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Magazines > Online > January/February 2003
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SUBSCRIBE NOW!
Online Magazine
Vol. 27 No. 1 — Jan/Feb 2003
Industry News
Compiled by Suzanne Sabroski

Industry News goes up on the Web at http://www.onlinemag.net as soon as it is written, approximately one month before the print issue mails to subscribers. 

SEND ANNOUNCEMENTS ABOUT ONLINE AND INTERNET PRODUCTS AND SERVICES TO: Industry News, Information Today, Inc., P.O. Box 78225, Indianapolis, IN 46278; Fax 435/658-1169; marydee@infotoday.com


Inktomi's New Frontier: Web Search 9
A bit like Deep Space 9, Inktomi's Web search engine is not as visible in the Web universe as its more public brethren since its business model lies in supplying search capabilities to other Web sites rather than having a branded search engine on the Net. Inktomi powers MSN Search, Overture, and Hotbot, for example. Web Search 9 will refresh its database—which is now up to 3 billion documents—every 10 to 14 days, although paid inclusions will update every 48 hours. Smart summaries are created based upon user intent and return contextually generated page fragments, editorials written by human editors, or custom descriptions submitted by paid inclusion subscribers. Web Search 9 will suggest spelling corrections to searchers and has an XML interface to allow portals and content providers to exchange information with Inktomi. Claiming that the "next horizon for Internet search" is understanding the user, something most information professionals have known for a long time, Inktomi correctly identifies search engine challenges as the growth in volume and diversity of content. Advancements in crawler technology and rank algorithms are only part of the story; going forward, what's necessary is increased personalization and anticipation of meaning from search query words and phrases. This type of relevance can only be determined by extensive testing of search engine performance [www.inktomi.com].
 

EDGAR Flies Free Again
The official repository of U.S. corporate financial filings, EDGAR has long been available on various platforms, many of which have moved from free to fee-based. A new version of the EDGAR database comes from Inverito, Inc.—EDGAR IQ. It features searchable keyword access to complete documents. You can search with industry sectors by checking the appropriate box or enter a company name or ticker symbol in a search box. You can also enter keywords in another search box. EDGAR IQ contains 2 years of data as its default, but you can choose to go back to 1996. The results page allows for sorting of documents by filing type and shows a hyperlinked hierarchy by industry. The hierarchy relies on SIC codes for its structure. Inverito, Inc. is a new company owned and managed by four employees previously with WiseNut [www.edgariq.com].
 

Alliances & Deals

LexisNexis and Anderson Publishing Company have announced a merger agreement, further marking LexisNexis' efforts to reach legal professionals practicing in small firms. Anderson is the publisher of Page's Ohio Revised Code Annotated and other secondary analytical information sources. Terms of the deal include a $21 million shareholder buyout by Reed Elsevier Group plc, with Anderson becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of Matthew Bender & Co., another publishing arm of the LexisNexis Group [800/543-6862; www.lexisnexis.com].

Vivisimo has announced that Stanford University's High Wire Press has licensed its Clustering products for use with their Verity search engine. Vivisimohas also opened an office in the Washington, D.C., area to better meet demand from the federal government sector [412/422-2496; www.vivisimo.com].

Infotrieve has announced a linking agreement with Institute of Physics Publishing (IoPP). Customers will be able to link from IoPP Electronic Journals Services to Infotrieve's database and document delivery services. Infotrieve has also signed content agreements with American Physiological Society, American Society for Investigative Pathology, BMJ Publishing Group, the British Psychological Society, the Company of Biologists, Institute of Electrical Engineers, New England Journal of Medicine, Pharmaceutical Press, Society for Neuroscience, Urban & Fischer, BioOne, and Allen Press [800/422-4633; 310/234-2000; www.infotrieve.com].

Dialog has announced file enhancements and additions, including market research from Adis International, and content from BMJ Publishing, Catfile Plus, Controlled Trials Register, HealthScout, National Patent Databases from Germany, France and the UK, Regulatory Affairs Journal from PJB Publications, and an expanded version of ToxFile. Additionally, The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews currently available on DataStar will be available to Dialog users in 2003 [800/3-DIALOG; 919/462-8600; www.dialog.com; www.thomson.com].

FIND/SVP has announced it will provide Hoover's Online users with online, on-demand custom inquiry and research services in addition to the prepackaged business information available through Hoover's. As part of the agreement, FIND/SVP industry and business professionals will, for an additional fee, provide quick personalized answers to a single inquiry, or answer up to five questions a month via a yearly FIND/SVP subscription [800/346-3787; 212-645-4500; www.findsvp.com].
 

