Welcome to the July 2006 issue of NewsLink, Information Today, Inc.'s FREE e-mail newsletter for library and information professionals.

As summer kicks into full swing after the July 4th holiday, and all of us are catching up on e-mail and getting back to the office, let's take a look at the latest ITI news.

We are thrilled to announce that Information Today, Inc. has acquired SpeechTEK Conferences and Expositions and Speech Technology Magazine of Lexington from AmComm Holdings, Inc. We are extremely pleased with the acquisition, as it fits nicely with some of our other publications and conferences. Go to www.speechtek.com and www.speechtechmag.com to learn more.

Thanks to everyone that purchased ITI books, publications, and directories at this summer's ALA and SLA events. We are happy to donate 20% of the booth sales from the events to Katrina Relief Funds. As always, we appreciate your continued support and look forward to seeing you at our events in the future.

For those of you who regularly listen to podcasts, check out our podcast archives. EContent magazine editor Michelle Manafy and Searcher magazine editor Barbara Quint have numerous podcasts available online. Go to http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleIndex.aspx?ContextSubtypeID=107 and www.infotoday.com/Searcher to hear editorials and interviews with industry leaders. Download these files to your desktop or portable mp3 player.

We look forward to seeing you at our events this coming year. If you have any comments or suggestions on any special content you would like to see covered or on how to improve this newsletter and the information held in it, please let us know at newslink@infotoday.com. 

by Paula J. Hane

While the laboratory projects of Google and Yahoo! tend to generate lots of interest and media buzz, it’s interesting to take note of some other worthy online lab experiments. I recently found out about Reuters Labs (http://labs.reuters.com), which demonstrates some new initiatives that the company is working on that are focused on new media and mobile technologies.

Starting July 4, a new online World eBook Fair that is designed to provide “the largest showcase for eBooks, eBook publishers, editors, and others working in the new world of eBooks” will launch. Sponsored by the oldest and largest free e-book source on the Internet, Project Gutenberg (with the assistance of the World eBook Library and a number of other e-book efforts), the month-long celebration (July 4–Aug. 4) will offer one-third of a million e-books to the public for free downloading.

Each year from 2006 to 2009, the World eBook Fair promises to bring a growing number of e-books to the public from July 4 through Aug. 4:

The choice of the July 4 date is fitting: It marks the 35th anniversary of the first step taken toward today’s e-books. (The U.S. Declaration of Independence was the first file placed online for downloading.)

Project Gutenberg e-books—which now number 20,000—are always free of charge from http://www.gutenberg.org, http://gutenberg.net.au (Project Gutenberg of Australia), and http://pge.rastko.net (Project Gutenberg Europe). In addition, the World eBook Library sponsors Project Gutenberg’s Consortia Center (http://www.gutenberg.cc), where entire collection providers around the world make many e-book libraries available in their entirety.

The World eBook Library, a member-supported service, offers unrestricted access to its collection of more than 250,000 e-books, documents, and articles. The World eBook Library normally charges $8.95 per year for online access and allows unlimited permanent downloading. During the World eBook Fair, all of these books are available free of charge through a gateway at http://www.gutenberg.org.

Most Project Gutenberg files are plain text, but some are HTML. The preferred formats are those that are open and editable. Titles from the World eBook Library are in PDF.

Organizers hope the fair will help promote e-book awareness, disseminate e-books more broadly, and encourage increasing levels of literacy and reading. The site states, “We hope you and yours will find lifetimes of reading materials to expand your horizons over the years.” The site also encourages people to contribute e-books to the fair.

Project Gutenberg is also making it even easier to get hold of its texts. The group is now offering the “Build Your Own Public Library” DVD. The DVD image is available online at http://preprints.readingroo.ms/ultimate/ultimate.iso. It contains about 20,000 books, which would take up two-thirds of the space on a single DVD. So, it would have “room for you to select e-books from the rest of the Internet to fill out those last 1/3 at your pleasure.”

Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg, never seems to tire of pushing his vision of providing e-books for the world, hailing the achievements of the many volunteers who contribute and making predictions for how many e-books can be given away. Though, as he said, “I’ve been making predictions about e-books from 1971 on—and no one has ever believed me—so why start now?”

He recently wrote: “I personally DARE Google or Yahoo or anyone else to make eBooks available to the general public at this rate. I would LOVE to lose, because that would mean this world would have at least TWO million free eBooks [by] July 4, 2009.”

