SUBSCRIBE NOW! Vol. 28 No. 5 — Sep/Oct 2004 Industry News Compiled by Suzanne Sabroski

Thomson Financial Sells Two Products
Having announced in February 2001 its intent to divest various financial properties, Thomson Financial finally sold two of them in May 2004. Sheshunoff Information Services was purchased by its original founders, Alex and Gabrielle Sheshunoff, and is located within Austin, Texas-based Alex Information. Highline Media LLC bought the banking and insurance products formerly under Thomson's Sheshunoff subsidiary. The banking products, including BankSource, BankFocus, and BranchSource, will be within Highline Banking Data Services, while Insurance Data Services will join The National Underwriter Company [www.alexinformation.com; www.sheshunoff.com; www.highlinedata.com; www.nationalunderwriter.com].

IHI Purchased by Thomson Scientific
Balancing this divestiture with acquisitions, Thomson Scientific and Healthcare decided to acquire Information Holdings Inc. (IHI) for $441 million. IHI products include MicroPatent, Aureka, Master Data Center, and Liquent [www.thomson.com].

NCAA Scores with Web-Based Championship Database
The NCAA library staff announced the creation of a Web-based championships database. This initiative will provide access to the Association's vast championships history currently housed in the archives at the NCAA national office. Pennsylvania-based Thomas Technology Solutions has already scanned more than 30,000 pages of box scores, programs, and other championships material in baseball, softball, and track and field as part of a pilot project [web1.ncaa.org/ncaa/mainsearch.do].

Peopleware

Reed Elsevier Group plc named Erik Engstrom as CEO of Elsevier. Formerly with publishing houses Random House (a Bertelsmann subsidiary) and Bantam Doubleday Dell, Engstrom comes to Elsevier from General Atlantic Partners, a private equity firm.

After almost 34 years as president and CEO for EBSCO Industries, Inc., J.T. Stephens will conclude his term July 1, 2005. F. Dixon Brooke Jr., vice president and general manager of EBSCO Subscription Services, will become the third individual to serve as president in EBSCO's 60-year history. To prepare for that transition, Brooke became EBSCO's chief operating officer July 1, 2004. Allen Powell succeeds Brooke as general manager.

Sci-Tech

Thomson Scientific announced the release of version 3 of ISI Web of Knowledge. The enhanced solution, resulting from 2 years of design in close collaboration with librarians and researchers, offers new personalization, better search tools, a cleaner and more intuitive interface, and a new journal analysis tool. It also has increased linking power, with customized links to hundreds of new publishers [215/386-0100; www.thomson.com].

FIZ Karlsruhe and FIZ Chemie signed an agreement to enter into closer strategic cooperation. An efficient, high-performance competence center for scientific and technical information is expected to develop out of this alliance [FIZ Karlsruhe: +49 (0) 7247 808-101; www.fiz-karlsruhe.de; FIZ CHEMIE Berlin: +49 (0) 30 399 77-101; www.chemistry.de].

FIZ Karlsruhe launched a new pharmaceutical database, Pharmaceutical Substances (PS), on its STN International service. PS, produced by Georg Thieme Verlag, was initially offered as a printed version in one, then two volumes (Pharmaceutical Substances and Syntheses, Patents, Applications) and is now also available electronically. The new database contains the same data available in Thieme's electronic version and is not offered by any other online host [www.stn-international.de].

InfoChem launched its Web-based structure and reaction research platform SPRESIweb 2.0. The synthesis strategy design tool Synthesis Tree Search (STS) is fully integrated, and the system offers Internet access to 4.5 million compounds and 3.5 million reactions from 540,000 references, including 151,000 patents. Over 20 million facts such as chemical, physical, or biological property data and keywords abstracted from the primary literature are also searchable in SPRESIweb [+49 (0) 89 583002; www.infochem.de].

Alliances & Deals

LexisNexis acquired Seisint, Inc. for $775 million. Seisint's main product, Accurint, provides online access and analysis of public records and related information to collections, federal, and legal market segments. Seisint will be placed with LexisNexis Risk Management [www.lexisnexis.com; www.seisint.com].

ProQuest acquired Serials Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of e-journal management and linking services. Its Article Linker, Journal Linker, A-Z title list service, and MARC records delivery products are currently installed in 1,300 libraries worldwide.

ChoicePoint acquired Rapsheets, a provider of online criminal records data [www.choicepoint.com; www.rapsheets.com].

