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Weekly News Digest

April 23, 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.

OCLC and Credo Reference Extend Partnership

With this new project, libraries that are both OCLC members and Credo customers will receive Credo Topic Pages at no charge for an introductory period. These libraries—along with current Topic Pages subscribers—will show WorldCat results from libraries worldwide that relate to the topic being searched. Libraries can have their results customized to show only local library holdings in WorldCat, as well as other customizations such as branding and deep links back to their catalog through this special project.

A campaign announcing this new partnership will feature the tag line, “We added more data—yours.” It launched April 18, 2012, and will run through June 30.

To participate in the program, libraries that qualify for the WorldCat Search API Key can request it and agree to share it with Credo Reference. Credo Reference will then make the customizations on behalf of participating libraries. All participating libraries will receive usage statistics on their customized Credo Topic Pages at the end of the introductory period. For more information on whether your library qualifies, visit the project page at www.oclc.org/go/worldcatcredo.

Source: Credo Reference

Bilbary Announces Ebook Partnerships With The State Library of Kansas and Taylor & Francis

Taylor and Francis has made available 26,000 ebook titles for Bilbary to both sell and to rent. Taylor & Francis is a leading academic publisher whose imprints include Routledge, CRC Press, and Psychology Press. Taylor & Francis publishes 1,600 scholarly journals and more than 3,700 new books each year. Bilbary’s agreement with Taylor & Francis will allow Bilbary to sell approximately 26,000 ebook titles, on top of its 340,000 current titles. All titles will reside in the Bilbary cloud, ensuring accessibility on any internet-connected device.

With this partnership, Bilbary will establish its first lending model, in which there will be a number of rental periods ranging from 30 to 360 days. The varying rental periods will provide students access to ebooks and will eliminate worries regarding rental fines, due dates, and whether the library or bookstore has sufficient copies stocked for university courses. Students will also be able to search for full texts, a first for a commercial consumer website.

The State Library of Kansas, founded in 1855, serves the needs of state agencies, legislators, and the general public. Bilbary’s agreement with The State Library of Kansas will allow Bilbary to open its doors to all Kansas library patrons. A link to Bilbary’s website will live on the Kansas State Library page, which patrons from anywhere in the U.S. will be able to click to purchase and download ebooks.

“Our relationship with Bilbary demonstrates the sheer volume of reading that takes place in libraries and provides behavioral data to publishers, to which they have never had access to,” said Joanne Budler, state librarian, State Library of Kansas. “Essentially, we hope our relationship with Bilbary diminishes the intimidation publishers feel when interacting with libraries and improves mutual understanding to build a better dialogue—which will lead to improved understanding and policies.”

Another aspect of the overall agreement is that all commissions will be given back to Bilbary to be used for developmental purposes. Doing so will encourage Bilbary to create and improve its capabilities for Kansas patrons, while also paving the way for a rental model to be integrated. For consumers who tend to purchase books, Bilbary says it presents the perfect solution.

Source: Bilbary 

Academic Video Database Coming to EBSCO Discovery Service

The INTELECOM Online Resources Network, a hosted and supported digital repository and subscription database of academic video clips, is closed captioned and streamed on demand. It is used to support online, hybrid, and face-to-face classes. The video collections offer academic students and teachers a comprehensive selection of video clips covering a range of key concepts and topics within an academic discipline. Core collections include Anatomy and Physiology, Biological Sciences, Oceanography, History, Philosophy, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, Health, and Environmental Studies.

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

Source: EBSCO Publishing 

Millions of Harvard Library Catalog Records Publicly Available

In addition, the Harvard Library announced its open distribution of metadata from its Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) scholarly article repository under a similar CC0 license. The catalog records are available for bulk download from Harvard, and are available for programmatic access by software applications via API’s at the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The records are in the standard MARC21 format.

"By instituting a policy of open metadata, the Harvard Library has expressed its appreciation for the great potential that library metadata has for innovative uses. The two metadata releases today are prime examples," said Stuart Shieber, Library Board Member, director of the Office for Scholarly Communication and professor of Computer Science at Harvard.

John Palfrey, chair of the DPLA, said, "With this major contribution, developers will be able to start experimenting with building innovative applications that put to use the vital national resource that consists of our local public and research libraries, museums, archives and cultural collections." He added that he hoped that this would encourage other institutions to make their own collection metadata publicly available.

The records consist of information describing works—including creator, title, publisher, date, language, and subject headings—as well as other descriptors usually invisible to end users, such as the equalization system used in a recording.

Source: The Harvard Library

Serials Solutions Announces Intota Development Partners

The development partners that have committed to collaborating with Serials Solutions include:

• Ball State University
• Johnson County Community College
• Marist College
• Oklahoma State University
• The State University of New York at Geneseo
• University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

The development of Intota addresses the complex operations facing libraries today; from inefficient and redundant workflows, to costly and time-consuming system maintenance and   lack of interoperability within the library and the institution at large. Serials Solutions says that Intota is unique from other solutions, both currently in the market and under development, and is an industry first because it leverages a linked data model, lowers total cost of ownership, addresses inherent interoperability, and is built entirely around workflows—not legacy platforms.

Source: Serials Solutions

CABI Re-Indexing Improves Search and Retrieval

CABI also added more than 415,000 new Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to older database records, which allows a direct click through to the original publisher record and often to the full-text article. 

“We are strongly committed to the continuous improvement of all of our products,” said Janet Halsall, head of publishing operations at CABI. “This re-indexing has improved the database products by adding extra searchability and more links out to newly digitized source material. This includes DOIs for journal articles indexed by CABI back through time to 1910. Now customers can click through to the original journal article which has since been digitized by the publisher.”

CABI is a not-for-profit science-based development and information organization. It improves people’s lives by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment. CABI helps address the challenges of food security by helping farmers grow more and lose less. It does this by improving crop yields, safeguarding the environment, and improving access to agricultural and environmental scientific knowledge.

Source: CABI