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Vol. 23 No. 3 — March 2003

The Smithsonian Institution has announced the opening of the Joseph F. Cullman III Library of Natural History. It houses, for the first time in one place, the Smithsonian Libraries' entire collection of approximately 10,000 rare and valuable natural history books and manuscripts.

The new library is named for New York City businessman Joseph F. Cullman III, whose $2 million gift established an endowment to support the programs and operations of the facility. The building has protected stacks and a special book storage vault, and includes such items as Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, as well as publications from his voyage on the Beagle; George Catlin's and Edward Curtis' accounts and illustrations of Native American peoples; and numerous other centuries-old books in anthropology, botany, mineral sciences, paleontology, and zoology.

Source: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 202/357-2700; http://www.si.edu.

Brodart Has Introduced DartClix 4 Kids

Brodart Co.'s Automation Division has announced the introduction of DartClix 4 Kids, an offshoot of the company's DartClix subscription service that provides professionally selected and cataloged Web sites that can be imported directly into a library's bibliographic file and viewed in the online public access catalog (OPAC).

With DartClix 4 Kids, subscribers receive a backlist of 2,400 records and approximately 100 new Web sites each month. Records are selected by library professionals. DartClix 4 Kids enables students and patrons to receive age-appropriate Web sites when searching the OPAC. Users can go directly from the OPAC to the Web site by clicking on the URL in the MARC record.

While libraries may each have a different way of presenting their OPACs to their students or patrons, each DartClix 4 Kids record appears the same and can be found the same way in any OPAC. All records adhere to current AACRII cataloging standards. Each record also contains a contents field, the URL, a summary, an audience level, and multiple subject fields.

As part of the DartClix 4 Kids subscription service, Brodart monitors the records and delivers a monthly maintenance report to subscribers. The report includes any edits or changes that need to be made to the record as well as inactive sites that need to be deleted.

Source: Brodart Automation, Williamsport, PA, 800/233-8467; http://www.brodart.com.

COUNTER Code of Practice Now Available

COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) has announced that the COUNTER Code of Practice is now available and can be downloaded at http://www.projectcounter.org. COUNTER is a multi-agency project whose objective is to develop a single, internationally accepted, extendible code of practice that will allow the usage of online information products and services to be measured more consistently. Member organizations include the Association of Research Libraries, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, the National Information Standards Organization, and the American Association of Publishers.

COUNTER says that because librarians want to understand better how the information they buy from a variety of sources is being used, and publishers want to know how the information products they disseminate are being used, its Code of Practice meets these needs by setting international guidelines that govern the recording and exchange of online usage data.

According to the announcement, there will be only one valid version of the code at any given time, but different levels of compliance will be possible. Release 1 focuses on journals and databases. There are also plans to extend the Code of Practice to cover other categories of publications, such as e-books.

Source: COUNTER; a working group that can be contacted electronically at http://www.projectcounter.org.

Inmagic Offers Spanish Versions of Products

Inmagic, Inc., a global provider of content and information management software and services, has announced the release of a Spanish version of DB/Text WebPublisher 5.2, a fully integrated database system that provides organizations with the capability to store, search, and obtain information (text, multimedia, and images) on the Web.

Also available is the Spanish version of DB/Text WebPublisher Lite, a single database version of DB/Text WebPublisher. Similarly, French versions of DB/Text WebPublisher and DB/Text WebPublisher Lite were released last May. According to the company, DB/Text WebPublisher is used by many prominent institutions to manage and disseminate business intelligence, research data, image archives, product catalogs, help desk knowledgebases, and more.

Source: Inmagic, Inc., Woburn, MA, 800/229-8398, 781/938-4442; http://www.inmagic.com.

OCLC to Add Singapore's Union Catalog

OCLC has announced that all 1.4 million holdings from the Singapore National Union Catalogue are being added to WorldCat, making it the first national union catalog from the Asia Pacific region to be loaded in the OCLC online union catalog. Containing more than 50 million records, the WorldCat bibliographic database connects librarians, students, researchers, and other library users to 4,000 years of recorded knowledge.