United Press International (UPI) added its content into Thomson Gale's online databases, including access to all of UPI's English and Spanish content. English content includes UPI Perspectives, analytical articles that offer behind-the-scenes insight and understanding of the news, and UPI NewsTrack, items that provide a snapshot of the day's news, science, entertainment, sports, and business stories. Spanish content additions will include the UPI LatAm News Service and the UPI Chile News Service [202/898-8086; www.upi.com].

Inmagic, Inc. announced a strategic reseller partnership with Visard Solutions, Inc., a document management and service provider based in Canada. Visard will offer Inmagic Content Management Solutions as the replacement for the Edibase product line that is being phased out. According to the companies, Inmagic Content Management Solutions provide customers with ease-of-use and a rich feature set currently not available to Visard customers using Edibase software [Inmagic: 800/229-8398; www.inmagic.com; Visard: 514/286-9494; www.visard.ca].

The Associated Press (AP) and Convera Corporation announced an agreement whereby Convera's RetrievalWare will be used for categorizing, searching, and distributing multimedia content within the AP's "electronic AP" (eAP) initiative. Under the agreement, the AP and Convera will also work together to tailor RetrievalWare to address broader application requirements of the news industry [AP: www.ap.org; Convera: 800/788-7758; www.convera.com].

The British Standards Online Project (BSOL) chose Ingenta for its online delivery and payment channel for British Standards, citing its information commerce platform that will allow BSI Business Information to package and deliver its content.

The Special Libraries Association (SLA) and Outsell, Inc. disclosed a new partnership to deliver a range of services and programs to the worldwide community of information professionals within the SLA membership. SLA members will receive discounts on Outsell Briefings and other content, the ability to participate in and share results of joint studies, a training course for information professionals, and a Web-based version of Outsell's Ready-Set Needs Assessment survey [SLA: 202/939-3633; www.sla.org; Outsell: 612/824-1982; www.outsell.com].

Search Engines

HighBeam Research announced several improvements in functionality to its research engine and added millions of documents to its eLibrary archive. While searching eLibrary, subscribers can now specify a list of multiple publications to search at once and can exclude a list of publications from their search. Members can apply the same functionality to their e-mail alerts [864/650-7111; www.highbeam.com].

A new Australian-based Web search engine, 100.com, which launched in May 2004, has teamed with LookSmart to include its directory listings and bid-for-placement network in 100.com's search results [www.100.com; www.looksmart.com].

Portals & Intranets

Emerald launched the beta version of Emerald Management Xtra, a comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed management journals and online support created to meet specific needs of educators, students, researchers, librarians, and deans in the higher education management field. Emerald Management Xtra combines core content from over 100 select Emerald journals. The Emerald Literati Club has been integrated offering resources for those seeking to publish their work. An integrated search and navigation function covers Emerald Fulltext and Emerald Management Reviews [+44 (0)274-777700; www.emeraldinsight.com].

Legal

LexisNexis aligned with national compliance firm American Bank Systems (ABS) to better protect financial institutions from identity fraud and offer a tool that can be used in USA PATRIOT Act compliance efforts. The alliance integrates the companies' leading products, LexisNexis's RiskWise and ABS' BankManager into one program, giving banks an instant risk rating on new accounts and immediate verification of customer identification [LexisNexis: 937/865-7229; www.lexixnexis.com; ABS: 405/516-9686; www.americanbanksystems.com].

West added Banking Updates to Westlaw. These updates keep professionals abreast of the most recent developments in banking compliance, offering summaries of newly proposed and enacted federal and state banking acts, newly proposed and final federal and state banking regulations, and new issuances from federal banking agencies. West also released Andrews' Bankruptcy Litigation Reporter. This biweekly reporter offers comprehensive coverage of ongoing bankruptcy litigation, including trial court proceedings, appellate briefings, U.S. Supreme Court petitions, and valuable insight by practitioners in the field. A wide range of topics regarding Chapter 11 proceedings and analysis of the most significant caselaw are included [651/848-2741; www.thomson.com].

West has integrated RSS technology into its West IntraClip service, a current-awareness service that automatically tracks news and legal developments and can be integrated into an intranet or portal [http://westIntraClip.westlaw.com].

Biomedical

Vivísimo announced the first group of ClusterMed biopharma customers following the April 2004 product launch. Six companies have adopted ClusterMed including BioSynexus, Inc., Cetek Corporation, Exact Sciences, Hydra Biosciences, Inc., and Neurotech USA. ClusterMed clusters PubMed search results into hierarchical folders, allowing researchers to focus on the most valuable results quickly in a chronological list [www.vivisimo.com].

