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Weekly News Digest
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August 1, 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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Swets Acquires JSTOR Ebooks
JSTOR signed an agreement with Swets to make its ebooks available on the SwetsWise platform. In SwetsWise, librarians can compare prices and publisher policies and choose purchasing options.Books at JSTOR, the digital library’s collection of more than 20,000 ebooks, is now joined with SwetsWise’s 1 million-plus ebooks from more than 43 publishers and aggregators. “JSTOR is one of the most well-known and widely used scholarly resources,” according to Linda Vendryes, Swets global business development manager. Adding JSTOR ebooks to SwetsWise helps libraries “looking to simplify the selection and acquisition of eBook content,” she says. The agreement will help JSTOR customers as well, making it “easier to locate and purchase books of interest and make them available to library end users in an efficient manner that suits libraries’ internal workflows,” says Frank Smith, director of Books at JSTOR. Source: Swets
Wolters Kluwer Health Enhances OvidSP With Multimedia Content
Wolters Kluwer Health rolled out enhancements for OvidSP, its medical research platform. Healthcare professionals and researchers are now able to search with improved functionality and download and export videos, images, and full-text and bibliographic content.Clinicians, nurses, students, and other OvidSP users provided feedback to Wolters Kluwer Health that they required more multimedia resources. “Increasingly, the healthcare community is employing video and images for use in clinical instruction and research,” according to Cathy Wolfe, president and CEO of medical research at Wolters Kluwer Health. Among the updates are the addition of more than 1,800 clinical videos and more than 2 million images from reference books and journals to the OvidSP full-text content. Topics include surgery, neurology, physical therapy, obstetrics and gynecology, cardiology, and emergency medicine. The videos show demonstrations of procedures, diagnoses, and treatments; interviews and lectures from experts; and article discussions. The new media can be accessed using Basic Search or Advanced Search, and are marked as multimedia for better discoverability. Search results are ranked by relevance and there is an option to view related videos and images. Users can also print, export, download, and email search results. “Whether a user wants to review procedures or techniques prior to a patient interaction or treatment, listen to expert commentary, or provide curriculum materials, OvidSP users now have a wealth of video and images to support their work,” according to Wolfe. Source: Wolters Kluwer Health
Thomson Reuters CompuMark Promotes Trademark Best Practices in China
Thomson Reuters CompuMark, a Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property & Science business that protects worldwide brands, released a white paper, “Best Practices for Brand Expansion in China: How to Navigate a Unique Intellectual Property Landscape,” that discusses best practices for trademark protection in China and outlines strategies for brand protection.Brand owners worldwide depend on China’s more than 1.3 billion consumers, but to gain a share of that market companies must adhere to the country’s intellectual property rules. Thomson Reuters CompuMark’s set of best practices helps companies navigate trademark filing and maintenance and deter counterfeiters and trademark squatters, competitors who file a company’s trademark in a country where it does not yet have a presence. The report cautions that China files the most trademarks in the world, making it a competitive market. From 2006 to 2012, companies published more than 5 million trademarks in China, with 924,414 published in 2012. Companies should file early to avoid the Chinese trademark office’s decreased processing times and beat the first-to-file system so that the first company to file a trademark is not necessarily the first to obtain it. China has a single-class filing system, so companies should protect their brands in both active and inactive sectors, which deters trademark squatters. The report also suggests investing in anti-counterfeiting measures such as systematically confronting each individual infringer. “With trademark activity by both domestic and foreign entities on the rise and given the country’s overall effort to encourage the effective management of intellectual property assets, China is asserting itself as a serious player in the world and intellectual property economy,” according to Viji Krishnan, general manager and vice president of Thomson Reuters CompuMark. “While there is no perfect solution for protecting multinational trademarks in China, with the right cultural know-how and shrewd navigation of a complicated regulatory framework, brand owners are in the best position in years to build a strong consumer base in the country.” Source: Thomson Reuters
Zoho Introduces Integration With Dropbox
