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Weekly News Digest

November 15, 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 Expands Partnership With Goodreads

The expanded partnership includes several components:

• A joint marketing effort to get libraries to join the Goodreads site and create a library “group” page, which will now be listed at the top of the groups page.
• Engagement reports from Goodreads that show how many libraries have joined and created group pages and how fast membership is growing for individual libraries on Goodreads.
• An upcoming webinar held specifically for librarians and library staff members, to learn more about Goodreads and how to optimize the library’s presence.
• Library-specific promotional materials to encourage patron participation in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2012 during November.
• A discussion session planned for ALA Midwinter 2013 to hear library feedback and solicit ideas for additional visibility and collaboration.

“This partnership truly starts to deliver on the power of exposing libraries where potential library users—people who love books and will use libraries—go,” says Cindy Cunningham, director of Partner Programs for OCLC. “The APIs and data available through the WorldShare Platform make it simple for Goodreads to include the aggregated library data of the cooperative in their user experience, which delivers value back to both the end-user and to the participating libraries. I am thrilled to think how much more visible libraries will be on the consumer Web, at a massive scale, as we embark upon this new chapter of our relationship with Goodreads.”

Source: OCLC

NLM Launches Web Content Collecting Initiative

New forms of publication on the web, such as blogs authored by doctors and patients, illuminate healthcare thought and practice in the 21st century. In launching this initiative, the library is capturing and providing a unique resource for future scholarship.

The library’s inaugural collection of web content is “Health and Medicine Blogs,” presenting the perspectives of physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, and other individuals in healthcare fields. The collection also includes patients chronicling their experiences with conditions such as cancer, diabetes, and arthritis. The site currently contains 12 blogs, including KevinMD.com, “social media’s leading physician voice”; Not Running a Hospital, a blog by a former CEO of a large Boston hospital; e-patient Dave, a cancer survivor and leader in the participatory medicine movement; and Wheelchair Kamikaze, who writes about his personal experience living with multiple sclerosis (MS). The collection can be accessed from www.nlm.nih.gov/webcollecting.

Guided by the NLM Collection Development Manual and other strategic collecting efforts, NLM will continue to expand its capacity to collect web content. With this initiative, NLM has taken a major new step in its mission to collect pertinent healthcare information of today for the benefit of research in the future. Increasingly, that information is found on the web, which is a rapidly changing environment where valuable and interesting materials can surface and then quickly disappear. The library is working to ensure it can effectively collect new material in a web environment and guarantee the material's permanence and availability to current and future patrons.

In launching this initiative, NLM joins many other national, state, and public libraries and archives that have acknowledged the importance of preserving web content for future generations. In addition to the Internet Archive, which has been broadly archiving the web since 1996, dozens of libraries and cultural heritage institutions have been engaged in thematic or event-based collecting. This community has contributed to the development and use of common tools, techniques, and standards that enable the creation of web archives. NLM has benefitted from this work and from local partners such as the Library of Congress, which is actively engaged in collecting and preserving web content.

The library has contracted with the Internet Archive to use its Archive-It service to collect web content. NLM staff use the service to specify web site titles, scope, depth, and frequency of collection. Currently the Health and Medicine Blogs collection resides at the Internet Archive, but in the future, NLM expects to permanently store all web collections in the NLM Digital Collections repository. The library also manages its own web domain and makes archived content available through its search function, as detailed at www.nlm.nih.gov/about/archives.html.

Source: National Library of Medicine

Labtiva and NPG Offer ReadCube Access for the Public

Labtiva is a software company focused on helping scientists discover, organize, and read peer-reviewed literature. Articles read by clicking the ReadCube Access icon on nature.com pages cost between $5 and $11, compared to the $32 pay-per-view fee. A 48-hour rental costs between $3 and $5.

Purchased articles open in the ReadCube app, which works on PCs, Macs, and within any desktop web browser. The app makes PDFs interactive with annotation tools, clickable citations, compatibility with common reference managers, simultaneous download of supplemental data, and links to subsequent citations and online discussions of the article. An article accessed through ReadCube Access may not be printed or shared, but it can be read offline.

At this time, the ReadCube Access button is present on articles in Nature and 18 Nature research journals. Articles in all NPG journals are available at the same discount using the ReadCube desktop app.