Social Sciences & Humanities

ProQuest's Information and Learning division has announced an agreement with the National Library of Scotland to include 2,350 newly identified works in the Early English Books Online database and Early English Booksmicrofilm collection. The addition of these titles, published from 1475 to 1700, represents the single largest content addition to the collection in over a decade. Early English Books Online includes over 125,000 printed works, reproduced in Adobe PDF format directly from the microfilm. New titles are added as they are discovered, and future initiatives call for full-text encoding of 25,000 works [800/521-0600; 734/761-4700; www.il.proquest.com].

ProQuest's Information and Learning division has completed publication of Chadwyck-Healey's Acta Sanctorum database, covering early European social history and the development of Christianity. Available via the Web and on CD-ROM, the collection contains complete texts of 68 printed volumes dating from 1643 to 1940. The majority of the text is in Latin and is indexed using Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina reference numbers, widely used by scholars to identify works about the lives of saints. All Latin and Greek text is fully searchable, with other language text as well as illustrations by medieval artists captured in scanned images [800/521-0600; 734/761-4700; www.il.proquest.com].

Swets Blackwell has announced it will link reference publisher ABC-CLIO's Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life with its e-journal access service SwetsnetNavigator. Users will have access to over 70,000 journals through both long and short abstracts, with over 16,000 new entries added each year [+31 252 435 584; www.swetsnetnavigator.com].

EBSCO has announced that its MetaPress division will handle electronic publishing services for journals published by Baywood Publishing Company. Content management and Web hosting services are provided through the Metapress service, with searching and alert services made available to all registered users of the Web site. If a publisher so chooses, abstracts can be accessed regardless of any subscription status [205/981-5145; www.ebsco.com; www.metapress.com].
 

Biomedical

BioMed Central (BMC), the "open access" publisher, and the California Digital Library have announced that the 10 campuses of the University of California have joined BMC's Institutional Membership program. Under terms of the agreement, processing charges are waived for University of California faculty who submit an article for publication in one of 80 peer-reviewed journals. Upon acceptance, the article becomes freely available via the Web [BMC: +44 (0) 20 7323 0323; www.biomedcentral.com; California Digital Library: 510/987-0425; www.cdlib.org].

Elsevier Science Bibliographic Databases (ESBD) has announced an upgraded version of EMBASE.com. The new Version 3.0 has enhanced functionality and expanded linking capabilities, allowing users to search over 15 million EMBASE and MEDLINE records. Linking is now possible from bibliographic records directly to the full text of cited articles. Digital Object Identifier (DOI) linking to full text is also available through CrossRef [+31 20 4853 507; www.embase.com].

EditorsWeb, a portal to U.S. government and congressional press releases, has announced the addition of the Federal Register and the Congressional Record to its daily alert service. EditorsWeb monitors over 850 Web sites maintained by federal government and Capitol Hill offices [304/264-8160; www.editorsweb.org].

Thomson Publishing Group, Inc.'s FDA Library has announced the offering of CLINLAW, which monitors state and federal clinical trial requirements. Published and updated monthly, CLINLAW E-mail Update service is available to notify subscribers about law changes, proposed legislation, recent developments, and related news [800/677-3789; 202/739-9517; www.thomson.com].
 

Business & Finance

Vickers Stock Research Corporation has announced a new Web-based stock holdings product. The re-engineered collection offers Insider Trading Reports, 5% Holders, Institutional and non-U.S. Institutional Holders, complete stock holding reports, holdings information broken down by industry group and geographic area, peer analysis reports, and voting authority [212/425-7500; www.vickers-stock.com].

FluentMedia has expanded its international content with the addition of COMTEX News Network, Inc. FluentMedia customers will now have access to full-text stories from over 70 global news outlets covering Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Content will be available in English, Spanish, and French. COMTEX also supplies news from U.S. sources A.M. Best, Business Wire, and EDGAR Online, and from regional sources A & G Information Services (covering the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe), AllAfrica, Business News Americas, Kyodo News (Japan), and South American Business Information [323/660-9004; www.fluentmediainfo.com].

FluentMedia has also added daily economic, political, and market-development reports from the Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) ViewsWire. ViewsWire covers 16 global industry groups in over 100 countries [323/660-9004; www.fluentmediainfo.com].

Dialog has announced the following enhancements: an expanded roster of content channels is now available through its DialogPRO small business service. Biotech, competitive intelligence, consulting, and defense join the original channels in advertising and news. Dialog Profound has added content from Business Monitor International (BMI), now available through its market research collection, ResearchLine [800/3-DIALOG; 919/462-8600; www.dialog.com; www.thomson.com].

LexisNexis has announced several enhancements to its Business Intelligence Content. In the financial sector, new content from Multex, numerous Kiplinger reports and letters, CBS MarketWatch, EfinacialNews.com (covering Europe's investment markets), and FD (Fair Disclosure) Wire containing transcripts of analyst calls to executives of publicly traded companies. In company intelligence, idEXEC now provides a database of key executive contacts, and Integra Information Industry Reports cover corporate financial information. It has also added an array of SEC data and tools from EDGAR Online, including searching across more than 2 million SEC documents by more than 15 criteria [800/543-6862; www.lexisnexis.com].

