That's
what a
new study by Outsell concludes. Success or failure
seems to hang on formal business planning and systematic evaluation of
services, i.e., do more user studies. The research is
part of Outsell's study of critical content deployment
functions. more...
Classical.com is music to our
ears
The CEO of the world's first online
classical music service is certain that Asia is his most important market. Roger
Press, who was recently in Singapore, says that Asians are more enthusiastic about the
playing and study of classical music than anybody
else. more...
The Silk Road comes to life courtesy China
and the UK
The British Library and the National Library of China have
got their feather dusters out to sweep
away the cobwebs on their silk road collections. What they've uncovered
are 50,000 manuscripts, paintings and artefacts which have been digitised
for the International Dunhuang Project. All are viewable on the project
website via a single Chinese and English
interface. more...
Balance of power shifts in
libraries
The Primary Research Group in a recent study concludes that
power has shifted in favour of libraries especially those that are aware of
alternative web access to databases often carried by commercial online
services. more...
Preserve your assets
If your newspapers,
palm leaf manuscripts and antique runs of
journals are the
worse for wear, fear not: CLIR and Cornell University have launched the first in
a series of conservation manuals for Southeast Asia. In the format of a
tutorial, the guide looks at management and planning, preservation, building
capacity and
support. more...
UK investigates scholarly journal
pricing
Many librarians
held up their hands in horror when Reed
Elsevier bought
Harcourt. Prices will go up they thought. Too few
publishers means monopolies they said. Somebody listened. The UK's Office of Fair
Trading decided to investigate the STM journal market and have
recently published their findings. more...
Creative Commons has machine readable
licenses just for you
Creative what? It's an
organisation fighting for the creative reuse of intellectual works. And it has
just launched its first product: machine readable copyright licenses. The licenses, inspired by the open source
and free software movements, come in three
formats.
more...
Groundbreaking depository launched by
MIT
If you haven't heard of
it, you soon will because DSpace from MIT will be replicated by other research bodies all over the world. DSpace will capture, store, distribute and preserve the entire intellectual output of MIT, setting a standard in the process. more...
New features added to BBC Monitoring
Online
They're the best
known and probably the most watched and listened to broadcasting company in
the world. And for years, they've been listening too to the world's radio
and TV stations. Why? To translate into English everything they see, read and hear. So for what's happening anywhere in the world, the BBC Monitoring Online Database must be in a class of its own. It's recently been enhanced. more...
CAS digs into its
past
The numbers
are very large indeed. CAS recently added 3 million unique subject and chemical
substance index entries to the CA and CAplus databases for 1 million
documents from 1962-1966. Clearly in love with indexes and wanting to add
value for subscribers, the CA folks are adding several million more entries back
to, wait for it, 1907.more...
Australia and
Singapore national libraries get intimate
They've recently signed an MOU that will allow both libraries to benefit
from each other's expertise. Both will exchange information on IT strategies
and plans, and new technologies to deliver services. They're also
going to discuss regional collaboration through the AskNow digital reference
service of the National Library of Australia. more...
Information services
to small food companies
How do small Asian food companies innovate and
compete? With difficulty must be the answer because the worlds major
sources of information cost thousands of dollars annually - far
beyond the budgets of
companies with 30 or fewer employees. But that's about to change with the
launch of Food Science Central, the new home on the web for food
information from IFIS. Read our interview with Jeremy Selman, more...
Online
Information 2002 attracts exhibitors from Asia
Online Information 2002, the library
and information showcase which recently concluded at Londons
Olympia, proved that bigger isnt always better. Information
industry professionals from over 45 countries gathered at the 26th exhibition and conference. 11,091 attendees passed through the doors
of the Olympia Grand Hall to see the new information products and
services on offer from 240 exhibitors, attend the conference, and
take advantage of 80 free educational seminars on the exhibition
floor.
