A modern day Henry Higgins might well lament the
state of 21st century book publishing. In our case, Henry Higgins is Chuck
Hamaker, an American Librarian who has a clear sense of how books should
take their rightful place in the scholarly electronic environment. One
solution is technical, the other legal. Agreeing with him in this 'future
of books' debate is Toby Green of OECD Publishing who says that he's
already doing what Chuck proposes. While journals have undergone a huge
transformation into electronic publications, books are still books whether
print or electronic. So how can they be
transformed? Click here for the
story.
India: Third World superpower or of little
importance?
India was once the Third World R&D superstar, but
no more. It's been eclipsed by China and Brazil not to mention South
Korea. Part of this must be due to the quality of the research collections
and libraries offered to Indian scientists. While India has a few high
profile and fairly well funded libraries, the vast majority are way behind
China, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and Singapore in terms of
collections and technologies. But there are signs that recent developments
in STM publishing might regain lost ground for Indian science.
Subbiah Arunachalam tells us what's happening here.
Is knowledge management the new
librarianship?
A new Economist Intelligence Unit publication finds
67 percent of companies surveyed cite knowledge management as important to
achieving their goals over the next three years. The survey underlines
that KM is about more than effective IT. It's three critical components
are x, y and z. Find out what they are here.
If your Dad's a millionaire, show him this
article
Does it say something about Asia, or does it say more
about the UK and the art of philanthropy, that some beautiful and unique
collections of Asian documents are being preserved for posterity with
British money? The Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund has recently granted
GBP600,000 to create digital copies of endangered documents and art. From
Bhutan to China these wonderful grants are saving Asian heritage for
Asians and the entire world. Here has
the story.
Here's another story about Asian materials
being saved by Western Powers
They dropped bombs, destroyed temples, libraries and
universities but ironically, here's the United States of America
preserving the heritage of Vietnam. Cornell University as part of its
Southeast Asia Microform Project is microfilming Vietnam's war era
newspapers. The project is described here.
And yet
another…
CORMOSEA and several partners have won a grant from
the US Department of Education to create the Southeast Asia Digital
Library. It will provide access to research materials and support research
and teaching. The project is based on the model established by the Digital
South Asia Library which ACCESS featured several years ago. SEADL
projects are listed here.
Your donation nightmare
solved
Admit it, librarians: book donations are often your
unwanted nightmares. You never want to see another Mills & Boon or
biography of Julia Roberts again. Your dreams might be about to come true
with 1stReads, an experimental library donation programme pioneered in
Maryland, USA. The idea is, if a patron donates a book, they get to…
well, read the entire story here.
Those search engines are getting into
everything
Thomson Gale has created AccessMyLibrary enabling
libraries to capitalize on internet search engines as a means of
connecting library users to authoritative content. Gale is allowing its
content to be crawled and indexed by Yahoo! and Google bringing a
potentially huge visibility to high value content. More here.
International Food Information Service (IFIS) -
launches FSTA - Food Science and Technology Abstracts® on iGroup's eBridge database
platform
FSTA - Food Science and Technology
AbstractsTM is now online in Asia on the eBridge
platform from iGroup, the Asia-Pacific's leading information
provider. IFIS and the iGroup through eBridge, will bring greater
accessibility of FSTA to the Asia-Pacific region. eBridge will allow
FSTA users to interface with the database in Asian languages such as
Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Thai, Burmese and
Vietnamese for the very first time. ACCESS spoke with Prof.
Jeremy. D. Selman, Managing Director, International Food Information
Service, via email, about his hopes for FSTA in the Asia-Pacific
region.
How
has your Asia coverage in FSTA increased over the years? In
the sciences we hear that there has been enormous growth in
published papers from Northeast Asia.
The Food Science and Technology
Abstracts (FSTA) database has always had a strong emphasis on
information originally published in languages other than
English, as well as from authors working globally. IFIS covers
a great deal of literature produced by Asian authors, and
these contribute to over 10 percent of the records added to
FSTA each year. Japan and Korea have traditionally been the
highest yielding countries, but in the last few years we have
added increasing numbers of records from China. IFIS has a
valuable association with the Scientech Documentation &
Information Centre of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural
Sciences in Beijing, which helps us to ensure good coverage of
information published in Chinese. Overall, as in other
scientific disciplines, we are finding more and more
literature originally published in English. However, although
much of it is published in English language journals, it is
certainly true to say that we have seen a large increase in
the proportion of source literature originating from Asia. The
speed at which food science and technology research is moving
forward in that region has started to escalate rapidly, and we
recognise it to be one of the most exciting and dynamic
centres for the future development of the food industry.
Why
did you want an online presence in Asia?