Singapore Integrated Library Automation Services (SILAS), which has provided Singapore libraries with online shared cataloging services since 1987, will continue to maintain a copy of the Singapore National Union Catalogue. As part of WorldCat, the catalog will be available to library users around the world. Currently, 93 libraries in Singapore are using OCLC cataloging services.

The National Library Board of Singapore manages the National Library, two regional libraries, 19 community libraries, and 46 community children's libraries, as well as libraries belonging to government agencies, schools, and private institutions.

Source: OCLC, Dublin, OH, 800/848-5878, 614/764-6000; http://www.oclc.org.

Information Science Abstracts Renamed Information Science & Technology Abstracts

Information Today, Inc. (ITI) has announced that Information Science Abstracts (ISSN: 0020-0239, $789 for 1 year) has been renamed Information Science & Technology Abstracts (ISTA). Published nine times a year by ITI, ISTA has provided worldwide library and information science records from more than 450 publications dating back to 1966. According to the announcement, the new name reflects recognition of the significant changes in the field of information science that occurred during the last decade and that are recorded in the literature that ISTA abstracts. As information has increasingly become a commodity, the information science profession has also grown from its beginnings in the library and information retrieval world to become more interdisciplinary.

Source: Information Today, Inc., Medford, NJ, 800/300-9868, 609/654-6266; https://www.infotoday.com.

New Online Resources

University of Minnesota and ASID Start InformeDesign Web Site for Design Research

The University of Minnesota and the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) have launched InformeDesign, a Web site that provides research on the connection between design and human behavior. The URL for the Web site is http://www.informedesign.umn.edu.

The InformeDesign Web site was created and will be maintained by a team of researchers at the Department of Design, Housing, and Apparel at the University of Minnesota. According to the announcement, the impetus for InformeDesign was to create a device to facilitate design professionals' use of research as a decision-making tool in the design process, thereby improving the overall quality of design solutions to protect and enhance the public's health, safety, and welfare.

The site currently contains more than 240 "practitioner-friendly" research summaries of findings transformed from a wide variety of academic journals on design and human behavior. An additional 500 research summaries will be added to the site each year. Visitors can access the free summaries by performing simple keyword searches or by reviewing the summaries under three major categories: Space, Issues, and Occupants.

In addition to the searchable database of summaries, the site features online discussion forums, listings of collaborative research opportunities, a calendar of research-related events, and a glossary of terms.

Source: University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN, 612/624-5318; http://www.umn.edu and American Society of Interior Designers, Washington, DC, 202/675-2369; http://www.asid.org.

BIOSIS Launches BiologyBrowser Portal

BIOSIS has announced BiologyBrowser (http://www.biologybrowser.org), an interactive portal designed for the life sciences community. According to the company, BiologyBrowser creates a dynamic environment that connects users with valuable information through interactive discussion forums, quality-controlled Web links, science news, and other free resources.

BiologyBrowser's product manager says that the portal "... offers information-seekers—whether they are researchers or students—a peer-to-peer option for finding information in the life sciences...." The free resources on BiologyBrowser include more than 12,000 science links, updated daily; an interactive forum for connecting scientists worldwide, featuring discussion boards broken down by field and offering user-to-user messaging; The Index to Organism Names; an animal classification guide for science students; and up-to-date science news.

The initial topics for BiologyBrowser discussion forums will include Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Ecology and the Environment, Genetics, Pharmacology and Toxicology, Plant Sciences, and Zoology and the Animal Sciences. Forum topics will be added or consolidated based on usage demands and member requests.

Source: BIOSIS, Philadelphia, 800/523-4806, 215/587-4800; http://www.biosis.org.

U-M Creates New Academic Search Service

The University of Michigan (U-M) has announced that an online search service designed to create access to a wide-ranging collection of digital resources geared to the academic community is now available through the University Library.

