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Weekly News Digest
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July 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.
CLICK HERE to view more Weekly News Digest items.
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Thomson Reuters Launches Company Investigator for Westlaw Next
Thomson Reuters introduced a new resource for Westlaw Next users called Company Investigator, which examines private and public company structures, relationships, assets, and court documents. Researchers who are looking for help with business development, risk management, and litigation issues can use the database to find information on more than 30 million companies, 20 million of which are private and usually not accessible. Company profiles include everything from corporate infrastructure information to subsidiary data to regulatory filings.“Legal industry professionals depend on relevant, accurate and current company information,” says Steve Obenski, senior director and general manager of Business Law Solutions, Thomson Reuters. “Company Investigator is remarkably easy to use while at the same time incredibly powerful. It makes it fast and easy to understand corporate structures, relationships and other information about business entities.” Search options include company, officer, or director name or tax identification number. Data can be organized into customizable reports, and researchers can sign up to receive email alerts for specific businesses when statuses change or new developments are announced. They can also add “risk flags” to businesses that require further investigation and view corporate relationships in a “family tree” graphic. Source: Thomson Reuters
Vital Source Debuts Building Block for Blackboard Learn
Vital Source Technologies, Inc., Ingram Content Group’s etextbook solution, launched the Building Block etextbook platform, which integrates its VitalSource Bookshelf with Blackboard Learn, Blackboard’s learning management system.The new platform, called VitalSource Building Block for Blackboard Learn, allows for a single login to both Blackboard and VitalSource Bookshelf and use on Blackboard Learn’s mobile app for Apple, Android, and Kindle Fire devices. Blackboard’s partnership with Vital Source Technologies will “deliver practical tools to educators,” says Jim Kelly, Blackboard’s vice president of business development. Instructors can search and sample VitalSource Bookshelf titles and embed them in their Blackboard Learn account for use during classes. They can link to media and interactive elements as well as annotate sections of text. Analytic tools measure class engagement data. Students using the etextbook have “the ability to interact with the newest media-rich content and learning tools,” Kelly says. They can explore online content and technology and share notes, highlights, and annotations within the platform. The etextbooks also sync across devices. VitalSource Bookshelf has more than 3 million users at 6,000 universities worldwide, and offers content from more than 350 publishers. Building Block has a student-purchase option where students can buy or rent the etextbooks from within Blackboard Learn. Universities with textbooks included in the price of tuition can offer the etextbooks free to students on the platform. Source: Ingram Content Group
Springer Renews Its Commitment to Open Access
Springer Science+Business Media announced that the influence of its open access (OA) journals has increased over the past year.In Thomson Reuters’ new edition of Journal Citation Reports for 2012, which calculates a journal’s impact factor in the industry based on its articles’ cited references, 46 Springer journals received an impact factor for the first time, meaning that their citation data improved over the year. Springer now has 1,539 journals with impact factors from Thomson Reuters, out of its full publishing program of 2,200 titles last year. Springer received more good news from the report: 86% of its journal titles have increased citations, and 55% increased their impact factor numbers. Springer now has 163 OA journals with an impact factor, which is 41% of its entire OA output. “Not only did our overall numbers grow, but nearly one half of those with new impact factors were open access. This reaffirms the importance of peer-reviewed publications supported by different models,” says Peter Hendriks, president of scientific, technical, and medical publishing at Springer. Source: Springer Science+Business Media
Northern Light Debuts Primary Research Manager Software Application
Northern Light, a provider of strategic research portals, business research content, and search technology, just released Primary Research Manager, a new software application. Primary Research Manager is embedded into the SinglePoint Strategic Research Portal, Northern Light’s software for market research project management.SinglePoint clients have immediate access to Primary Research Manager. “Northern Light SinglePoint customers are research-driven companies," according to C. David Seuss, Northern Light's CEO. "When you’re spending millions of dollars annually conducting primary research that will drive critically important decisions, speeding these projects to completion and giving the research staff the ability to manage more of them is an organizational imperative." Primary Research Manager enables researchers to provision, track, and control their projects because it is part of the existing portal where all of their research has already been indexed and it is easily accessible. The software application “works within the established framework of [the] enterprise research portal,” Seuss says. Features include automatic provisioning of an organization’s accounting and purchasing projects, alerts for unavailable documents on specific projects’ milestone due dates, and the ability for external research vendors to upload documents to the portal. Clients can create custom metadata, follow projects through their full life cycle (i.e., move documents to the next step, publish documents, and pay research vendors), control publication to specific groups, and manage milestones with research vendors. These features are designed to streamline workflow and reduce lag time and administrative overhead. The new application also allows research to be more complete and to be published more quickly. Source: Northern Light
EBSCO and EOS International Join Forces
EBSCO Information Services recently partnered with EOS International so their mutual customers can access both EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) and EOS International’s library automation software products. EBSCO is also planning a development schedule to integrate EDS with EOS International’s ILS software.EOS International users will be able to view content from EDS’s unified index and benefit from its features. Thousands of global universities use EDS for its comprehensive index and single-search approach. EOS International also works with thousands of libraries to provide automation and knowledge management solutions via local in-house installations or at EOS Global Data Centers using the EOS e-Library Service. “Working with EOS International, we will be able to create an elegant solution that allows EOS users to have access to the EDS search engine, leveraging the strong metadata, the highly refined relevancy ranking system and the features and functionality” of EDS, says Michael Gorrell, EBSCO’s CIO. Offering a rich discovery experience for users of EBSCO partners’ platforms is part of the company’s mission, he says. Source: EBSCO Information Services
LexisNexis Improves Digital Library Functionality
LexisNexis Legal & Professional, part of Reed Elsevier, enhanced its Digital Library elending solution with new features and functionality.The LexisNexis Digital Library is partnered with OverDrive to offer electronic titles in a bookshelf-style interface across a variety of devices. Legal professionals can manage their library and check out ebooks from LexisNexis’ 1,800-title collection as well as from OverDrive’s 800,000-ebook collection, keeping all of the checkouts in one location. The service’s improvements are: a better bookshelf design for easier readability and navigation no matter a device’s screen size; integration with OverDrive Read, OverDrive’s in-browser e-reader; access to EOS International’s EOS.Web, a cloud-based ILS; direct access to the RSS feed content of Law360’s newsletters (with subscription); and simplified checkout options for one-step ebook borrowing. LexisNexis previously rolled out enhancements earlier this year, integrating Lexis Advance and the Digital Library. Lexis Advance subscribers can now access the research service while they browse ebooks. Source: LexisNexis Legal & Professional
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Brandi Scardilli
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