Bureau van Dijk Electronic Publishing (BvD) has announced two major enhancements to its OSIRIS database. Multex Fundamentals will supply annual and quarterly financial data on 10,000 U.S. companies going back 20 years. Additionally, EDGAR Online will provide OSIRIS with approximately 100 types of SEC filings, plus filings history dating back to 1999.These filings include 10-Ks, 10-Qs, 8-Ks, S-1s, and 20-Fs, among others.As with all other information on OSIRIS, both new offerings will also be available on BvD's ORBIS database [212/797-7120; www.bvdep.com].

Factiva has announced the Factiva Quotes Module, the third product in the Factiva Modules product suite, which enables companies to place a customized quotes list in their intranet or portal, providing users with access to financial data from Reuters Investor [609/627-2593; www.factiva.com].
 

Legal

Thomson Derwent has announced the launch of Derwent Web of Software, a Web-based patent information tool to assist in the patent process for software-enabled business methods. With recent court decisions upholding patents on software programs, companies worldwide have been rapidly applying for patents on business methods. Derwent Web of Software unites patent documents from 40 world patent-issuing authorities, scholarly and trade journals, and links to evaluated Web sites [215/386-0100; www.derwent.com].

Thomson ISI has announced the release of Derwent Innovations Index 3.0, a component of ISI Web of Knowledge. Derwent Innovations Index is a Web-based resource that merges the Derwent World Patents Index and the Derwent Patents Citation Index. Updated weekly, it covers 1 million basic inventions —a total of 30 million patents—from 40 patent-issuing authorities dating back to 1963. Enhancements include Cited Patent Family Search, Technology Focus to zero in on core technologies, and Equivalent Abstracts for quick summaries [215/386-0100;www.isinet.com].

FIZ Karlsruhe, European partner of STN International, has made an enhanced version of the JAPIO Japanese patent database available. Bibliographic data from the European Patent Office's INPADOC records is now included, as well as images from the front pages of patent documents and improved indexing [+49 (0) 7247 808 555; www.fiz-karlsruhe.de].

Cypheron Systems, LLC has announced the availability of Rapidpat Complete, featuring a digital copy of the complete U.S. patent collection. Delivered on DVD or online, Rapidpat Complete allows for network applications and is targeted toward law firms [201/736-3518; www.rapidpat.com].

LexisNexis has released a practice-management product designed specifically to help New York trial lawyers organize their practices and research using the LexisNexis edition of Time Matters software. The LexisNexis New York Feature Package includes the newly introduced Research Manager, which allows users to create, annotate, and save a direct link from a case matter and research results from LexisNexis [877/810-5324; www.lexisnexis.com/timematters].
 

Search Engines

FAST has announced that its showcase site AlltheWeb.com has become the first major search site to fully adopt XHTML (eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). These new developments will facilitate faster loading times and a more consistent display across a wider range of Web browsers, as well as pave the way for searching on mobile phones and personal digital assistants [781/304-2495; www.fastsearch.com].

Convera has announced that its RetrievalWare technology has been embedded into five ProQuest products, covering three of ProQuest's core markets. RetrievalWare now is used to power ProQuest Reference Asia, the ProQuest Learning brand of products including KnowPeople and UKOP, and its new service, History Online. RetrievalWare allows searching across multiple formats, including text, video, and image files [800/788-7758; info@convera.com; www.convera.com].
 

Peopleware

David Brown has been appointed as the British Library's Head of Publisher Relations. He will be developing the U.K. national library's strategy in relation to the long-term in-licensing and access of published materials. Brown was formerly the Director of Strategy at Ingenta, plc.

In line with a major reorganization, Ingenta, plchas named Simon Dessain as Chief Operating Officer and William Finlay as Finance Director.

ProQuest has announced the departure of Joe Reynolds, who served as president of the company's Information and Learning segment. A new business unit, ProQuest Education, will be overseen on an interim basis by ProQuest's president and chief operating officer, Alan Aldworth. Candidates will be sought to lead both units.
 

Sci-Tech

Thompson ISI and the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEEE) have announced a linking agreement that will provide ISI Web of Knowledge and IEEE subscribers with links to the full text of articles from IEEE journals and conference proceedings. Users will be able to link from ISI Web of Science and ISI Current Contents Connect to IEEE literature dating back to 1952 [ISI: 800/336-4474; 215/386-0100; www.isinet.com; IEEE: 732/562-5390; www.ieee.org].