The service, called OAIster (pronounced "oyster"; http://www.oaister.org), searches a repository of information that links to previously difficult-to-locate electronic scholarly resources such as the complete contents of books and articles, technical reports, preprints (unpublished works that have not yet been peer reviewed), white papers, images of paintings, movies, and audio files of speeches. OAIster retrieves these sometimes-hidden resources by tapping directly into the collections of a variety of institutions using "metadata harvester" technology being developed by the University of Illinois­Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Through a collaborative effort with UIUC, U-M's OAIster service provides access to over 1 million harvested records that describe and point to these resources. Currently, the resources are created and hosted by 119 research libraries and institutions from around the world.

Many of the scholarly collections included in OAIster were not previously indexed in any popular Web search services and remained hidden from those who needed the resources for their searches. With the OAIster tool, researchers can locate specific and relevant information based on their needs. Examples of some of the collections currently available through OAIster include the arXiv.org e-Print Archive (physics research), Carnegie Mellon University Informedia Public Domain Video Archive, Ethnologue: Languages of the World, and many other online scholarly resources available over the Internet.

Source: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 734/764-1817; http://www.umich.edu.

Columbia University Libraries Launches New Database—The Papers of John Jay

Columbia University Libraries has announced The Papers of John Jay, 1745­1829, an image database and indexing tool composed of thousands of pages scanned from photocopies and abstracts of original documents gathered from more than 50 repositories by the John Jay publication project staff during the 1960s and 1970s. The database is now available on the Web without restriction at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/eresources/archives/jay.

This new tool provides access to the correspondence, memos, diaries, and diplomatic papers written by or to Jay—diplomat, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and early graduate of King's College. These files were maintained as sources for items to be used in a planned four-volume series.

According to Columbia University Libraries, the Papers of John Jay, 1745­1829 is a work in progress that will expand as new documents and additional searching features are added.

Source: Columbia University Libraries, New York, 212/854-2271; http://www.columbia.edu.

New/Enhanced Databases

JSTOR Completes Its Arts & Sciences II Collection, Adds 47 New Journal Titles

JSTOR has announced the completion of its Arts & Sciences II collection. Released in stages over the past 18 months, Arts & Sciences II is a multidisciplinary collection that contains the digitized archives of 122 journals in an array of disciplines including history; economics; Asian studies; classics; history of science; archaeology; geography; and African, Latin American, Slavic, and Middle Eastern studies.

According to the announcement, the finalization of Arts & Sciences II furthers JSTOR's dual mission to create and maintain a trusted electronic archive of important scholarly journals, and to provide and extend access to these journals as widely as possible throughout the academic community. It is one of six collections in the JSTOR archive, along with Arts & Sciences I, Business, Ecology & Botany, General Science, and Language & Literature.

In a separate release, JSTOR announced that it will now be offering its journal collections to U.S. high schools. This comes as the result of a successful 2-year pilot project at 16 public and private high schools nationwide. Most often found at college and university libraries, as well as at selected public libraries and research institutions, the pilot project demonstrated JSTOR's benefits for high school students. More information about participation (including fees) can be found at http://www.jstor/org/about/ss.participation.info.html.

Source: JSTOR, New York, 212/229-3700; http://www.jstor.org.

H.W. Wilson Offers Complete Readers' Guide, Upgrades Biography Reference Bank

H.W. Wilson has announced that the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, back to its 1901 debut, is now searchable online via WilsonWeb.

The full release of Readers' Guide Retrospective delivers nearly 3 million citations from nearly 500 leading U.S. magazines. Readers' Guide Retrospective is the online equivalent of 43 Readers' Guide annuals in print—saving subscribers about 12 feet of shelf space. The database allows searching by keyword, subject heading, date, journal, author, article title, ISSN, article type, and more. Updated subject headings allow searching using familiar, contemporary terms, while original subject headings are also provided.

Readers' Guide Retrospective also makes acquiring articles easy. A library holdings indicator, linked to the library's OPAC, lets users know if they'll find cited articles on the shelves. WilsonLink SFX-powered technology links citations with full text from other open-URL-compatible databases. Users can also acquire articles through built-in interlibrary loan and document delivery links.