IFIS is keen to ensure that FSTA is
presented directly from the region in order to make the
database more accessible and widely known. It is very
important to IFIS that we are able to recognise and satisfy
the food information needs of academia and industry in every
part of the world. Having an online presence in Asia is an
important first step in achieving this objective. Asia plays a
big role in our plans for the future and so it is crucial for
us to have an online presence there.
What
advantage does eBridge give you? Asian languages?
We are sure that the availability of
local language interfaces, including for example Thai,
Vietnamese (here)
and Chinese, will be extremely valuable However we are also
impressed by the functionality of the eBridge platform (here) and we
are motivated by the opportunity to work with a team of people
in the region who have unrivalled local knowledge. As iGroup
have been selling information in the region for over twenty
years, they have strong connections with institutions
concerned with food processing and technologies.
680,000 records, 25,000 added
annually to FSTA. How much of this is concerned with tropical
products - coconuts, cassava, durian, fish balls, and
fermented fish products etc?
FSTA has excellent coverage of
regional foods and Asia is covered very well. The coverage was
recently spotlighted in one of our competitions using a
dictionary definition for Kimchi. FSTA has just under 500
records which mention this fermented product. One aspect of
FSTA is that we are always very careful to make reference to
the local names of products and commodities, and we try hard
to include as much information on regionally produced products
as possible. Our Thesaurus of Keywords contains
nearly 10,000 terms and we are very proud of our coverage of
regional products - its breadth and range are unequalled. In
addition we have also just published a companion
Dictionary of Food Science and Technology containing
nearly 8,000 terms.
Is
FSTA (and the eBridge version) offered in slices? For example,
fish products or tropical fruit?
FSTA on eBridge is presented as one
file covering all the data from 1969 to present. IFIS itself
offers FSTA Custom Alerts which gives access to the latest
information added to the database on any topic via an email
service, and also an expert retrospective search service where
we run searches on any topic back to any year and supply the
records. We also have a service, called Food Science Alerts,
which offers all records on a particular commodity section
added in the last 12 months; this collection includes a
service for fruit and vegetables, and also one for fish.
Has
the Food Science Central web site been successful getting
Asian scientists to register?
Yes, we have many registrants from
Asian countries. India, Japan and Thailand are the strongest
so far. Overall, last year we calculated that at least 5
percent of the approximately 119,000 user sessions on the site
were from Asian countries. We have just put up some
explanatory information on our free Food Science Central web
site (here) in Japanese and will consider doing
this for other Asian countries too in the future. In addition,
nearly 500 individuals and organizations in the Asian region
receive our web site related newsletter FoodInfo
which features articles and reports of topical interest to the
food community.
FSTA on eBridge.
FSTA on eBridge. Vietnamese
screen
SE
Asia has a vibrant food industry which is almost a cottage
industry. How does IFIS reach small scale food producers?
Through producer associations?
IFIS attends food science
exhibitions and professional food meetings in various
countries around the world, including the International Union
of Food Science and Technology (IUFoST) meetings -
particularly where there is the opportunity to present an
information seminar. We also advertise in a wide range of
global food science publications, and on the internet, in
order to attract Food Scientists. This includes our own web
site, and the web sites of other organizations who have
allowed us to publish a banner advert. So we put ourselves in
the view of people using the internet, and who recognize a
need in their business for food science information. With the
help of our partners in the region, we would like to continue
to build closer ties with the Asian food industry. This
includes marketing through the relevant Trade Associations. Of
course, we are always happy and ready to directly discuss the
information needs of existing and potential new
customers.
What
is your biggest challenge to bring FSTA to a wider audience,
especially in Asia?
Our biggest challenge is probably
ensuring that we are getting our message across clearly to our
wider audience, and are then able to follow up appropriately
on the interest this creates. This is why we are so keen to
work with iGroup and our other partners. For example we have
had an FSTA helpdesk in Tokyo for many years. IFIS has less
than 40 employees, yet the relevance and quality of FSTA has
led to a growing global market.
eBridge is a powerful,
contemporary platform that uses the latest Web,
Windows and Database Management technologies to
provide highly advanced content and context
sensitive linking capabilities. It supports Latin
based languages and several other Asian languages
including Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese,
Thai, Burmese and Vietnamese. FSTA on eBridge
offers a number of sophisticated search functions
including simple keyword, advanced and thesaurus
searches; the capacity to print, save and email
search results; sorting and relevance ranking;
word stemming; cross-database searching and full
text linking.
For further
information about IFIS and FSTA visit here. To
request a free trial to FSTA on eBridge click here
.
How
has your Asia coverage in FSTA increased over the years? In
the sciences we hear that there has been enormous growth in
published papers from Northeast Asia. 