A recent Project Gutenberg newsletter referred to other high-visibility digital text initiatives, calling it a case of “David versus Googliath”:

Google and Yahoo are each multibillion dollar brands, and each have a host of multibillion dollar libraries as business partners, while The World eBook Library’s collection is made up of donations from 100 libraries you probably never heard of, and Project Gutenberg is made up totally of volunteer eBook makers. Google’s eBook total is finally approaching 1% of the stated goal of 10 million eBooks in 25% of the period of 6 years laid out 18 months ago in the media blitz. If you combine their total with Yahoo’s, perhaps that would get them to 1% of that 10 million.

Just recently, Microsoft announced that the libraries of the University of California and the University of Toronto will participate in the Open Content Alliance (OCA) book-scanning project, which is known as Windows Live Book Search. Yahoo! participates in the OCA, along with many U.S. and Canadian university libraries, The Internet Archive, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Adobe Systems, and many other companies and organizations. Meanwhile, Google’s book scanning project continues to meet with opposition from some publishers who don’t like Google’s “scan first, ask later” assumption.

By the way, I found it interesting that “Scan This Book,” the recent, much-discussed article by Kevin Kelly in The New York Times (May 14 Magazine; http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14publishing.html), discussed Google repeatedly but didn’t even mention Project Gutenberg, the OCA, or several other worthy projects.

Congratulations to Hart and Project Gutenberg on the 35th anniversary of helping worthy texts find a digital outlet.

Paula J. Hane is Information Today, Inc.’s news bureau chief and editor of NewsBreaks. Her e-mail address is phane@infotoday.com.
 

NewsBreaks for Monday, July 3, 2006

APA Discontinuing Print Index After 8 Decades, Adding Full-Text Archives
by Barbara Quint

After 80 years as the leading abstracting and indexing (A&I) service in the behavioral sciences, this December will see the last issue of Psychological Abstracts. Subscribership for the print publication has dropped steadily from an all-time high of 9,500 to just a few hundred in 2005.

-->http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060703-1.shtml

NewsBreaks Weekly News Digest

Thomson Gale Extends AccessMyLibrary.com Service
Thomson Gale (http://www.gale.com), part of The Thomson Corp., announced a new partner to the AccessMyLibrary.com platform—OCLC’s Open WorldCat program. The partnership between AccessMyLibrary.com, Thomson Gale’s library advocacy initiative to increase the visibility of library content on the Internet and in search engines, and OCLC WorldCat, the bibliographic database of the merged catalogs of OCLC member libraries, is designed to enhance users’ search experiences in both platforms.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd060703.shtml#1

Alacra Offers Premium Content Web Feeds
Alacra, Inc., a provider of online business information solutions, announced the launch of Web feeds for select premium publishers’ content in the Alacra Store (http://www.alacrastore.com). This new feature enables business information professionals to subscribe to company-specific feeds containing credit and investment research from premium content publishers such as CreditSights, Moody’s Investors Service, and Thomson Financial.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd060703.shtml#2

LexisNexis Launches Advanced Government Solutions
LexisNexis U.S. (http://www.lexisnexis.com) announced the launch of LexisNexis Advanced Government Solutions, which is designed to enable customers across federal, state, and local government to transform data into mission-critical decisions.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd060703.shtml#3

INFORMATION TODAY
The Impact of Open Choice
By Robin Peek

The findings of a study released last month in PLoS Biology reveal that articles that are published by the author-pays open access (OA) approach are cited more often than those that are published in the same journal and that are publicly released 6 months after publication.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/it/jul06/Peek.shtml

ONLINE Magazine
Virtual Reference in the Age of Pop-Up Blockers, Firewalls, and Service Pack 2
By Pascal Lupien

Real-time virtual reference (VR) has been around for several years. Although it has become standard in our libraries and widely discussed in the professional literature, the evidence indicates that libraries are not satisfied with the service. Usage statistics have been disappointing; frustration levels with the technology remain high.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/online/jul06/Lupien.shtml

COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES
Computers in Libraries' Annual Buyer's Guide

Computers in Libraries' annual Buyer's Guide still appears in print as the July/August issue. Now it's also online at http://bg.computersinlibraries.com. You can search by vendors' names or by keywords for products and services. Consultants are also listed under various specialities; you can check the "Services" section to find those. Use the CIL Buyer's Guide next time you're shopping!
-->http://bg.computersinlibraries.com

