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

DestinationCRM 2006, ITI and CRM magazine’s first annual CRM conference, is less than 3 weeks away. Beginning September 17, destinationCRM will bring together top executives in sales, marketing, and customer service. Also featured at this conference is the CRM Leader Awards dinner, CRM magazine’s annual awards banquet. This event is a must-attend for anyone involved in a CRM initiative in their business. There are still some seats available for the dinner and the conference; if you are interested in attending, register by going to https://secure.infotoday.com/dcrm/register.asp.

For those of you interested in Enterprise Search, ITI recently re-launched the Enterprise Search Center (www.enterprisesearchcenter.com). The Web site features product demos from leading enterprise search companies. You can “test drive” any number of technologies for free. The Web site also features a free biweekly e-newsletter, Enterprise Search Xtra.

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. 

From all of us at ITI, have a great Labor Day Weekend.

by Paula J. Hane

I was watching the U.S. Open tennis tournament on television the other night and was surprised to see an ad spot for Ask.com. My husband asked me about the search engine and said he wondered how any of the search engines compete with the seemingly omnipresent Google—the one he uses exclusively. I suggested to him it was worth trying Ask, but I strained to recall some of the excellent features recently added to the service. So, I decided to refresh both us and you.

Ask.com has been focused on increasing its Smart Answers, which it first introduced back in April 2003. Smart Answers provide key information and links to more information right at the top of the Web results page. You can get quick access to important people, company information, sports scores, movie information, weather, dictionary results, translations, conversions, and more.

Try some of these sample searches:

Search for the market capitalization of Coca Cola Co. (market cap ko): http://www.ask.com/web?q=market+cap+ko&qsrc=0&o=0.

Search for the P/E ratio for General Electric Co. (P/E ratio GE): http://www.ask.com/web?q=P%2FE+RATIO++GE&qsrc=1&o=0.

Many of the data points from the CIA’s The World Factbook are now available as Smart Answers. For example, the birth rate of China can be found at http://www.ask.com/web?q=birth+rate+china&qsrc=1&o=0, while the number of Internet users in Turkey is located at http://www.ask.com/web?q=Internet+Users+turkey&qsrc=1&o=0. The latter result shows the flag of Turkey, provides the answer (“The number of Internet users in Turkey is 5,500,000”), and offers direct links to The World Factbook, the Wikipedia entry for Turkey, the country profile from the BBC, travel information from the U.S. Dept. of State, and a selection of maps. It’s almost like a helpful librarian.

Ask.com has just announced that users can now search with nonalphanumeric characters. It currently offers a growing list of emoticons (aka “smileys”) that can be found simply by typing the smiley into the search box. One example of a smiley is ;-), an emoticon that typically means winking (http://www.ask.com/web?q=%3B-%29&qsrc=1&o=0&l=dir). Each Smart Answer also includes links straight to a dictionary for more emoticons and other Net terms. It even offers a link to learn more about instant messaging etiquette. Ask said it is also building a set of Smart Answers for instant messaging shorthand such as BRB, LOL, and ROTFL.

This summer, Ask.com released RSS Smart Answers. If a user enters the title of a blog or feed, the blog is identified with a direct link, plus the three most current headlines from it are placed at the top of the Ask.com results page. It’s actually showing the RSS feed in the results set—updated in near real time. The result for “searchblog,” John Battelle’s Searchblog (http://battellemedia.com) can be found at http://www.ask.com/web?q=searchblog&qsrc=1&o=0. Links to Stephen Cohen’s Library Stuff blog (http://www.librarystuff.net) are located at http://www.ask.com/web?q=library+stuff&qsrc=1&o=0.

In the future, Ask plans to add this feature for RSS feeds from other information resources such as libraries. Already you can find some interesting results by trying searches for “dLIST” (an open access archive) and “new science books.”