Healthcare publishing and training company HCPro Inc. acquired ePharmaceuticals and its flagship product, ePharm5, from Medical Broadcasting Company. Each business day, ePharmaceuticals covers the Top 5 developments in healthcare that could drive emerging technology innovation within the pharmaceutical industry. Every issue features original research, interviews, and analysis. Health-care marketing agency Medical Broadcasting Company launched ePharmaceuticals in 1999. HCPro's target audience for its products and services includes administrators, managers, and senior medical staff at hospitals, nursing homes, physicians' offices, and other healthcare facilities [781/639-1872; www.hcpro.com].

Social Sciences & Humanities

EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service (EJS) signed an agreement to index content from the University of California Press. One of the oldest scholarly publishers in the United States, the UC Press has a distinctive repertoire of books and periodicals with concentrations in anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, musicology, law, and area studies [205/980-6794; www.ebsco.com; www.ucpress.edu].

Ovid Technologies announced an agreement with the American Psychological Association (APA) to make content from the APA PsycBOOKS full-text database accessible through Ovid's online platform. It will initially include more than 600 titles including 100 out-of-print books from 1950 to 2002 and approximately 50 archival resources in psychology. Ovid anticipates adding approximately 10 titles a month to the database. Customers on the Ovid platform will be able to browse a table of contents and locate specific book chapters in PDF form. Users also will be able to search a database of bibliographic records that includes book and chapter titles, author names, abstracts, and subject headings as well as the chapter references [www.ovid.com; www.apa.org].

Online Services

EBSCO introduced Hospitality & Tourism Index, (HTI), a new bibliographic database that combines the records of three collections: Cornell University's former Hospitality database, previously unavailable for public use; Articles in Hospitality and Tourism (AHT), formerly co-produced by the Universities of Surrey and Oxford Brookes; and the Lodging, Restaurant & Tourism Index (LRTI), formerly produced by Purdue University. Customers using EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service (EJS) Enhanced can now view more than 5 million articles on the e-journal gateway [205/980-6794; www.ebsco.com].

Ingenta Inc. announced that RSS feeds are now available as a feature of the Ingenta service. Launched with the second version of the IngentaConnect beta Web site, users can sign up for feeds of new issues loaded for journals they are interested in, showing the latest issue numbers and dates with a link to the full table of contents [401/331-2014; www.ingentaconnect.com].

SAGE Publications announced the development of its new online search platform, powered by Stanford University's HighWire Press, to launch in September 2004. The platform will host all SAGE journals in both the social sciences and STM disciplines, providing institutions with premier search technology, toll-free linking features, a social science specific taxonomy, and enhanced subscription options for their journal collections [805/499-0721; www.sagepublications.com].

Business & Finance

Mergent is being acquired by Xinhua Finance, a joint venture between Xinhua Financial Holdings, a subsidiary of China's official Xinhua News Agency, and private investors in the U.S. and Japan. Previously, Xinhua Finance acquired AFX Asia and U.S.-based Market News International [www.mergent.com; www.xinhuanet.com].

Thomson Financial announced the launch of Thomson MarketView, which provides stock and industry analytics for enhanced investment selection on Thomson ONE. Content includes comprehensive stock analysis, detailed reports and idea generation tools, targeted news, and headlines from Dow Jones [www.thomson.com].

HighBeam Research added the HighBeam Executives database, which offers free information on 20.5 million business executives, managers, and employees from close to 1.2 million organizations. The institutional coverage extends from public and private companies to nonprofit organizations. Eliyon Technologies supplies the data, which also appear on Eliyon's own Web-based service, using crawls of Web sites, press releases, electronic news sources, SEC filings, and other Internet sources [864/650-7111; www.highbeam.com].

Factiva and John Fairfax Holdings Limited have agreed to distribute all full-text articles from the Fairfax group of publications to Factiva subscribers. Factiva will be the only international vendor offering full-text content from all of Fairfax's metropolitan daily newspapers. Factiva will also offer access to Fairfax's business and finance titles [Factiva Australia: 02 8272 4613; www.factiva.com; Fairfax: 02 9252 2266; www.f2network.com.au].

FreeERISA.com announced that its EIN Finder has been updated with hundreds of thousands of new U.S. Federal Employer Identification Numbers and a host of new features. EIN Finder includes nearly 5 million businesses with tax IDs, addresses, phone numbers, and industry classification (NAICS) codes. [202/728-0111; www.freeerisa.com].