Somewhat confusingly, the EU has announced a single
European Library combining the resources of some of Europe's national
libraries. It'll be digital of course, offering searches and access to
digital collections in participating libraries. The project is coordinated
by The British Library and includes eight national
libraries. more...
One billion yuan is a lot of money
Reports from China suggest that the government is to
spend 1 billion yuan on a national digital library project. Termed
"China's key information infrastructure project" it is listed as a key
project in the 10th five year
plan. more...
Asian art included in the AMICO
database
H.W. Wilson has added to its portfolio of art
databases, a collection of art images from leading museums in North
America. The AMICO database offers hundreds of high resolution digital
images with full descriptions and provenance. Even better, all works in
the AMICO Library are rights-cleared for educational
use. more...
Mongolian sutras washed and strengthened
The monasteries and museums of Central Asia are home
to treasure troves of manuscripts written hundreds of years ago. Many are
the rarest of Buddhist texts translated into Tibetan, Nepali or Mongolian
from Sanskrit. And many of them are fragile beyond repair. The NEDCC was
fortunate to be invited to Mongolia to help restore ancient
sutras. more...
Full houses at Asian benchmarking
workshops
Benchmarking may slip easily from the tongue these
days but what is it? How does one become a practitioner? What does one
need to know? And how does one start? Korea, Singapore and Taiwan had
answers to these questions when a travelling benchmarking workshop toured
Asia in
September. more...
The copyright maze from the viewpoint of a
publisher
Copyright is at the heart of what libraries can and
cannot do. Digital data often comes with a long list of dos & don'ts
in the fine print that can cause apoplexy to those who pay USD100,000 for
a subscription. But it's often the case that publishers get their data
from somebody else and pass on the fine print from information owner to
subscriber. This article explains the position of a digital publisher, in
this case IHS, the middle man between an owner and a serials
librarian.
more...
Lower case reviews.com publishes upper case
and respected Computing Reviews
Have you noticed how many companies use lower case to
begin their names and sometimes mix in a few caps later on? netLibrary the
bankrupt comes to mind and now there is reviews.com. Only reviews.com is
already off to a flying start with its accoladed Computing Reviews, chosen
as web site of the week by a name I'm sure we all trust. reviews.com was
partnered by ACM to get Computing Reviews
online.
more...
Business models for digital
collections
Do you need a digital collection? Is there a model
you can follow? How does a digital enterprise affect your institution? How
can a sustainable strategy be put in place? These are but a few of the
issues addressed in a series of reports from the Council on Library and
Information Resources,
CLIR. more...
National Library of China chooses its
software
Ex Libris is on every System Librarian's list of
'find out more'. Its ALEPH 500 has found a home in more than 600 libraries
in 44 countries. And now it has got China, the National Library of China
to be exact. That means 22 million volumes of which 1.6 million are
ancient monographs. There must have been a lot of competition for this
contract. So it says a lot of ALEPH's abilities that it
won.
more...
Blackboard in a university near you
If somebody in your organisation is interested in
e-learning software, the chances are that your library will become the
custodian of the service. Many of Blackboard's 3,000 sites in 140
countries see the library as the natural home for managing and housing
digital learning material. The success of Blackboard has been rapid and
well
earned.
more...
Food on the Web
eIFIS has promised the launch of Food Science
Central, early 2002. The site offers the FSTA database, links to a new
review journal, 2,200 links, site reviews and a daily datafeed on patents,
standards and
books.
more...
It could have been
the bin Laden effect. From the crowded aisles of previous years, Online
Information 2001
seemed to suffer a shortage of visitors. The flocks of Scandinavians
in their colourful sweaters and bobble hats, the chattering French,
the gesticulating Italians...overseas visitors were difficult to spot
among the 12,600 who passed through Olympia's doors. Or was it
because the exhibition had moved into the spacious Grand Hall?
Whether fact or illusion, Online Information was more subdued than
usual in spite of celebrating its silver anniversary. Gone were the
"online solution" companies attracting delegates to their booths
with coffee and pastries. Gone were the wenches in 'nude' lycra
offering tantalising promises of the database kind. Gone were the
junior account executives dressed as barmen pulling pints for
dipsomaniacs.
But most gone
were the start up and smaller database companies. The
start-ups, who in previous years provided much of the fun and
colour of International Online, had all but vanished. Glitzy
promises of seamless integration, or an ultimate search
sensation or even miracle serials management cures, were
nowhere to be seen. Many had fallen by the wayside or been
gobbled up by larger companies.
Companies consolidating into three
camps
It was the
changes in the industry that most came to mind in the
exhibition hall. The publishing triumvirate of Thomson, Reed
Elsevier and Pearson dominated the hall, combining all their
electronic publishing companies on their stands. It starkly
demonstrated how consolidated the information industry has
become. On the Elsevier
booth for example were BioMedNet, Engineering Information (Ei),
Ideal (Academic
Press), MD Consult
and MDL Information, all
acquired in the last few years. SilverPlatter shared
a booth with their former arch rival and now partner, Ovid
.
