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Weekly News Digest
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September 24, 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.
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Time-Saving Options Available Through the EBSCO Usage Loading Service
EBSCO Information Services announced that with EBSCONET Usage Consolidation, librarians can collect, consolidate, and report on the usage of their online resources, making vital collection management information readily available in the librarian’s workflow—within EBSCONET Subscription Management. But EBSCO knows gathering usage data can be time-consuming, and that is why the EBSCO Usage Loading Service can load usage on behalf of Usage Consolidation customers.The Usage Loading Service is a highly skilled team that can obtain usage reports, load them to the library’s Usage Consolidation account, and match exceptions—allowing librarians to spend more time developing collections that can help users achieve their research objectives. Usage Consolidation customers who choose to take advantage of the Usage Loading Service can select from two time-saving options: Basic and Complete. With the Basic Usage Loading Service—in addition to the automatic matching of titles available through Usage Consolidation—each library’s account is assigned to a knowledgeable representative who will: - Retrieve COUNTER reports from content providers
- Manipulate reports, cleaning them up to ensure that they load
- Load usage reports into the customer’s Usage Consolidation account
The Complete option goes even further. For libraries that choose this service, the Usage Loading Service team will do the following: - Set up platform details within the library’s Usage Consolidation account—including setting up SUSHI, where applicable
- Load historical details (up to 2 years, where available)
- Manually match titles that were unmatched during the automated process
- Coordinate to ensure that titles are accounted for
- Act as the library’s advocate, communicating with content providers to ensure that usage data is correct and problems are resolved in a timely manner
Plus, with the Complete Usage Loading Service, thanks to the high level of integration among EBSCO’s products, librarians are assured that high-quality usage data will automatically be available directly in EBSCONET. Source: EBSCO Information Services
Elsevier to Provide Free Content Through edX
Elsevier announced its plan to provide free content through edX, the online learning initiative founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) launched in May. Students who enroll in edX’s course 6.002X: Circuits and Electronics will have free access to an online version of the course textbook, Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits, written by Anant Agarwal and Jeffrey Lang and published under Elsevier’s Morgan Kaufmann imprint.“We’re honored to collaborate with edX,” said Suzanne BeDell, managing director, Science and Technology Books, Elsevier. “With this new course, hundreds of thousands of students around the world will have had free access to the cutting-edge content contained in Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.” The free version of the textbook was also available in the spring offering of MIT’s 6.002x, before the creation of edX. “Innovative alliances, such as this one with Elsevier Science & Technology Books, are at the core of the edX mission to improve access to higher education for students worldwide,” said Anant Agarwal, co-author of Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits and president of edX. “edX is committed to providing our students with content published under the most rigorous standards. We are very grateful for Elsevier’s commitment to helping edX learners throughout the world.” Through edX, the “X Universities”—which now includes UC Berkeley in addition to founding institutions Harvard and MIT—will provide interactive education wherever there is access to the internet and will enhance teaching and learning through research about how students learn, and how technologies can facilitate effective teaching both on-campus and online. edX plans to add other “X Universities” from around the world to the edX platform in the coming months. Source: Elsevier
Project MUSE and Portico Partner to Preserve UPCC Ebooks
Portico and Project MUSE announced that they are partnering to secure the long-term preservation of ebooks published online in MUSE through the University Press Content Consortium (UPCC). Working together, Project MUSE and Portico will ensure that the ebook offerings of the UPCC—73 presses and more than 15,000 books at the time of signing—will remain available for future scholars, researchers, and students.“Partnering with Portico will make it possible for Project MUSE to future-proof the book content entrusted to us by the members of the UPCC community,” according to Terry Ehling, associate director of Project MUSE. “The archiving and preservation of our book content is a priority for us, and we look forward to working closely with Portico to ensure that the UPCC title collections are available to scholars in perpetuity.” The UPCC book collections allow thousands of peer-reviewed new and backlist ebooks to be discovered and searched in an integrated environment with content from nearly 500 journals currently on the Project MUSE platform. The book collections’ inclusion in the Portico archive strengthens a growing ebook preservation service currently responsible for the long-term preservation of more than 150,000 ebooks from a spectrum of publishers, including university presses, societies, and commercial publishers. Source: Project MUSE
