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Weekly News Digest

April 9, 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.

BioMed Central, LabArchives to Link Data Sets With Journal Articles

LabArchives provides a platform that scientists can use to store and publish their laboratory data. The special BioMed Central version of LabArchives will provide authors with 100 Mb of complimentary storage and optional integrated submission to BioMed Central’s journals. Published data sets can be assigned a digital object identifier (DOI), which serves as a permanent identifier for a data set, making data more discoverable and citable, and helping to enable scientists to get credit for publishing their data and to permanently link journal articles to supporting data.

“As more scientists would like to share data beyond what can practically be included within the confines of a traditional paper, they require easily accessible technological solutions that enable them to achieve this important goal,” said Earl B. Beutler, president and CEO of LabArchives.

Speaking of the partnership, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, journal publisher at BioMed Central, said, “For large datasets which cannot be accommodated within journal articles or additional files, data repositories such as LabArchives, which can assure permanence of published data, are a natural partner for BioMed Central’s journals. We are really looking forward to working with our authors and LabArchives to help scientists gain more credit for sharing their data; make even more scientific data available for reuse; and help enhance the scientific record.”

LabArchives was founded by a team of experts in scientific computing and web-based development. It was established in 2009 to create an affordable and easy-to-use solution to the problem of laboratory organization and collaboration.  It is used by scientists on six continents to store, organize, share, and publish laboratory data, as well as by instructors in many leading K–12 institutions and colleges.

Source: LabArchives, LLC

SPIE Digital Library Extends Archiving

SPIE has lowered its subscription prices in the last few years with a 10% rollback in 2010, a price freeze in 2011, and a further 5% rollback in 2012. The approximately 40,000 technical papers dating from 1962 through 1989 will be added to the existing content at no additional charge to subscribers. The added content will include papers by technology pioneers and visionaries such as the following:

• Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel and originator of the notion that chip capacity doubles about every 2 years, also known as Moore’s law
• Nobel Laureates including laser pioneers Charles Hard Townes, Zhores Alferov, John L. Hall, and Alexander Prokhorov; fiber-optics and internet developer William Boyle; and astronomer John Mather
• Renowned inventors including Theodore Maiman, who developed the first working laser, and Shuji Nakamura, who made the first mass-producible high-brightness GaN LED

The SPIE Digital Library is the most extensive research resource on optics and photonics, with more than 330,000 technical papers from SPIE Journals and Conference Proceedings from 1990 to the present and more than 160 SPIE Press eBooks. SPIE publishes approximately 18,000 new technical papers and 15 to 20 new books in the SPIE Digital Library each year.

Source: SPIE

New EBSCOhost Collection Manager to Help Libraries With Ebooks and Audiobooks

ECM allows staff to be designated as selectors or approvers and then build lists and modify requests based on their budgets. It can be used to determine which titles to purchase outright through the available access models and to select which titles to expose to end users through PDA.

ECM users can establish lists based on subjects and allow the collection development staff (selectors) to specify which titles are needed while the approvers maintain the right to make purchasing decisions. Since ECM is also used to set up and maintain a library’s PDA program and manage the deposits, librarians can use it to add additional content to the library catalog.

As ECM expands, it will also be used to manage profiles, lease options, and Smart PDA—which allows patron usage to trigger access upgrades or leases ensuring end users never encounter an ebook or audiobook that is “checked out” while also helping libraries keep their ebook and audiobook costs in check.

Source: EBSCO Publishing

International Name Authority Project Moves to OCLC

This transition from an interim, shared-governance arrangement to OCLC is done in agreement with institutions participating in VIAF. The change has been made to assure that VIAF will be well-positioned to scale efficiently as a long-term, cooperative activity. The transition also assures that http://viaf.org will continue to have an appropriate infrastructure to respond to rising levels of traffic as VIAF gains momentum and popularity as a resource for library authority work and linked data activities.

The institutions contributing to VIAF will continue to help shape VIAF’s direction through participation in a newly formed VIAF council, which will provide guidance on policies, practices, and operation of VIAF. At present, 22 agencies from 19 countries have contributed data to VIAF. Data is contributed on a nonexclusive basis.

Concurrent with the change in governance structure, OCLC has begun moving operational responsibility for VIAF from OCLC Research to OCLC’s production areas. VIAF will continue to be made available through http://viaf.org.

