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Weekly News Digest
April 18, 2013 — 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. For other up-to-the-minute news, check out ITI’s Twitter account: @ITINewsBreaks. CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.

Publishers’ Online Communities to Double by 2015

The study also investigated the rationale and perceived benefits for publishers moving into this arena, revealing that:

• 84% of publishers felt their spending on online communities would increase in the next 2 years with only 14% envisaging expenditure remaining stagnant
• 64% of publishers with online communities were convinced that their investment in this market is already paying off and a further 24% believed it would do so in the short term
• 73% of all the publishers interviewed felt that online communities helped or would help them to engage better with their audiences
• 72% of trade publishers said they helped or would help to increase direct relationships with customers and 45% claimed they provided or would provide good marketing support to sales channels
• 40% of academic and professional publishers said that increasing knowledge and understanding of customers was a key benefit, whilst 40% felt increasing content usage was a priority

Although currently only 16% of all respondents viewed online communities as viable direct sales channels, the formats that have benefited most from online community activity are ebooks for trade publishers (40%) and online resources for academic publishers (67%).

Overall, the results of this study tell us that online communities are far more than a channel for selling books or journals. They send a clear message that both trade and academic publishers want to use these platforms to establish closer relationships with their core readers, be it to communicate with them directly or to better understand their needs.

Source: Publishing Technology

Credo Integrates Topic Pages With EBSCO Discovery Service

Michael Gorrell, EBSCO executive vice president and chief information officer, says as a provider of discovery services for libraries EBSCO is always working to improve the end-user experience. “By leveraging this new technology from Credo we are able to offer a new reference layer that sets the context for information discovery and make further use of existing library resources within the discovery environment. This agreement expands upon our partnership with Credo to further address the research needs of libraries and the end user.”

Credo’s new technology is available at no cost to libraries that subscribe to both Credo and EBSCO Discovery Service.

Source: EBSCO and Credo

New OCLC Registry Service Shines a Spotlight on Libraries

OCLC uses information from a variety of sources to prepopulate location and contact information for thousands of libraries. The OCLC Library Spotlight program takes this a step further, providing a single, easy-to-use interface in which any library can add, edit, and update its own information once, in order to populate multiple web destinations. Initial data was taken from the WorldCat Registry, but libraries can add a variety of information, including pictures and links to services, social content, and collections. A custom, mobile-optimized link allows libraries to easily publish information to smartphones and other mobile devices.

“The advantage of this program is that libraries can manage essential information about their local services in one central registry. Their information then becomes available in WorldCat.org and is fed into many OCLC partner websites and services,” said Chip Nilges, vice president, OCLC Business Development. Library information that is entered into the OCLC Library Spotlight program will be syndicated into a variety of online environments and websites to more easily connect information seekers back to libraries.

OCLC’s Library Spotlight program extends the reach of all libraries to more audiences with essential information about libraries—through WorldCat.org and a network of partnerships across the web. The simple process of claiming and managing a prepopulated profile gives any library a quick path to participation and visibility. This program represents one more way to register library data into the worldwide network of libraries.

Source: OCLC

Elsevier and O’Reilly Media Sign New Ebook Distribution Deal

“The consumer ebook market is an emerging and changing one and we want to offer customers as many choices as possible,” according to Suzanne BeDell, managing director of Elsevier’s Science & Technology Books. “O’Reilly has a strong presence in the consumer market and provides us with a great opportunity to offer titles to many who might not otherwise see our content—all in a DRM-free format. That’s a win for both companies.”

Elsevier ebooks purchased through oreilly.com are offered DRM-free and are available in multiple formats, including PDF, EPUB, and .MOBI. Free ebook updates are also guaranteed, along with lifetime access.

Source: O'Reilly Media and Elsevier 

ProQuest Launches RefWorks Flow

Built with user experience as its primary development driver, Flow features an intuitive interface that needs little training to use and simplifies the management of research materials. It enables users, whether they’re students or scholars, to organize full-text documents and references, keeping them together, accessible, and usable for a variety of needs—team collaboration, class reading scenarios, etc. Users can save webpage content and metadata, create collections to organize documents and citations, and upload PDF and Office documents. Once saved to the cloud, these documents can be read, highlighted, and annotated on multiple devices. Flow has built-in recognition of documents and citations so users don’t have to enter metadata manually.

Flow is also designed to be easy for institutions to use. A cloud-based service, it requires no installation or updates. Flow is compatible with all modern web browsers on computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Source: ProQuest

Wolters Kluwer Health Partners With CCC’s Pubget Solutions

Pubget’s comprehensive solution in partnership with Ovid allows global corporate institutional users—librarians, researchers, scientists, and other consumers of medical information—to search, download, organize, and share full-text and PDF documents quickly, while automatically managing copyright permissions. Pubget’s time-saving productivity tools allow users to focus on their research and practice, while information managers can monitor and optimize their holdings and institutional e-resource costs.

With Pubget’s PaperStream, users can search journal articles—OvidSP, subscribed holdings, internet and institutional and pay-per-view article repositories—and quickly download and save PDF articles in one online environment. They can access and organize files according to licensing permissions and copyright policies. RightSphere advises all users across an organization on their rights to freely share and collaborate around the content, while providing librarians and other information managers with a compliant institutional repository. Plus, users can purchase access rights while they search.

PaperStats gathers usage statistics of all of the e-resources at an institution so librarians and information managers can make informed e-resource development decisions, such as eliminating duplicate resources and underperforming resources, to more effectively control costs.

Source: Wolters Kluwer Health