Zoho.com and Dropbox rolled out new tools that integrate services to benefit each company’s customers: Zoho users can now sync their files for free via Dropbox, and Dropbox users now have free access to Zoho Docs, Zoho’s office suite. Zoho Docs offers word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation apps. Dropbox offers syncing between multiple devices, including mobile devices.“Users who take advantage of the Zoho Docs and Dropbox integration can synchronize all of their Zoho Docs files across all of the devices they use with Dropbox,” according to Raju Vegesna, Zoho evangelist. Dropbox customers must configure their accounts to include the Zoho integration and then choose which folders they would like to include. New documents added to either Dropbox or Zoho Docs will automatically save to both services, and any documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from Dropbox can be edited using Zoho Docs. This marks Dropbox’s third partnership with Zoho, after integration with Zoho Mail and Zoho Projects. Source: Zoho.com
Alexander Street Press Debuts New Website Features
Alexander Street Press updated its search interface with semantic facet browsing, an algorithm to identify categories of interest from a single keyword, with 20-plus new features to follow. With semantic facet browsing, results are returned pertaining to the keyword even if the keyword is not in the title of the resource, and users can also access related content from the search results page: related approaches and similar authors, contributors, places, and organizations.More than 30 developers worked for 18 months to complete the upgrades, which will be rolled out in a series of releases. The first release includes in-depth text searching across the publisher’s 900,000 music tracks and 17,000 videos; discipline- and topic-based landing pages for editor-curated playlists and highlighted content; an HD-quality video player and toolbar with streaming that adjusts to a user’s bandwidth; audio clip creation, sharing, and annotation; translation options for every page; and the ability to export citations in various formats. “This level of functionality has never been seen before,” according to Stephen Rhind-Tutt, Alexander Street Press president. “How often did John F. Kennedy refer directly to Cuba in his speeches? Now, you can not only identify every instance, but with one click, you can watch him say the word.” Customers of VAST: Academic Video Online and five of Alexander Street Press’ music collections can now access these features. Throughout the year, customers of all Alexander Street Press collections will gain access. The next wave of updates includes enhanced usage statistics, a mobile app, and access to album liner notes. Source: Alexander Street Press
Alexander Street Press Starts Patron-Driven Acquisition Program
Alexander Street Press signed an agreement with Scotland’s University of Dundee to launch a patron-driven acquisition (PDA) program. Now the University of Dundee library has access to Alexander Street Press’ academic videos for a period of 1 year. When the loan period ends, the university will use Alexander Street Press’ metrics to decide which titles to keep in its permanent collection.“This model ensures libraries of all budgets can provide their patrons with access to precisely the materials they’re looking for,” according to Jordan White, senior product manager. The University of Dundee recently decided to increase its video collection and Alexander Street Press “has offered us the opportunity to ensure that our expenditure for these resources is targeted directly to support material that is being utilized to enhance learning. This represents a very cost-effective method for ensuring that the maximum resource is available from the library budget,” notes Richard Parsons, university librarian. Alexander Street Press intends to sign agreements with other institutions to offer its more than 23,000 videos in PDA models. Source: Alexander Street Press
VitalSource Bookshelf Offers Etextbooks to the Middle East and Africa
Vital Source Technologies, Inc., an Ingram Content Group company, partnered with Panworld Education to make the VitalSource Bookshelf available in the Middle East and North Africa. The VitalSource Bookshelf will sell and deliver etextbooks to Panworld Education customers looking for elearning solutions from the provider. Panworld Education will remain in charge of institutional relationships, content, contracts, and financial management, and VitalSource Bookshelf will handle all orders. Customers are able to download, search, annotate, share notes, and access mobile options on VitalSource Bookshelf etextbooks.“Leading universities in the Middle East and North Africa, and countries represented by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), are transitioning to all-digital curriculums,” according to Gaurav Parwanda, Panworld Education CEO. “Educational institutions are looking to provide their students with digital content that can be accessed anywhere, anytime and securely, and the VitalSource Bookshelf platform is the right solution for us to help our customers do that.” Education services in the Middle East now have $61 billion in projected worth and 53.6 million students by 2015, according to Ingram Content Group. Saudi Arabia now has an education budget of $54 billion. Panworld Education customers can integrate with VitalSource Bookshelf using a variety of their existing learning management platforms and virtual learning environments. Source: Ingram Content Group
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Brandi Scardilli
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