Library systems
vendors were almost not there at all. No VTLS or Innodata for
example. But rising star Ex Libris was
represented by its UK office. By contrast, the worlds' major
document delivery suppliers were very visible: the British Library, CISTI, Infotrieve and Information Express.
Alongside them were many more document management companies
like Albert Inc showing
their query optimisation software and Instant Library Ltd
offering records management solutions.
Business information still in
demand
Companies
offering business information were most numerous and buoyant.
A number of exhibitors reported a surge in demand for
information services in the past three months. It appears that
more money is being invested in business intelligence despite,
or perhaps because of, the tightening economy and
after-effects of September 11. According to market research
commissioned by the organisers of Online Information 2001, the
European online information market is expected to have grown
by 6 percent during 2001, and business information companies
will take a disproportionate share of that.
What new
products and services caught ACCESS' eye? Ei was
showing ChemVillage offering connectivity
to multiple databases: Compendex Chemistry, Chemical Business
NewsBase, Beilstein Abstracts and Patents. Handbooks published
by CRC Press
including the Dictionary of Commonly Cited
Compounds
have fully searchable text. For that human
touch, ChemVillage offers reference services via its Ask a
Librarian and Ask a Chemist features.
Agriculture information for
Asia
While many
Asians and the rest of the world see our region as an
important technology centre, agriculture is still the biggest
employer and contributor to economic prosperity. So five
online communities from CABI
Publishing
should not be
overlooked: organic-research, agbiotechnet,
nutritiongate, animalscience and leisuretourism.com.
Each has a subset of the CAB Abstracts database. Also from
CABI is the award winning Crop Protection Compendium,
2001 edition recipient of the Pirelli INTERNETional
Award for the Environment. It's an encyclopaedic mixed media
tool on CD and the internet, offering decision support
software for plant guarantee and on the economic impact of
pests. Special prices are offered to developing countries.
Promised for 2002 is the Animal Health and
Production Compendium, 2002 edition
. It's the initiative
of a development consortium comprising commercial
corporations, development agencies and research institutes.
Poultry, pigs and small and large ruminants have their own
modules.
Engineering
Database Online, ENGnetBASE, is
the online equivalent of best selling engineering textbooks
from CRC Press. The books are hyperlinked and
cross-referenced. CHEMnetBASE
offers Chapman & Hall's chemistry reference works
including The Combined Chemical Dictionary, Properties of
Organic Compounds and Polymers - a Property Database.
Structure searching is also possible. ENVIROnetBASE
offers full textbooks from several publishers including
Environmental Engineers' Handbook and Ecological Risk
Assessment for Contaminated Sites.
Over
2 million dictionary definitions
Spring 2002 sees
the launch of Oxford Reference
Online which brings together Oxford's reference
works into a single cross-searchable resource including a
broad selection of 100 dictionary and reference books
representing all disciplines. Containing over 2 million
dictionary definitions, a wide choice of search options is
offered. In January 2002 comes the Oxford English
Dictionary (2nd edition) on CD-ROM with
a special offer closing in May; and the Oxford World
English Dictionary Shelf comprising dictionaries for
the Australian, Canadian and British markets is published on
CD-ROM in March. Last from Oxford in the same month is the
Oxford Chronology of English Literature
which documents the publication of nearly 30,000
works of literature.
Link
to it from your home page
The humanities
are well served by the Resource Guide
for the Arts and Humanities
funded by the UK's Joint Information Systems
Committee. It offers bibliographic, reference and research
information, online publications, subject gateways, data
services and a lot more, much of it free. Librarians will want
to link to it from their home pages.
The European
Commission spends a lot on organising its information.
CORDIS
, the Community
Research and Information Service, describes the R&D projects
funded by the Commission. Fully searchable
databases include current and completed projects, participants,
partners, results and contacts. CORDIS also offers
downloadable participation documents, assistance on how to write a
research proposal and information on previous research results
or new technologies.
Social science e-journals
from Project Muse
Project Muse
was
a debutante at the exhibition. A collection of e-journals from
25 not-for-profit publishers in collaboration with Johns
Hopkins University Press, 19 new journals are confirmed for
2002. Muse offers its journals in two collections: arts &
humanities and social sciences, the former with 138 titles and
the latter with 94.
Finally, for monarchists and
those fascinated by British aristocratic families, the bible
of blue blood, Burke's Landed Gentry, is now online.
Burke's is
renowned as an invaluable record for genealogical researchers
world wide. The Kingdom in Scotland is the
first online version to come from Burke's which is publishing
the 19th edition of Burke's Landed Gentry
regionally. This volume contains over
650 Scottish families with their full lineage as well
as hundreds of leading influential people who have helped
shaped modern Scotland. As the Scots continue to be
inveterate travellers and settlers overseas, Australia,
New Zealand and Hong Kong will certainly find content of
interest.
Online
Information 2002 will again be at Olympia, 3-5
December.
Companies consolidating into three
camps