Smaller than
its immediate predecessors, this show was well focussed. Gone
were the sharp suits, fast talk and blissful information
products promised by the dot.coms. In were the solid and
reliable databases, services and software created with
libraries in mind by companies who three years ago were being
written off as sunset basket cases. They remain with us
because they have content, which is created by people who
value information and which is immediately recognizable to
researchers and librarians alike. Many of them still have
print too. Not everybody has moved their assets to the Web
cutting down on printers bills. Library patrons still like
the versatility of paper copy for those long bus rides and
browsy afternoons in the
garden.
Chinese
trade statistics from GCB
While almost
all the exhibitors were from Europe and North America, there
were a couple of Asian companies exhibiting for the first
time. Goodwill China Business Information
Limited from Hong Kong has taken Chinese
import/export data and created a website that permits analysis
of data. Assigned by the Statistics Department of Customs
General Administration of China as a global agent since 1998
with the exclusive rights to distribute their statistical
information service, GCB is able to provide detailed import
& export records based on China Customs statistical
information. It also provides other trade related services
such as foreign trade laws and policies, duty rates,
declaration information, and extensive profiles for the
importing and exporting companies. Data is updated monthly
with over 12 million shipment records annually. More on the
Web at here
.
From South
Korea, MediSurf will be selling medical
information in English to individual practitioners. From its homepage, subscribers
will have access to databases, news services such as Reuters
Health Information, full text delivery and lots of links to
free medical websites. Albert Sang-Wook Han, CEO of MediSurf
told ACCESS
that the paid
services would be open for subscribers in the coming weeks. He
was at Online Information testing the reaction to his service
since he believes that the most promising markets are Europe
and North America where physicians are accustomed to paying
for medical information
services.
Biomedicine ejournals from Germany
and Holland
Thieme, a German
company, have brought their medical and science journals to
the web. Thirty five of them are in English. The company
offers free access to abstracts and table of contents at here. From The
Netherlands came Bentham Science Publishers.
This Dutch company has 25 high quality ejournals in chemistry
and drug sciences with a further six titles announced for
2003. Prices range from USD6,900 a year for Current
Pharmaceutical Design to four or five hundred dollars for
other titles. Universities should get nearly 50 percent
discounts for all titles. Visit here for the details.
There is a lot
of choice for librarians wanting to subscribe to news
services. But perhaps none is as comprehensive and up to date
as Global Newsline from the BBC. For 70 years
the BBC has been monitoring foreign TV and radio broadcasts
and translating them into English. In practical terms, news
items from 3,000 sources in over 100 languages are translated
and added to the internet database daily. The database is
unrivalled in its geographical coverage and timeliness. It
also carries the BBC imprint making it among the most reliable
news source available. The BBC is also offering BBC
Monitoring Online, a searchable database of political
and economic news. And International Reports,
a tailored file of reports selected by geographical region or
topic. There are plenty of details about each service at here .
If you prefer
the TV news to databases, MyCast
should appeal to you. Its a photo-realistic
speaking news presenter who delivers the news at your command.
MyCast sits in the background of your computer and when the
news breaks, announces it to you. It was recently launched by
KnowledgeView Limited, who provides more details at here.
Staying with
news and current affairs, Palgrave Macmillan has created SYBworld
a global reference service. It promises
comprehensive coverage of government and politics, geography,
history, economics, social policy and culture for 192
countries. An intuitive map interface with links to a further
2,000 websites helps with the browsing.
Several
publishers catch the ebook bug
While 'pure'
ebook companies are still a rarity, several publishers are
bringing their printed books to the Web. The latest is
Springer who was trumpeting their Lecture Notes in
Computer Science, 1,000 volumes of 35,000 articles by
more than 50,000 authors. Its available on SpringerLink with
having the product details. In the same vein, Pearson
Education announced Safari Tech Books Online,
an internet library information retrieval system for IT
professionals. It consists of 1,000 technology books from
Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, Cisco Press and others. Its
homepage is at here
.
Another publisher moving their
titles to the Web was Europa Publications. Its World
of Learning with profiles of 30,000 institutions and
200,000 people from 200 countries, is at here,
International Whos Who of 19,000 eminent people has its home
at here; and the Europa World Year
Book will be live in June 2003.
