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Weekly News Digest
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July 25, 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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ProQuest Databases Integrate EasyBib Option
ProQuest partnered with EasyBib to create an Export to EasyBib option in its databases. Now students can send citation information directly to EasyBib when searching on ProQuest; they simply click on the option when they find a resource they’d like to add to their EasyBib bibliography, and it will automatically save to their EasyBib account.EasyBib is a service that helps students organize their research, take notes, and create a bibliography. Its more than 40 million users can keep track of their citations, evaluate websites, save sources, get help with reference formats such as MLA and Chicago, and learn about research and writing best practices. EasyBib has been building its partnerships to offer export options to EasyBib users, says Darshan Somashekar, EasyBib’s co-CEO. “More publishers and databases—including OCLC, IGI Global, ABC-CLIO, and most recently MackinVIA—have integrated an EasyBib option into their platform because they realize their users subscribe to EasyBib,” he says. Source: ProQuest
IMLS and ALA Offer Health Insurance Resources
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) teamed up with the American Library Association (ALA) to offer resources for libraries before enrollment for the Affordable Care Act begins on Oct. 1, 2013.OCLC’s WebJunction also joined with the IMLS to create webinars, tip sheets, and other tools for informing patrons about health insurance issues. WebJunction put together an FAQ for information on these resources and the Health Insurance Marketplace and created widgets for library websites that connect patrons to government information in English and Spanish. “Providing resources that help librarians answer patron requests for health insurance information furthers the long-standing commitment of both IMLS and ALA to make information more widely available to the public. … While libraries provide information in a way that best suits their own communities, IMLS and ALA stand ready to help all libraries prepare for the anticipated increased demand for health-related information,” according to Barbara Stripling, ALA president, and Susan Hildreth, IMLS director, in a statement. Anyone who would like to receive project activity updates, online resources, and webinar registrations and archived content can sign up with WebJunction. Source: Institute of Museum and Library Services
Spiceworks Program Supports Technology Startups
Spiceworks, a social network for information technology (IT) professionals, created Built in Spiceworks, a program to help B2B technology startups develop, grow, and market their products and services.“Spiceworks is in a unique position to help startups accelerate their product and marketing efforts by connecting them directly with their future customers,” says Jay Hallberg, co-founder and vice president of marketing. Spiceworks has 2.5 million members who visit the site to network, discuss technology, and collaborate on IT projects. The site also aggregates 2,300 vendors that IT professionals can speak with when making purchasing decisions. Groups of Spiceworks members are assigned to serve as mentors to Built in Spiceworks startups. Research shows that “companies harnessing the crowd for ideation, development, support and other business functions can be more resilient and efficient than those who do not,” says Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter Group analyst and partner. “This is especially true for technology startups who are typically more socially savvy and nimble, lack burdensome processes, and are more inclined to approach challenges in new ways.” Built in Spiceworks helps startups with market validation and research, product beta testing and trials, positioning and price testing, public launch promotions, and marketing. Startups have the option to do large-scale custom research projects, polls and surveys, or focus groups. They have access to the Spiceworks Community and to the SpicePanel, a 500,000-member community within Spiceworks created specifically to give feedback to fellow IT professionals. Spiceworks also offers use of its marketing tools and services for research, advertising, content marketing, and social engagement. Technology startups such as Pertino, Exablox, Workspot, and PLUMgrid have already signed up. “The path to launching an enterprise technology startup is well understood; however, the game changes when targeting the $875 billion small-to-medium business IT market,” says Todd Krautkremer, Pertino’s vice president of marketing. “The ‘Built in Spiceworks’ program addresses these issues by providing a community-powered lab environment for gathering hands-on product and go-to-market testing, feedback and insights.” Built in Spiceworks was designed for venture-backed startups, but the company says that the program can be modified for boot-strapped or angel-funded companies. Source: Spiceworks