In a separate announcement, Wilson said that its Biography Reference Bank database now has new content, as well as a new structure that makes finding information more precise.

Because the database can include several entries of various types about an individual, searches now retrieve a single master record. The master record, in turn, features hotlinks to each category of material available: original Wilson profiles, profiles licensed from other reference publishers, magazine articles with the person as subject, and records of books by and about the person. From the Category page, a user can click to see the citation of interest.

Besides the narrative profiles, Biography Reference Bank now incorporates any article that has the person of interest as subject, from thousands of periodicals indexed by the full range of Wilson periodicals databases. Additionally, over 11,500 biographical profiles currently are being added to Biography Reference Bank as a result of licensing agreements with publishers Harvard University Press, Houghton-Mifflin, Greenwood Publishing, and James Clarke.

Source: H.W. Wilson, Bronx, NY, 800/367-6770, 718/588-8400; http://www.hwwilson.com.

Thomson Derwent Releases a New Patent Database—Derwent Web of Nanotechnology

Thomson Derwent has announced the development of Derwent Web of Nanotechnology, a Web-based patent resource that delivers up-to-the-minute nanotechnology-related patent records from Derwent, journal literature from Thomson ISI, and editorially evaluated Web sites.

With 35,000 patent records from the Derwent World Patents Index (10,000 added per year) and more than 185,000 journal records from ISI Web of Science (25,000 added per year), Derwent Web of Nanotechnology is a comprehensive resource. In addition, the new product is equipped with a variety of search options, including an easy-to-use interface for the casual searcher and powerful advanced search capabilities for more in-depth research. An alerts feature is also included.

Derwent Web of Nanotechnology is available via industrial or multi-user subscription. Trial subscriptions are available.

Source: Derwent, London, 011-44-20-7344-2800; http://www.derwent.com.

Your Digital Library

Luna Imaging Offers New Insight Software

Luna Imaging has announced the launch of its new software solution, Insight Standard. Insight Standard includes the same functionality of Insight and comes pre-configured with the VRA Core 3.0 metadata standard, which provides collection owners with the ability to install and begin building their collections quickly, easily, and economically, Luna says.

Luna Imaging's Insight is multiplatform, scalable software that enables users to dynamically view and work with high-resolution images, data, video, and audio materials online. Luna's newest Insight software was developed out of a desire to help institutions struggling with implementation of the VRA Core 3.0 metadata standard. VRA provides guidelines for cataloging visual resources, but implementation of the standard within a database structure is left to the individual institution.

As new records are created, Insight Standard provides the fields to be completed, ensuring that the visual resources are cataloged in accordance with the VRA guidelines. The software also comes with Luna's data editing tool called Inscribe, which enables users to create, edit, and delete catalog information over the Internet. Other features include work-flow tracking, local vocabulary support, online training, and software productivity tools for adding and cataloging unlimited numbers of images, with local management of user accounts and privileges through Insight Administrator Tools.

Source: Luna Imaging, Inc., Culver City, CA, 800/452-LUNA, 310/452-8370; http://www.lunaimaging.com.

ACRL Offers Digital Reference Audiocasts

The Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) has announced that audiocasts of the opening and closing sessions of the August 2002 Digital Reference Research Symposium are now available through the ACRL Web site free of charge.

This invitation-only event brought together 30 participants from libraries, digital libraries, and the computer science field with the goal of creating a research agenda in digital reference that bridges the areas of digital reference, library practice, and digital libraries. (Six white papers were presented at the symposium, and will soon be available as an ACRL publication.) The Digital Reference Symposium was sponsored by the Information Institute of Syracuse, the National Library of Canada, the ACRL, Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and QuestionPoint, with participation by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Library of Congress, and Gemstar.

To listen to R. David Lankes' opening comments and the closing group discussion session, visit http://acrl.telusys.com/webcast.