“Matching national authority files for persons and corporate bodies enables their mutual consolidation at the international level,” said Bruno Racine, president of the National Library of France. “VIAF allows the exposure on the Web of highly trusted data, demonstrating the value of authority work done for so many years by national libraries and bibliographic agencies. The new Agreement confirms the free re-use of VIAF data, including the commercial re-use of data according to the ODC-By license. We expect that this broader opening of access to VIAF will encourage multilingualism and the creation of new services beyond the library world, including for data mining, intellectual property rights management, etc.”

Source: OCLC

Tablets Become Newsstands for Digital Magazines Through Next Issue Media

Today, the Next Issue Unlimited Basic catalog includes: All You, Allure, Better Homes and Gardens, Car and Driver, Coastal Living, Condé Nast Traveler, Cooking Light, ELLE, Esquire, Essence, Fitness, Fortune, Glamour, Golf, Health, InStyle, Money, Parents, People en Espanol, People StyleWatch, Popular Mechanics, Real Simple, Southern Living, Sports Illustrated Kids, Sunset, This Old House, and Vanity Fair.

The Next Issue Unlimited Premium catalog includes those in Unlimited Basic plus all weekly titles such as Entertainment Weekly, People, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, and TIME.

Next Issue offers the following price plans:

• Unlimited Basic: Includes titles published monthly and biweekly for $9.99 per month
• Unlimited Premium: Includes all titles in the catalog, including weeklies such as Entertainment Weekly, People, Sports Illustrated, The New Yorker, and TIME for $14.99 per month
• Individual magazine subscriptions range from $1.99 to $9.99 per month
• Individual magazine issues are available from $2.49 to $5.99 per issue

Thirty-day free trials are available for all subscription plans, and print subscribers can add digital editions of the same titles for free or a nominal cost.

Customers can browse, manage, and read all the titles from a single app in one consistent and easy way. For example, customers can quickly flip through an entire magazine using the animated carousel. Once they choose what to read, they navigate using the same commands across all titles. They can also access an entire library of magazines in the cloud. All Next Issue magazines are custom-designed for the tablet experience and include enhancements such as videos, bonus photography, interactive features, and links to more information online.

Next Issue is available in the U.S. on tablets running Android version 3.0 (Honeycomb) or later. The app is also available for download from Google Play, formerly known as Android Market. An iPad version of Next Issue is expected to be submitted to the App Store Approval Process soon.

Source: Next Issue Media

More Than 30,000 Spanish Language Titles in eBooks Kindle en Español

The store has more than 30,000 titles in total with more than a thousand free classics in Spanish and exclusive Kindle Singles in Spanish. In addition, the new $79 Kindle and many free Kindle reading apps can be easily customized for complete Spanish-language reading and navigation, including popular highlights and other social features. While currently aimed at U.S. customers, Russ Grandinetti, vice president, Kindle Content stated, “We’re looking forward to continued expansion of our store for Spanish language readers around the world.”

eBooks Kindle en Español includes the following:

• All of the Spanish-language Nielsen best sellers available as ebooks in the U.S., and 65 of the top 100 Spanish-language print best sellers from Amazon.com
• The largest representation of Mexican authors, including Jose Emilio Pacheco, Carlos Monsivais, and Sergio Pitol
• Kindle Singles in Spanish, including Singles by best-selling authors Kurt Vonnegut and Susan Orlean
• An exclusive selection of Dora the Explorer and Go Diego Go books in Spanish
• Compilations of articles from “El Pais,” including exclusive pieces from Mexican journalists writing about Mexican current affairs
• Subscriptions to 14 leading Latin American newspapers such as El Universal and La Nacion
• Popular English-language books translated into Spanish, such as the Hunger Games series, the Twilight series, Steve Jobs, The Help, and books by authors Stephen King, Nora Roberts, and Joel Osteen

Independent authors and publishers can also use the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) website and select “Spanish” to make their books available in the eBooks Kindle en Español store, as well as more than 100 countries worldwide, while continuing to own the rights to their books.

In order to set their Kindle store experience to Spanish, U.S. customers simply change their language to “Spanish” under Store Language Preference in Manage Your Kindle.

Source: Amazon.com