SEARCHER Magazine
Music to Soothe the Savage Searcher: Classical Music Databases and Web Resources
By David Mattison

The year 2006 marks the 250th birthday of Austrian musician and composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I thought the occasion might warrant a review of Web databases and related online resources covering the European classical musical traditions from Mozart’s musical antecedents up to contemporary composers.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/jul06/Mattison.shtml

MULTIMEDIA & INTERNET@SCHOOLS
The Changing Face of the Scholarly Web: Finding Free, Quality, Full-Text Articles, Books, and More!
By Robert J. Lackie

The scholarly Web is getting noticed more because of new digitization initiatives underway and the enormous publicity search leaders are receiving for their fledgling work. Many librarians and researchers seem to be pleasantly surprised by the continually changing face of the scholarly Web and its freely available quality full-text offerings. This article brings together pertinent resources on the free Web of interest to anyone, including librarians and other educators, who conducts research and would like to easily supplement their currently available holdings, in print and electronic formats and via commercial vendors’ fee-based subscription databases, within their own libraries.
--> http://www.mmischools.com/Articles/
ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=11534

ECONTENT
Know Your RightsWith CCC’s Rightsphere
By Michelle Manafy

Copyright is not user-friendly. In fact, copyright issues are so complex it is hardly friendly to publishers or lawyers either. The complexity of copyright presents such a high hurdle that most users don’t even try to decipher its vagaries and just hit the Send button and hope for the best. Even those who personally want to adhere to copyright or whose organizations mandate it often find the process of clearing rights so daunting that it hardly seems worth it, thus inhibiting their ability to share valuable resources. In an effor to clarify the process, CCC has introduced Rightsphere, which provides “an instant, unambiguous answer to the user’s question, ‘What am I allowed to do with this content?’”
--> http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/
ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=16784

LINK-UP DIGITAL
Giving Your Photo Editor a Boost
By Reid Goldsborough

The top photo editing computer programs provide professional photographers and amateur snapshooters alike with powerful tools for improving their images. Starting with a digital camera or using a scanner with a conventional film-based camera, you can correct and enhance your images and create impressive artistic effects without exposing yourself to smelly darkroom chemicals.
 --> http://www.infotoday.com/linkup/lud070106-goldsborough.shtml

CONFERENCE REPORT/UPDATE

Internet Librarian 2006 - Online Registration Open
Register online for the 10th annual Internet Librarian Conference and Exhibition, located in Monterey, Calif., Oct. 23 - 25, 2006. This year's event features four keynote sessions; 100-plus dynamic speakers in four simultaneous tracks plus 2 days of Internet@Schools West, many in-depth learning events and workshops, a fun and informative evening session, cybertours, and a new IL podcast studio. Group discount pricing is available; go to http://www.infotoday.com/il2006/registration.shtml for more information.

CONFERENCE CALENDAR

July 2006

For the complete Conference Calendar, featuring hundreds of information and library conferences, visit http://www.infotoday.com/calendar.shtml
 

The Visible Employee
Using Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance to Protect Information Assets—Without Compromising Employee Privacy or Trust
By Jeffrey M. Stanton and Kathryn R. Stam

The Visible Employee reports the results of an extensive four-year research project, covering a range of security solutions for at-risk organizations as well as the perceptions and attitudes of employees toward monitoring and surveillance. The result is a wake-up call for business owners, managers, and IT staff, as well as an eye-opening dose of reality for employees.

2006/376 pp/softbound
ISBND: 0-910965-74-9
Regular price: $24.95

To purchase this title, please go to http://books.infotoday.com/books/VisibleEmployee.shtml.

To view our entire catalog, go to http://books.infotoday.com.
 

KMWorld Newslinks: http://www.kmworld.com/newslinks
mmis Xtra: http://www.mmischools.com/newsletters
EContent Xtra: http://www.econtentmag.com/ecxtra
EMedia Xtra: http://www.emedialive.com/Newsletters/Default.aspx 
CRM eWeekly: http://www.destinationcrm.com/newsletter/
 
 

Sponsor - WebSearch University September 18 - 19, Washington Marriott, Washington, DC WebSearch University enables Internet researchers to hone their skills and refresh their search competencies. WebSearch University’s two-day intensive environment concentrates on how information professionals can most effectively and efficiently apply Internet resources to their individual work situations. Register now!