Research institutions, like individuals, can use ReadCube Access to supplement subscription holdings. In a trial program underway at the University of Utah, researchers can access articles from more than 50 NPG journals that were previously not fully accessible. Payments are deducted from a central fund, managed by the library.

Source: Nature Publishing Group

Boopsie Star Program Certifies Vendor Partners

The Boopsie Star Program currently includes a range of services available in most libraries including Overdrive, Mango Languages, Tutor.com, Credo Reference, EBSCO, Gale/Cengage Learning, Recorded Books, and Library H3lp. The Boopsie mobile app is in use in more than 2,500 libraries and universities.

“Library patrons want to do more than simply access the library’s catalog from their mobile device,” says Greg Carpenter, Boopsie CEO. “They want one point of access to what the library has to offer. That’s why Boopsie is aggressively seeking Star Partners to make their mobile apps accessible through the Boopsie app. With one click from the library's Boopsie mobile home screen, patrons can instantly access valuable services to which their library subscribes. This enhances service to patrons and increases the return on investment the library has made in databases and other rich resources.”

More information about the Boopsie Star Program, including technical specifications for vendor participation, is available here.

Founded in 2006 and located in Silicon Valley, Calif., Boopsie provides a mobile solution for universities and libraries. Customers include Seattle Public Library, Los Angeles Public Library, University of Toronto, University of Notre Dame, Brown University, University of Gent in Belgium, and University of Auckland in New Zealand. Affordable for all size libraries and easy-to-deploy without compromising on world-class performance, Boopsie’s solutions are fully hosted and all apps are downloadable on mobile devices including Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, J2ME, Palm, Symbian, Windows Mobile, and support browser-enabled devices.

Source: Boopsie, Inc. 

ORCID Registry Engineered by Semantico Goes Live

Interoperability is critical, so the system has been designed to enhance the scientific discovery process and improve the efficiency of research funding and collaboration within the research community. Thomson Reuters provided ORCID with a perpetual license and royalty-free use of ResearcherID source code giving ORCID the critical technology to create its system.

The system as launched provides a switchboard for linking with other existing researcher identifier systems. Elsevier is providing a way for researchers to link their Scopus Author IDs to ORCID and synchronize their publication information between the two systems. Thomson Reuters’ ResearcherID will link to ORCID and allow researchers to synchronize their publication information. In addition to manuscript tracking systems and vendors including Nature Publishing Group, Hindawi Publishing Corportation, Copernicus, Aries, Scholar One, and eJournal Press, several research information system providers have integrated ORCID identifiers, including AVEDAS, figshare, KNODE, Faculty of 1000, and ImpactStory. Through its affiliate ORCID EU, ORCID is working with DataCite to link ORCID identifiers with research datasets.

“ORCID addresses a problem shared by individuals and organizations across the research community: reliably connecting research with researchers,” said Laure Haak, executive director of the nonprofit ORCID organization. “But ORCID is more than a Registry, it is a community effort to embed these identifiers in research workflows. ORCID iDs will be as important as the DOI; every researcher funder, publisher, and research organization, will engage with the system over time.”

Source: Semantico

LibLime Announces Production Release of LibLime Koha 4.14 With Solr

LibLime Koha 4.14 represents the innovation, ideas, and talents of many professional librarians with whom LibLime enjoys working and with whom the company looks forward to a continued professional partnership in years to come.

Many of the features in LibLime Koha 4.14 were sponsored by a variety of libraries including the South Central Library System in Wisconsin, the Waldo Academic Directors Library Organization based in New York, the Colorado Library Consortium in Colorado, and the Pioneer Consortium in Nebraska.

LibLime Koha 4.14 fully integrates Solr into all areas where searches are executed for both staff and OPAC including: OPAC basic search page, OPAC advanced search page, staff landing page search box, staff advanced search, staff search for cataloging, and the persistent staff masthead search box. With Solr in place, indexing of imported records (single and batch) is now completed in minutes, richer results are retrieved through searches using stemming and autotruncation, and facet search limits are now available for the entire search results list.

The libraries sponsoring development in LibLime Koha 4.14 key role in the design of the new features, as well as the quality assurance process including alpha and beta testing. The SCLS group went live in production on LibLime Koha 4.14 and within the next 2 weeks, more than 90 LibLime Koha libraries will be using Solr in production.

Source: LibLime