source: American Mathematical Society

New Agreement Adds Britannica Content to EBSCO Discovery Service

Institutions subscribing to EDS will be able to search Britannica’s Online School, PreK-8, Public Library, 21^st Century Explorer, and Academic Editions, and if their school or library subscribes to Britannica Online, they will be able to retrieve Britannica’s articles and other educational resources in their entirety.

The wide array of topics covered in these databases will greatly enhance the search experience for EDS users. They include language arts, history and society, travel and geography & science and technology. Britannica content includes encyclopedias, atlases, timelines, learning materials, magazines, websites, videos, national statistics, the classics, biographies, and news.

Britannica is part of a growing list of publishers and other content partners that are taking part in EDS to bring more accessibility to its content. The EDS Base Index represents content from about 20,000 providers (and growing) in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers. EDS 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

Source: EBSCO Publishing

More Than 600 Million Keywords Categorized by Searcher Intent on Zenya

“Zenya’s keyword application addresses a persistent challenge for many search marketing professionals: quickly identifying all of the relevant keywords for any given advertising campaign,” said Matt Lawson, vice president of marketing for Marin Software. “Building out keyword portfolios by tapping into categories of searcher intent takes a radically different approach to helping marketers remain relevant while scaling rapidly.”

Digital marketers benefit from Zenya’s categorization technology, which considers the context of keywords to identify customer intent. Unlike common keyword generators that use static databases, Zenya’s dynamic data is refreshed daily from numerous licensed sources and only includes actual search queries. Zenya’s algorithm works in conjunction with a team of subject matter experts to improve the category structure and ensure relevancy of keywords.

Zenya’s filters refine keyword sets down to precise groups. With more filters coming soon, customers can already slice keyword sets by specifying character count, eliminating invalid terms, excluding adult terms and terms banned by the search engines, incorporating negative terms, choosing whether or not to include brand names, and specifying certain categories. The Zenya brand name filter, for example, already boasts more than 170,000 unique brand terms that marketers can opt to include or exclude altogether within their specified keyword sets.

Zenya also analyzes some of the search marketing industry’s largest keyword portfolios to uncover unique metrics that accelerate campaign growth. Categorical keyword-to-impression (KTI) ratios, for example, help marketers identify product categories with high growth potential. If a “shirts” subcategory represents only 1% of a retailer’s “clothing” keywords but that subcategory generates 3% of all “clothing” impressions, the retailer can significantly grow impressions by adding quality keywords to the “shirts” subcategory. This same strategic planning also works for marketers optimizing to clicks or conversions, not just impressions.

Source: Zenya

FTC Recommends Best Practices for Consumer Privacy Protection

“If companies adopt our final recommendations for best practices—and many of them already have—they will be able to innovate and deliver creative new services that consumers can enjoy without sacrificing their privacy,” said Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the FTC. “We are confident that consumers will have an easy to use and effective Do Not Track option by the end of the year because companies are moving forward expeditiously to make it happen and because lawmakers will want to enact legislation if they don’t.”

The final report calls on companies handling consumer data to implement recommendations for protecting privacy, including the following:

• Privacy by design: Companies should build in consumers’ privacy protections at every stage in developing their products. These include reasonable security for consumer data, limited collection and retention of such data, and reasonable procedures to promote data accuracy.
• Simplified choice for businesses and consumers: Companies should give consumers the option to decide what information is shared about them, and with whom. This should include a Do-Not-Track mechanism that would provide a simple, easy way for consumers to control the tracking of their online activities.
• Greater transparency: Companies should disclose details about their collection and use of consumers’ information and provide consumers access to the data collected about them.

Based on technological advances and industry developments since the December 2010 preliminary report and in response to more than 450 staff comments, the agency is revising recommendations in three areas: the guidance’s scope, when companies should provide consumers with choices, and recommendations about data brokers.

Over the course of the next year, commission staff members will work to encourage consumer privacy protections by focusing on five main action areas: Do Not Track, mobile, data brokers, large data platforms, and promoting enforceable self-regulatory codes.

The FTC works for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them.

Source: Federal Trade Commission

Ex Libris and Bibliotheca Collaborate to Provide RFID Solutions to Libraries

Bibliotheca is a leading supplier of self-service, material flow management, and operational-efficiency technology solutions for libraries. The company offers scalable self-checkout, RFID, security, shelf-management and automated material-handling (AMH) solutions that are easily customized and can be readily integrated with Ex Libris systems. With this agreement, Ex Libris and Bibliotheca will collaborate on aligning their product road maps and providing the most advanced integrations for new versions of each company’s solutions.

Shai Robkin, Bibliotheca’s managing director with responsibility for the company’s North and South American operations, commented: “Our partnership with Ex Libris is a win for all parties—Bibliotheca, Ex Libris, and most important, our customers. Bibliotheca has worked with Ex Libris for a number of years now, but this agreement will align our technical developments and integrate them tightly to bring enhanced products to the library community.”

Source: Ex Libris Group