RSS Smart Answers is not the same as the fairly new and very useful Ask Blogs & Feeds Search (http://blogsearch.ask.com), which is available on the Ask.com site and the Bloglines site (which is owned by Ask). Barbara Quint wrote about this new service in a NewsBreak in June (http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060605-1.shtml). Relying on Bloglines’ input, the service indexes more than 1.5 billion posts that extend “from 2001 through 5 minutes ago (or less),” more than 2.5 million individual feeds, and 7,000 news sites. As Quint noted: “The relevancy ranking impact of Bloglines could turn out to be a critical advantage for Ask.com’s Blog & Feed Search service.”

Ask.com provides a wealth of information for movie buffs—this one should grab my husband’s interest. A search of a movie title yields a Smart Answer for the specific film with an image of the movie poster, a brief synopsis, the MPAA rating, links to reviews, and direct links to the trailer and official movie site. There’s even a ZIP code search tool that provides local theater listings with showtimes and links to purchase tickets. An even faster way is just to search with the movie title and ZIP code. (Google supplies locations and showtimes as well, but the Ask implementation seems more extensive and has a more user-friendly layout.) Now Ask has also added extensive DVD information and television data.

A feature unique to Ask is the binoculars site preview. Mousing over the binoculars icon next to a search result provides a pop-up preview of the site.

Ask has even added a special help section called “Search Better With Gary” to its site. It features our well-known friend, colleague, and librarian Gary Price (http://help.ask.com/en/docs/about/garyprice.shtml). Price’s role at Ask.com is to help make search better for users and to be a resource to the Ask.com community. Kudos to Ask’s management for having the understanding and vision to hire someone like Price.

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, August 28, 2006

NewsStand Introduces LibreDigital Warehouse Service for Book Publishers
by Paula J. Hane

NewsStand, Inc. (http://www.newsstand.com), an Austin, Texas-based company that has served the digital content delivery needs of magazine and newspaper publishers, is—not surprisingly—moving to service the needs of book publishers. It has established a new division of the company, LibreDigital (http://www.libredigital.com), and launched a new service that allows book publishers to digitally capture and deliver selected book content online.

-->http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060828-1.shtml

Institutional Repositories on Target: ARL Survey and Scopus/Scirus Features
by Barbara Quint

Institutional repositories (IRs) form a key component in the open access movement to bring scholarly research onto the open Web. Librarians and their clients regularly search digital IRs in pursuit of scholarship, but now more and more research librarians have begun to envision institutional repositories as a responsibility, involving themselves in the creation, maintenance, promotion, and advocacy of IRs.

-->http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060828-2.shtml

NewsBreaks Weekly News Digest

Outsell Acquires EPS, Expands Globally
Outsell, Inc. (http://www.outsellinc.com), a research and advisory firm for the information industry, announced the acquisition of Electronic Publishing Services Ltd. (EPS; http://www.epsltd.com) of London. EPS is a global provider of information, strategic consulting, and research for the information marketplace.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd060828.shtml#1

Knovel Partners with Synapse Information Resources
Knovel Corp. (http://www.knovel.com), a provider of Web-based research and information services, announced a partnership with Synapse Information Resources, Inc. (http://www.synapseinfo.com) to make available a range of premium chemical and chemical engineering content on Knovel’s interactive platform. As a result of this partnership, reference handbooks from Synapse in the food science, pharmaceutical, and chemical manufacturing industries will be added to the Knovel Interactive Library.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd060828.shtml#2

SpringerLink Adds Rightslink Licensing
STM book publisher Springer Science+Business Media (http://www.springer.com) is now using Rightslink from the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC; http://www.copyright.com) as its automated, online permissions licensing solution for the newly launched SpringerLink online platform (http://www.springerlink.com).
--http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd060828.shtml#3

For full-text coverage of the following articles please use the links provided. 