SwetsWise Gains Ebook Collection
Swets signed an agreement with Edward Elgar Publishing making the publisher’s 2,300 ebooks available in the SwetsWise catalog. SwetsWise customers can now order ebooks from Elgaronline, the publishing company’s online content platform, directly from SwetsWise.“Swets … enables libraries to compare and contrast content from a number of vendors, making the process of selecting and acquiring eBook content easier to manage,” says Linda Vendryes, Swets’ global business development manager. Swets and Elgaronline share the same goal of making ebook management easier, says Tim Williams, Edward Elgar’s managing director. “Elgaronline was designed with the help of librarians for academic library users and comes with multiuser access, DRM free downloads, an intuitive user interface and seamless integration library search technology,” he says. Edward Elgar books and journals cover topics in economics, finance, business and management, law, environment, and public and social policy. Its ebooks join SwetsWise’s collection of more than 1 million ebooks from more than 40 providers and aggregators. Edward Elgar publishes 350 new titles each year. Source: Swets
eLife Produces Open Science Podcast Series
eLife, an open access (OA) journal covering research in the life and biomedical sciences, will produce a podcast series with The Naked Scientists, broadcasters who present easy-to-understand science to the general public.“The Naked Scientists have a committed following and a knack for making complicated stories accessible and interesting,” says Randy Schekman, eLife editor-in-chief. “Since our journal is freely available online, anyone listening to the eLife podcast will be able to read the full papers anytime.” There are two podcast episodes available so far. In the first episode, five authors discuss their research articles as representative samples of eLife’s publishing program. Topics include the discovery of a receptor for the hepatitis B and D viruses, the effects of fog on car drivers, and modern DNA sequencing technology that sheds light on the potato famines of the 1840s. In the second episode, topics are “plants performing arithmetic division, the evolutionary dynamics of cancer, single-molecule measurements in the immune system, why blood vessels don’t grow in the retina, how to make science count in government, a sensor for ammonium, and the evolution of gene regulation.” The goal of these podcasts is to offer eLife’s OA content to a wider audience and to use more engaging elements to reach that audience. Other initiatives include the eLife Digest, a short summary of each available paper; Insights, where experts offer commentary on selected articles; and an API (application programming interface) so users can access, reuse, and build upon eLife metadata. eLife encourages distribution of the podcasts under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Source: eLife
Swets Introduces Open Access Management Service
Swets has a new open access (OA) service to help librarians manage their OA-related workflows. Library administrations have to pay publishers article processing charges (APCs) for gold OA papers, and Swets’ new APC management service helps libraries with those invoices and payment processes.The service’s features include options to keep track of spending, a single contact for all publisher relationships, concise handling of micro-transactions, reduction in the number of invoices for processing, and detailed reporting on transaction statuses. “APC management is costing libraries and institutions more time and resources than is necessary,” says David Main, Swets CEO. “There’s a direct and urgent need for this service” and Swets’ goal was to “put solid processes in place” for customers as its first step in promoting OA. Swets aims to improve and standardize other parts of OA-related workflows in the future. Source: Swets
Springer Extends Partnership With CAPES
Springer Science+Business Media signed a 5-year agreement with Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel; CAPES), allowing students, researchers, and professionals access to Springer content.CAPES is a network of more than 400 academic and government institutions that helps the Brazilian Ministry of Education decide on postgraduate policies. Springer partnered with the government consortium in 2007. The new agreement grants CAPES members online access to Springer’s entire English-language journal collection, its Online Journals Archive, and the zbMATH database. “CAPES is very selective when it comes to its partners for long-term deals like this one with Springer,” says Marcio de Castro Silva Filho, CAPES’s programs director. “We only enter into agreements with those companies that can best support our needs and goals. It was clear that Springer was one of those organizations.” CAPES intends to make similar deals with other companies in Latin America, says Maria Lopes, vice president of library sales for Latin America. Source: Springer Science+Business Media
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Brandi Scardilli
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