Source: Association of College & Research Libraries, Chicago, 800/545-2433; http://www.ala.org/acrl.

Learning Opportunities

ITI Announces New WebSearch U Courses

Information Today, Inc. (ITI) has announced a new program for the WebSearch University (WSU) spring 2003 series.

WSU is an intensive learning environment in which intermediate and advanced searchers can improve their skills and learn new search tactics, strategies, and tools. At WSU, searchers have an opportunity to keep on top of new developments, review search options, and renew their thinking. The complete program is available online at http://www.websearchu.com. The next session will be held April 7­8 at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco. Other dates and locations are to be determined.

WSU has restructured its curriculum and courses for 2003. The first day offers three Core Courses and the opportunity to choose three of six WebSearch Academy Tutorials. On the second day, attendees can shape their own curriculum by selecting up to seven in-depth electives. Most electives repeat more than once so that each attendee can mix and match to create a personalized curriculum that fits his or her specific areas of interest.

Source: Information Today, Inc., Medford, NJ, 800/300-9868, 609/654-6266; https://www.infotoday.com.

Westlaw Offers Program for Law Librarians

West has announced that law librarians can now strengthen their legal research skills with the new online Westlaw Certification Program.

Two Master Classes, "Cost-Effective Research on Westlaw" and "Company Information," currently are offered free of charge on westgroup.com. These are 1-hour, self-paced programs. A certificate indicating that the researcher is proficient in advanced research techniques can be printed once the course is successfully completed. According to the company, plans for this year include adding courses that focus on practice areas, law firm cost recovery solutions, and researching news and business information.

Source: West, Eagan, MN, 651/687-7000; http://www.westgroup.com.

New Library Exhibition to Run Alongside Relocated Internet Librarian International

The Internet Librarian International Conference is relocating for 2003 to run alongside a newly launched event, Total Library Solutions. The conference and exhibition will take place March 26­27, 2003, at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham, England.

Now in its 5th year, Internet Librarian International is designed for Internet information managers and users. Total Library Solutions, which will run alongside the conference on both days, will feature about 70 leading vendors showcasing the latest products and services.

Total Library Solutions will offer visitors eight product trails to follow, as well as free educational seminars and breakfast briefings with topics specially designed for librarians from the school, public, academic, and special sectors, hosted by independent experts and practitioners. The exhibition will also feature more than 50 free product demonstrations and a BookTrends Centre presented in association with The Bookseller, offering insights and advice into publishing and the book trade.

To get more information or to pre-register, visit http://www.total-library.co.uk.

Source: Imark Communications Europe, Middlesex, U.K., 011-44-1932-730700; http://www.imark.co.uk.

ITI, Outsell Announce Programming for Buying & Selling eContent 2003 Conference

Information Today, Inc. (ITI) has announced programming for its Buying & Selling eContent 2003 conference. Scheduled April 13­15, 2003, this year's event will be held at Marriott's Camelback Inn Resort, Golf Club, and Spa, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

In conjunction with Outsell, Inc., ITI has planned sessions and keynotes centering on the latest developments and critical issues faced by the top-level executives responsible for buying and selling content in the electronic marketplace. Workshops and discussion sessions will focus on topics that include: profitable content business models; making content pay; forward trends in enterprise content services; new business models for content publishers; and the content commerce vision.

To view the complete program, go to http://www.buy-sell-econtent.com/BSEC2003Program.pdf.

Source: Information Today, Inc., Medford, NJ, 800/300-9868, 609/654-6266; https://www.infotoday.com.

Cutting-Edge Services

Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center Has Begun Offering eAudio Digital Audiobooks

The Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center and the Alliance Library System have announced a new program, eAudio, for visually impaired readers. The new service was to launch in mid-January.

The center will offer digital audiobooks to its readers through the Audible.com program, a private company and provider of digital, downloadable books. The pilot project will offer current popular titles in copyright-secure audio formats in CD audio quality from Audible.com on a portable digital audio player, the Audible.com Otis. The Otis digital audio players available for loan from the Talking Book Center will each hold two to three audiobooks, which will be mailed to interested, eligible readers.