INFORMATION TODAY
Caught in the Web 2.0
By Michael Baumann

Ask Howard Dean or Mark Zuckerberg what user-generated Internet content can do. User-generated content is one of the cornerstones of Web 2.0, the much-discussed but enigmatic new online paradigm that has catapulted previously unknown Internet companies such as Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Wikipedia to international notoriety and earned their creators great fame and fortune.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/it/sep06/Baumann.shtml

ONLINE Magazine
Libraries in the War on Terrorism
By Brad Robison and Greta E. Marlatt

While terrorism has existed in the world for a very long time, until recently, the U.S. had been extremely fortunate to have had limited experience with such attacks within its own borders. These two very deadly events served as major wake-up calls for Americans that we are, in fact, vulnerable.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/online/sep06/Robison_Marlatt.shtml

COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES
Maryland's Successful Campaign to Increase Library Funding
By Mary Baykan

One of the most basic tenets of securing funding is to prove your financial needs and value with solid statistics. One of the core rules of getting legislation passed is to communicate one key message to your representatives repeatedly. Maryland librarians used these two tactics together to win bipartisan support that led to tens of thousands of dollars in additional state funding. If you use this project as a blueprint, you could seek higher funding for some grass-roots campaigns of your own.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/sep06/Baykan.shtml

SEARCHER Magazine
Around the Fundraising Campfire
Stories of Dismal Failure, Near Misses, and Great Success
By Cecilia Hogan

When we last met, I shared basic concepts of philanthropic research with you. I told you about the critical qualities to watch when seeking a donor who has the potential to give a large gift — affiliation, capacity, and interest. You’ll remember that affiliation is a measure of a potential donor’s past contact or involvement with a nonprofit. Capacity is the dipstick on philanthropic potential.
-->http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep06/Hogan.shtml

MULTIMEDIA & INTERNET@SCHOOLS
Internet2, K-12, and Librarians
By Erika Thickman Miller

Internet2 allows unprecedented worldwide communication and collaboration on data sharing, and provides an invaluable opportunity for K–12 teachers and students. In the year and a half since her school district has been connected with Internet2, author Erika Thickman Miller has begun to explore a small part of its capacity—a taste, she says, that has made her feel she has opened a book of wonderful new adventures, and that she feels compelled both to share and to further explore.
-->http://www.mmischools.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=11766

ECONTENT
The Educated Browser: Scholar Simplifies Bibliographies
By Jared Bernstein

To many, the word bibliography sounds about as pleasant as nails on a blackboard, calling to mind unpleasant recollections of last-minute, late-night research reports: After burning the midnight oil completing a scholastic epic, you still face the daunting task of sifting through mountains of research materials, then citing sources—including book title, author, publisher, copyright date, and page numbers. Luckily, there are those hard at work trying to make at least the citation part of this familiar academic drama fade into distant memory.
-->http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=17323

CONFERENCE REPORT/UPDATE

September 1 is The Deadline for CIL 2007 Speaker Submissions
If you would like to participate in Computers in Libraries 2007 as a speaker or workshop leader, please submit a proposal as soon as possible. Include the following brief details of your proposed presentation on the form: title, abstract, a few sentences of biographical information that relate you to the topic, and full contact information for you and your co-presenters (title, address, e-mail, phone, & fax). The 2007 theme is BEYOND LIBRARY 2.0: BUILDING COMMUNITIES, CONNECTIONS, & STRATEGIES.

Mark Your 2007 Calendar: Enterprise Search Summit
The Enterprise Search Summit returns to NYC in Spring 2007 from May 14 to 16. It will be colocated with the Streaming Media East conference. Speaker submissions are currently being accepted at https://secure.infotoday.com/ESS/Call.asp. Go to www.enterprisesearchsummit.com for info on the 2006 event and what is coming up for 2007.

CONFERENCE CALENDAR

September 2006

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

Here is a unique and practical reference for anyone who teaches Web searching. Greg Notess shares his own techniques and strategies along with expert tips and advice from a virtual “who’s who” of Web search training: Joe Barker, Paul Barron, Phil Bradley, John Ferguson, Alice Fulbright, Ran Hock, Jeff Humphrey, Diane Kovacs, Gary Price, Danny Sullivan, Rita Vine, and Sheila Webber.

2006/368 pp/softbound
ISBND:1-57387-267-9
Regular price: $29.95

To purchase this title, please go to http://books.infotoday.com/books/TeachingWebSearchSkills.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
Enterprise Search Xtra (new): http://www.enterprisesearchcenter.com/Newsletters/
EMedia Xtra: http://www.emedialive.com/Newsletters/Default.aspx 
CRM eWeekly: http://www.destinationcrm.com/newsletter/
 
 

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