ABC-CLIO, the history reference publisher has
also launched an ebook site of 150 titles. All titles
published since 2000 are on the site. A free preview is at here
.
New to
ACCESS was xreferplus, a digital
reference library of 120 titles spanning 20 topics from 26
publishers including Harper Collins, Grove, Penguin, Whos Who
and Thames & Hudson. The idea is to aggregate and
integrate reference works online: encyclopedias, dictionaries,
thesauri, books of quotations and reference works covering a
wide range of subjects. A backend system allow for all this
content to be cross-referenced, creating some of the richest
content on the internet. A free trial is offered at here
.
200
digitised and searchable years of The Thunderer
Among the most
venerable publishers, Gale was launching the archive of the
best known newspaper in the world: The Times Digital
Archive 1785-1985. It was produced using Gales
microfilm collection of the newspaper resulting in a digital
searchable database of 10 million articles and a facsimile
version. A treasure trove of information, we can see how the
French Revolution, the Boer War and Maos Long March was
reported at the time. We can also see the display and
classified advertisements because nothing has been omitted.
For lots more detail visit here
.
H.W. Wilson
goes from strength to strength with
WilsonWeb. An entirely redesigned version
offers integration with web-based content and services,
multiple search and display, database-specific thesauri, many
customisation options and a simpler yet more effective
interface. A review of this new version is offered at here
.
Emerald
unveiled its enhanced Emerald Fulltext 2003
database scheduled for activation 1 March 2003. It offers many
features requested by subscribers such as the option for
account managers to pre-set the default parameters of the
search and browse functions to just those titles included on
the organisations subscription list. The new database can be
tried via the Emerald homepage at here
.
BIOSIS completes largest ever
enhancement
Another
venerable publisher offering a new service was BIOSIS. Its
BiologyBrowser
connects users with discussion
forums, 12,000 quality-controlled Web links, the Index to
Organism Names, an animal classification guide and science
news. BIOSIS has also completed its largest ever enhancement
of its databases by adding 9 million CAS Registry Numbers,
6,300 sequence data accession numbers and BIOSIS Major
Concepts. And just in case you think that BIOSIS stuff is
covered in other databases, colourful handouts comparing the
databases with Agricola, EMBASE and Medline, pointed out the
uniqueness of each.
IFIS, the food
science people, launched their biggest investment in years:
Food Science Central, a web site for the
worlds food scientists and nutritionists. 2,400 evaluated
links to food related sites, an online magazine, reviews of
key websites and plenty more free stuff, is found at here
.
INSPEC
announced several new resources including three current
awareness products, INSPEC Search Aids on
CD-ROM, two specialist databases - INSPEC Biomedical
Technology and INSPEC Photonics, and
a new journal IEE
Proceedings-Nanobiotechnology
.
Business
information is still the most remunerative sector of the
information industry. So Bureau van Dijk must be hoping to
make a killing with its ORBIS
database of 10 million companies, 8 million from Europe,
1.4 million from North America and 110,000 from Japan.
orbis.bvdep.com has more.
Music
lovers get ready to swoon
A new service
with a difference is Classical.com a music
service for libraries. It has more than 10,000 recordings
accessible every minute of the day, more than 200 themed
playlists, hundreds of composer and artist biographies, a
daily news service and a Beginners Guide. Aspiring conductors
and music librarians will swoon when they read all the details
at here
.
Finally,
information from Russia. ILIAC, the
International Library Information and Analytical Center, with
offices in Moscow and Washington, has a cornucopia of STM
information. Standards, patents, agriculture, online books,
legislation…you want it, theyve got it! To understand the full
scope of what ILIAC has to offer you could do worse than visit
here
.
Next years
conference, Online Information 2003, takes place from 2-4
December 2003 in the Grand Hall and Conference Centre,
Olympia. For further details visit the Online Information web
site at here
.
Chinese
trade statistics from GCB