Currently the Talking Book Center offers thousands of titles to readers on audiotape and free playback equipment to approximately 5,000 readers in central Illinois. The new eAudio service will begin to introduce readers to audiobooks in digital format, which is the eventual goal of the talking book program at the national level. Other agencies serving the visually impaired have begun to move to offering textbooks and other texts in digital format.

Source: Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center, Pekin, IL, 800/426-0709; http://www.mitbc.org.

Florida Libraries Launch Spanish Portal

The Southeast Florida Library Information Network (SEFLIN) has announced MiServiciodeBiblioteca.org, which enables 25 southeast Florida libraries to be accessed via a Spanish-language single-search service.

MiServiciodeBiblioteca.org also features a Spanish-language guide to libraries in southeast Florida. The guide includes a searchable directory of more than 300 libraries, information about each library, and a map of each library's location. Additionally, MiServiciodeBiblioteca.org provides resources to assist library staff in serving Spanish-speaking library users.

SEFLIN is a library cooperative whose members include more than 300 public, academic, and school libraries/library systems in Broward, Martin, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties.

Source: Southeast Florida Library Information Network, Fort Lauderdale, FL, 954/357-7345; http://www.seflin.org.

Cleveland Public Library to Circulate E-Books Through Kiosk Web Site or OPAC

The Cleveland Public Library has announced that it has entered into an agreement with digital media company OverDrive, Inc. to open a circulating e-book and digital media collection. Patrons will be able to access and download for offline reading digital books and periodicals either through the library's online catalog or from a new kiosk-style Web site. According to the announcement, the Cleveland Public Library will be the first of its kind to offer best-selling titles for reading on nearly every type of PC, notebook, tablet PC, Palm, Sony, and Pocket PC PDA device.

The new service is scheduled to launch this month. Besides support for reading on Palm and Pocket PC PDA devices in addition to PCs, the library will have the ability to add its own digitized titles to the collections, such as local newspapers or archived documents. The library will also be able to circulate copyrighted digital audiobooks and other multimedia. Cleveland Public Library personnel will be able to develop their collection from a variety of sources and a growing list of media file formats.

Source: Cleveland Public Library, Cleveland, OH, 216/623-2955; http://www.cpl.org.

ALA Midwinter News

Rallying to Save America's Libraries

ALA president Mitch Freedman kicked off a new initiative on Friday, Jan. 24. This national Campaign to Save America's Libraries aims to fight off the budget cuts that many libraries have been experiencing. Attendees packed a conference room, waved pennants, and listened to speakers outline how their library systems have been affected. ALA urged everyone to advocate for library funding, and said it was creating a customizable toolkit that people can download from http://www.ala.org/pio/campaign_to_save_americas_libraries.html.

Source: ALA, Chicago, 312/280-5043; http://www.ala.org.

Sirsi Launches 'Rooms' and Partnerships

At the Free Library of Philadelphia, Sirsi debuted its new context management solution called Sirsi Rooms. According to company executives, this suite of products and services will let librarians develop and present focused, dynamic collections, or rooms, of information from various sources. It's designed to organize information and to present "content in context" so that users can find what they need more easily. The company says that Rooms is not a portal, search engine, or OPAC, but rather a "new product category."

At the show Sirsi also announced that it has partnered with barnesandnoble.com to allow library patrons to buy books online while they're at the library. Sirsi libraries that use Rooms, iBistro, iLink, and Web 2 interface systems can implement the barnesandnoble.com system, and will get a percentage of the purchase prices for all materials that patrons buy via this new partnership.

In other news, Sirsi claimed successful interoperability tests between its Unicorn system and the OCLC FirstSearch service. Sirsi also announced that it's partnered with SF-Systems to integrate its systems to streamline and automate the bindery process. Finally, the company has released version 2 of Sirsi SingleSearch, which uses MuseGlobal technology to allow users to search multiple network-accessible resources simultaneously from one search interface.