FIZ Karlsruhe,European partner of STN International,has announced the launch of the AQUIRE database, containing international papers about the toxic effects of chemicals on aquatic animals and plants. AQUIRE covers both freshwater and saltwater species, including amphibians, with 214,470 records dating from 1915 to 2001. Over 4,000 species and 7,000 chemicals with CAS registry numbers are covered. Priority is given to peer-reviewed literature, with most records published from 1970 on [+49 (0) 7247 808 555; www.fiz-karlsruhe.de; www.stn-international.de].

A new portal for the oil, gas, and power utility industries is now available from Competitive Analysis Technologies, an energy industry intelligence-gathering firm. CATSites Energy Portal includes over 10,500 information resources in 16 separate categories, with daily updates. Three databases—Oil and Gas—Upstream; Oil and Gas—Downstream; and Power Utilities—are fully searchable, and include many resources from the Invisible Web that company researchers have uncovered. A variety of subscriptions, licenses, CD-ROM, and Intranet applications are available [281/370-1444; compete@catsites.com; www.catsites.com].
 

Online Services

Factiva has announced the release of Factiva Fusion, a content enhancement tool that categorizes and creates relationships between business content sets according to a taxonomy. Internal content can be integrated with Factiva's news and business information, as well as other external content including public Web sites. Factiva Quotes Module now provides the ability to track a company stock quote and market indices while users are still on their corporate intranet. Part of the Factiva Modules product suite, this third product in the line includes data from over 80 exchanges, approximately 150 spot currency rates, and 300 currency cross-rate combinations, finds, and corporate bonds [609/627-2593; www.factiva.com].

H.W. Wilson has launched an updated version of its WilsonWeb database service, with the addition of WilsonLink, SFX-powered software for searching beyond WilsonWeb. Additional enhancements include multiple search and display options, database-specific thesauri and customization features for administrators and users [800/367-6770; www.hwwilson.com].

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) has released version 6.0 of its Internet Database Service (IDS). Enhancements include an updated interface, full-text availability noted in citations, unlimited downloads, advanced search capabilities, thesaurus improvements, and various display and reporting features. IDS provides access to over 50 scientific databases [301/961-6761; www.csa.com].

RefWorks bibliographic softwarehas released a new Write-N-Cite utility that allows users to insert references from their personal Web-based RefWorks database. The feature allows users to access and insert citations without leaving a Microsoft Word document. RefWorks is compatible with references from many data providers, including LC MARC format, Dialog, Ingenta, and NLM. Distribution is handled by Cambridge Scientific Abstracts [301/961-6761; refworks@csa.com].

ProQuest's Information and Learning Division has announced an agreement with Tribune Publishing to distribute premium and historical content from the Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times. ProQuest will digitize content from each paper's first editions from 1847 and 1881, respectively. Distribution rights for microfilm and ASCII text versions of the newspapers are included in this agreement as well [800/521-0600; 734/761-4700; www.il.proquest.com].
 

Portals & Intranets

InMagic has announced the release of D/BTextWorks WebPublisher PRO, a new read/write XML-enabled interactive Web publishing tool. These products provide a fully integrated database system with the capability to store, search, and obtaintext, multimedia, and images on the Web. WebPublisher PRO will also include an XML Forms Library with a set of pre-programmed templates for Web queries and reports [800/229-8398; 781/938-6393; www.inmagic.com].

Convera has announced the release of 20 domain-specific semantic network cartridges to enhance enterprise search accuracy, relevancy, and personalization. The plug-and-play cartridges, which capitalize on Convera's recent acquisition of linguistic technology specialist Semantix Inc., allow customers to work with vocabularies relevant to their specific business or industry. The new pre-packaged cartridges plug into Convera's RetrievalWare enterprise search, retrieval, and categorization solution, joining Convera's existing selection of cartridges that support a wide range of languages.Industries covered include Army, Information Science, Biology, Chemistry, Computers, Finance, and MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) [800/788-7758; info@convera.com; www.convera.com].

PaperThin, Inc. has announced the release of CommonSpot Content Server 3.1, a browser-based content management solution. This latest version supports Macromedia's J2EE-based application server, ColdFusion MX, and includes enhancements for improved image and link management, expanded administrator tools, and more e-mail options [781/915-5019; www.paperthin.com].

Alacritude, LLC has announced an agreement with All Effort, Inc. and Inktomi to optimize and index the full text of its 2-million eLibrary documents. Through Inktomi's Index Connect, eLibrary content is now available on leading portals and destination sites such as MSN, About.com, Overture, Looksmart, HotBot and several others. The new partnership claims to be shedding light on the Invisible Web [864/650-7111; www.alacritude.com].

Opencola, Ltd. has released Opencola PRO 1.0, a personal knowledge manager that allows individual desktop users to collect relevant information from a diversity of sources, including news sites, search engines, blogs, and other peers' publicly shared documents. Using a semantic relevance search engine, existing documents can be tagged and integrated into the search process as well [415/596-5428; www.opencola.com].


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