As my fellow editors and I attended sessions and events and stopped by ALA exhibitors’ booths we had scant time to keep up with email. I was able to monitor it just enough to know that press releases were pouring in from vendors who had decided to use the occasion of the ALA meeting in Chcago to release a number of important new products and announce key product enhancements.
We were able to cover some of these things as we made our rounds, with some stories posted here on the blog. We also published three related stories on our ITI’s NewsBreaks service:
- Gale PowerSearch 2.0 and new knowledge portals
- New ProQuest platform announced
- SpringerImages
Paula Hane, ITI NewsBureau Chief, prepares an internal report weekly to make sure that all of us are fully informed of what’s happening in the market. We regard her report as valuable “proprietary business information” and we generally don’t circulate it outside our own editorial shop. In this case, I’d like to break the rules and share it with you, since the staff resources we had in Chicago were simply not sufficient to cover everything that was happening in Chicago. So here you go . . .
News This Week July 15, 2009
Compiled By Paula Hane
News Items We Are Following
Mark Logic announced a new version of its flagship product, MarkLogic Server and a productivity tool for developers, MarkLogic Application Services 1.0.
An agreement was announced between Blackwell and Ingram Digital, giving Blackwell e-book distribution rights to libraries around the world via Ingram’s MyiLibrary platform, with the exception of the UK and Canada. The agreement will allow Blackwell Digital Services customers to discover and order MyiLibrary e-books via Collection Manager, the Blackwell interface.
Amazon has dropped the price of the Kindle 2 to $299 instead of $359 (still overpriced, imho).
From the WSJ: A nonprofit group that provides continuing education for lawyers is making its books available for sale on the Kindle, underscoring the widening appeal of the digital reader. The discounts off print prices for digital works from the Practising Law Institute will be much smaller than those typical of Kindle best-sellers.
Northern Light announced MI Insight, a new service that unifies a company’s tracking of product markets, competitors, events, and trends in one easy-to-deploy, turnkey solution. Each MI Insight is customized to the client’s specifications, populated with content, and editorially supervised by Northern Light research professionals. MI Insight can be integrated into a SinglePoint strategic research portal, a Northern Light Business News portal, or deployed as a MI Insight portal.
The Associated Press and the UK’s Media Standards Trust have announced a digital news “microformat” that proposes specific content and metadata to be coded with every online news story. The proposed microformat would include what a story is about; where it was written; who wrote it; where it was published; the news principles it adheres to; and any usage rights associated with it. (www.mediastandardstrust.org/medianews/newsdetails.aspx?sid=46551)
Gale, part of Cengage Learning, announced the transformation of Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia into an interactive, media-rich online portal. This new digital version will be available this fall.
Unlimited Priorities Corp., a company specializing in support for organizations within the information industry, has announced the sale of AgeLine, an online bibliographic database produced by AARP, to EBSCO Publishing. Unlimited Priorities initiated the transaction, helped manage the process, assisted in the negotiations and acted as the exclusive strategic and financial advisor to AARP.
Gale and K12 Inc. announced an agreement to develop and distribute a new line of world language-learning products to libraries. Power-Glide Language Courses, Inc. (known as powerspeaK12), a subsidiary of K12 Inc., will develop web-based language courses, which Gale will distribute exclusively to the library market. The courses developed for Gale customers will use the research-driven powerspeaK12 language learning methodology which includes a variety of multi-sensory activities to take full advantage of the brain’s ability to acquire language.
Copernic announced the new myCopernic, a personal search portal that develops a search profile for a knowledge worker that is used to provide relevant search results from different sources.
LexisNexis announced plans to redesign LexisNexis Statistical, which includes new single search capabilities for multiple content sources, integration of statistics and datasets as well as their relationships, faceted search results, and improved relevance ranking—expected to launch Jan. 2010. Full-text for thousands of statistical publications and tables is being migrated onto a new XML-based publishing platform.
LexisNexis also announced InterActionIQ, which analyzes communication within an organization based on e-mail, calendar listings, phone calls, and event schedules to identify new or underutilized relationships and provide contact information.
Informa Healthcare has announced that the new interactive www.informahealthcare.com beta site will go live in July. The site will combine all of the Informa Healthcare pharmaceutical and medical journal titles currently listed on InformaWorld.com and InformaPharmaScience.com on one platform.
The Library of Congress National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) and DuraSpace have announced that they will launch a one-year pilot program to test the use of cloud technologies to enable perpetual access to digital content. The pilot will focus on a new service, DuraCloud, developed and hosted by the DuraSpace organization. Among the NDIIPP partners participating in the pilot program are the New York Public Library and the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has launched an enhanced e-mail alert system to inform the public about new government publications available for sale. Subscribers can select from more than 100 different subject areas.
Userful announced the “Secure Your Funding” initiative to help libraries, community colleges and other public sector organizations apply for, and receive Broadband Technology Opportunity Program stimulus money.
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) announced that its widely used system for classifying physics-related subjects, the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS), will be licensed to the publishing community under a fee structure beginning Jan. 2010 (previously it had been free).
From PaidContent: McGraw-Hill is trying to sell BusinessWeek—or as MGH says, “it is exploring strategic options.”
Microsoft announced the business model and launch timing for Azure, the cloud operating system it announced last fall. Azure will be offered for purchase through a consumption-based pricing model and will be available in mid-Nov.
Microsoft also said that its forthcoming Office 2010 (due in first half of next year) will have lightweight, FREE, browser versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote–all based in the cloud.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that operates Wikipedia, are joining forces to make health and science information more accessible and reliable. This collaboration is the first of its kind for both organizations. NIH subject matter experts will contribute to Wikipedia.
Springer Science+Business Media is offering all journal articles which deal with the H1N1 virus, or swine flu, free of charge on www.springerlink.com. The articles can be found by using the search term ‘H1N1.’ A total of 318 scientific articles will be available to print out or download from now until Dec. 31, 2009.
Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief, Information Today, Inc.
Editor, NewsBreaks, Infotoday.com
Posted by Dick Kaser, ITI VP, Content
P.S. Though you can’t get this report on an ongoing basis, you can sign up for our electronic news service for free.
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