Source: Sirsi Corp., Huntsville, AL, 800/917-4774; http://www.sirsi.com.

epixtech: New Name, New Releases

epixtech has relaunched its corporate identity and changed its name to Dynix to show its renewed commitment to libraries' needs. The company also said it is gearing up for new product strategies in 2003.

The first quarter will bring Horizon Reports Manager 1.0, a new reporting tool that will allow librarians to save or share easy-to-read reports. Scheduled for its initial release are school information reports; new report groups will be delivered every quarter. Also, Horizon Reciprocal Borrowing, a new ASP service that allows "in person" ILLs across a variety of vendors' systems by means of the new NCIP standard, should emerge. Also, Horizon Debt Collect 2.0 will come out to offer librarians a cost-effective method for debt recovery.

In the second quarter of 2003, Horizon 7.3 will launch with many enhancements to its Acquisitions and Circ modules along with other new features.

In the third quarter, Dynix expects to release Horizon Information Portal 3.0, with new functionality to deliver online self-registration and personalization services, easier administration, enhanced searching, deduplication of search results, a single point of authentication, selective dissemination of information, and OpenURL support. At that time Dynix also intends to release Horizon Interlibrary Loan, which will let patrons do much of the work themselves in order to streamline the ILL process.

Source: Dynix, Provo, UT, 800/288-8020; http://www.dynix.com.

TLC Rolls Out Online Selection Assistant

The Library Corporation (TLC) has announced the Online Selection Assistant, a vendor-neutral collection development service that automates the process of selecting materials, purchasing them, and handling the accounting. According to TLC, collection development librarians will be able to access comprehensive lists of both published and forthcoming materials, view recommendations, and place orders from information suppliers around the world.

Source: The Library Corp., Inwood, WV, 800/325-7759; http://www.TLCdelivers.com.

divine Talks Sales with Swets, EBSCO

In January word came out that the RoweCom part of divine, Inc. was not doing well—that it had not forwarded the subscription money or orders of many of its customers to the serials publishers. Subsequently divine started to talk about selling off RoweCom, and it was negotiating with both Swets Blackwell and EBSCO. At ALA, Swets announced that it had withdrawn its bid. At press time, EBSCO Industries had signed a letter of intent to acquire the worldwide business of troubled RoweCom.

Source: Swets Blackwell, Lisse, Netherlands, 011-31-252-435-111; http://www.swetsblackwell.com.

Lower Prices for Serials Cybrarian

Creative Library Software, Inc. has lowered and simplified its pricing structure for its Serials Cybrarian product, a Web-based system that helps libraries to fully utilize their electronic journal content by locating and connecting to all the e-journals available in their subscription services. The company has streamlined its business processes in order to pass along savings to its library customers during this economic downturn.

The Serials Cybrarian e-journals management system offers pricing structures for academic, corporate, and public libraries based on their potential user population and their total number of full-text research databases and electronic collections. Partner libraries pay an average of $1,400 annually, and the company reports that the new prices allow customers to save several hundred dollars or more.

Source: Creative Library Software, Inc., Hornell, NY, 607/324-2929; http://www.creativelib.com.

ProQuest Acquires bigchalk, Improves Databases, and Forms Linking Agreements

ProQuest has announced that it has acquired bigchalk, whose operations will be integrated into ProQuest's Information and Learning unit. bigchalk provides online reference databases, standards-based curricula, and tools for preparing lessons for the K-12 education information market.

In separate announcements, ProQuest announced that it has made enhancements to its Historical Newspapers and American Periodicals Series products. Historical Newspapers now contains improved date range tools, allowing users to more effectively pinpoint issues from any screen. It also now includes searching of the entire backfile, streamlined display of search options, and improved help menu customization for users. The American Periodicals Series now has a new custom interface, through which users can search new content by additional article types, choose full-page images or individual articles, and browse entire issues, making it easier to access the database's 775-plus titles.