Bloomberg BNA Launches Antitrust and Trade Regulation Resource Center
Bloomberg BNA launched the Antitrust & Trade Regulation Resource Center, a comprehensive web platform designed as an all-in-one resource for those following antitrust and trade regulation developments. The Resource Center brings together antitrust and trade regulation law, news, and analysis with current cases, practice tools, and state, federal, and international references, in a single, convenient site, saving users valuable research time and providing a source they can depend on for reliable coverage and insight into key developments. The Antitrust & Trade Regulation Resource Center combines the authoritative coverage from Bloomberg BNA’s flagship Antitrust & Trade Regulation Report—a leading industry publication for more than 50 years—with analysis from top practitioners and thought leaders. The Resource Center offers a diverse combination of tools and content for today’s professionals. Practical insight and real-world solutions from leading professionals are offered in BNA Insights’ articles and videos, 12 Bloomberg BNA Portfolios, and the ABA’s Antitrust Law Developments treatise. Full-text decisions of key federal and state cases—along with federal statutes and regulations, and state statutes—help users assess the impact of the latest rulings. Proprietary practice and compliance tools, forms and checklists, and Department of Justice (DOJ) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidance enable users to reinforce best practices and take action with confidence. Content from Bloomberg BNA’s Antitrust & Trade Regulation Resource Center is also available via the Antitrust Practice Center on Bloomberg Law. Source: Bloomberg BNA
Aptara Ebook Survey of Publishers Now Available
The results of the 4th Annual eBook Production Survey are now available. Issued in April 2012 and sponsored by Publishers Weekly magazine and Aptara, the survey tracks the ebook publishing trends, challenges, and strategies that have emerged since 2009 when the ebook market began taking shape. The surveys represent the Trade, Education, Professional, and Corporate publishing sectors.Excerpts from the 4th eBook Survey of Publishers findings include the following: - 4 out of 5 publishers now produce ebooks, a remarkable 30% increase in 3 years
- 36% of ebook publishers are realizing double-digit annual ebook revenues, an astonishing 100% increase (in publishers) since last year
- 31% of ebook publishers produce enhanced ebooks, though only 12% correlate the enhancements with a positive impact on sales
- Amazon is the most lucrative ebook sales channel. Publishers’ own websites come in a distant second place for generating the most ebook sales
- 60% of ebook publishers still employ print-based editorial and production workflows that add time and cost to each ebook
- More than half of publishers’ content is going to “digital waste”: 65% of ebook publishers have converted less than half of their legacy titles (backlist) into ebooks
Source: Aptara
Two Centuries Later, The Annual Register Is an Ebook
The 253rd edition of ProQuest’s Annual Register is now available as an ebook through ebrary, making this classic reference to world events as mobile as a smartphone. For more than 2 centuries, The Annual Register has been a “go-to” for librarians who value its year-by-year record of both major and minor world events, with text hearty enough to satisfy serious researchers and straightforward enough to answer a general query. The complete archive of the reference became available as an online tool through ProQuest in 2007, enabling researchers to scan the full text of every edition in a single search. Now ebrary, a business unit of ProQuest, will enable libraries to make contents of the past 10 editions available as ebooks, supported by its rich features and functionality, such as notes, highlights, and shareable bookshelves.The Annual Register can be ordered as an individual ebook—through perpetual archive and patron driven acquisition models—or as part of the most scholarly Academic Complete subscription collection. As an ebook, The Annual Register will not only be accessible on any web-enabled device, but it will go mobile via ebrary’s dedicated iOS and Android apps. In addition to its electronic versions, The Annual Register is also available in its traditional hardcover format. Source: ProQuest
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Brandi Scardilli
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