ProQuest also announced that its Information and Learning unit has entered into several linking partnerships, offering OpenURL links from ProQuest citations direct to the full text in e-journals from the SwetsWise, Ingenta, Ingenta Select, CrossRef, and OCLC ECO services, as well as to OCLC WorldCat, services such as SFX, and library OPACs.

Source: ProQuest Co., Ann Arbor, MI, 800/521-0600; http://www.proquest.com.

Checkpoint Unveils Surveillance Antennas

Checkpoint Systems, a provider of supply chain management and security products, has released Liberty, a family of Radio Frequency Electronic Article Surveillance (RF/EAS) antennas. Liberty incorporates two-way communications capabilities and is driven by Checkpoint's next-generation RF Digital Signal Processing technology, which supports the evolution of a blended EAS/RFID environment. Liberty uses Checkpoint's CheckBase, a stand-alone unit that initiates voice alarms, captures alarm activity from the system, and tracks alarm events at each antenna location; and CheckPro Reporter, software that supports automated alarm analysis and generates reports for detailed analysis of alarm events.

Source: Checkpoint Systems, Inc., Thorofare, NJ, 800/257-5540; http://www.checkpointsystems.com.

Ovid Releases YourJournals@Ovid at ALA

Ovid has announced YourJournals@Ovid, a subset of the company's research database, Journals@Ovid. It is designed to provide information professionals with the ability to customize their organizations' journal searching to include only the electronic journal content to which their organizations subscribe. End users who prefer to search Ovid's full Journals@Ovid database will still be able to do so.

Source: Ovid Technologies, New York, 800/950-2035, 646/674-6300; http://www.ovid.com.

New Books

O'Reilly Releases New Books on Perl-Based Web Development, Linux, and Apache

Programming Web Services with Perl, by Randy J. Ray and Pavel Kulchenko (ISBN: 0-596-00206-8, $39.95), brings Perl users all the information they need to create Web services using their favorite language.

Some of the topics that the book covers include HTTP and XML basics, XML-RPC and the toolkits, SOAP and toolkits, a comprehensive reference to SOAP::Lite, using SOAP with SMTP and other protocols, writing a REST-compliant Web service, and a guide to emerging Web services standards.

Running Linux, 4th edition, by Matt Welsh, Matthias Kalle Dalheimer, Terry Dawson, and Lar Kaufman (ISBN: 1-596-00272-6, $44.95), delves deeper into installation, system administration, configuring desktops, and networking than earlier editions did. Whether readers are installing Linux for the first time or need to know more about a specific task, they can benefit from this book. The authors, experienced Linux enthusiasts, have anticipated problem areas, selected stable and popular solutions, and provided clear discussions and instructions.

Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd edition, by Ben Laurie and Peter Laurie (ISBN: 0-596-00203-3, $39.95), which has been updated to cover the changes in Apache's latest release, discusses how to obtain, set up, secure, modify, and troubleshoot Apache software on both UNIX and Windows systems. In addition to providing detailed information that Apache administrators rely on, the authors have also included information in several different categories, including introductions to using Apache with open source scripting languages and databases.

Source: O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., Sebastopol, CA, 800/998-9938, 707/827-7000; http://www.oreilly.com.

ALA's New Title Prepares You for Disasters

Disaster Response and Planning for Libraries, 2nd edition, by Miriam B. Kahn (ISBN: 0-8389-0837-3; $40, $36 for ALA members), is a one-stop instruction manual for writing a disaster plan that covers all the bases—response, recovery, prevention, and planning. Offering quick and efficient protocols, this author comes to the rescue with a timely update of her step-by-step, how-to guide for preparing and responding to all types of library disasters.

This completely revised edition is a guide to preventing or responding to problems, big or small. With up-to-date information on prevention equipment and materials, it also provides the latest information on preparing for technology recovery. One new case study on post-9/11 recovery and one mold scenario give real-life examples. The text also contains 43 reproducible checklists and forms, and a comprehensive list of resources.

Source: ALA Editions, American Library Association, Chicago, 800/545-2433; http://www.ala.org/editions.