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| NewsLink — Issue 65/March 2005 |
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| NewsLink is a free weekly e-mail newsletter featuring news and resources for the information industry. If you are receiving this issue as a forward and would like to become a subscriber, please visit our Web site at www.infotoday.com or send a blank e-mail to join-infotoday@lists.infotoday.com. | |
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| IN THIS ISSUE 1) WELCOME 2) ITI SNAP POLL 3) NEWSLINK MONTHLY SPOTLIGHT 4) NEWSBREAKS 5) FEATURED ARTICLES 6) CONFERENCE CONNECTION 7) BOOKSHELF |
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| 1) WELCOME Welcome to the March 2005 issue of NewsLink, Information Today, Inc.'s FREE e-mail newsletter for library and information professionals. Spring and the conference season are approaching quickly, so here are a couple of quick updates on our upcoming events. The Computers in Libraries conference will be celebrating its 20th anniversary when we open the doors on March 15, 2005, at the Washington Hilton. By all of our counts, attendance will be at the highest levels in recent history. If you are still waiting to register, please do so quickly before space runs out. We look forward to meeting with many of you at the event. The Buying & Selling eContent conference in Scottsdale is one that we look forward to every year. Besides its beautiful location, it is the year’s best opportunity to network and learn with colleagues in the information industry. Designed for both buyers and sellers of electronic content, this is the most important high-level conference for the industry. The early bird discount is still available, so register today. Our ITI bloggers are busy this week at the NFAIS conference in Philadelphia. We’ll also be blogging at Computers in Libraries in 2 weeks. Our conference blogs have been so well received that we are planning more of them for 2005. Keep up with the latest conference and exhibition happenings through the eyes of our editors and staff. Whether you're at the event or not, these conference blogs provide a great look at these events. 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. Best Wishes,
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| 2) ITI SNAP POLL I have used/plan to use Google Scholar and recommend it to others. Yes? No? Please comment on its strengths and weaknesses. https://www.infotoday.com/ |
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| 3) NEWSLINK MONTHLY SPOTLIGHT Google’s Projects Continue to Generate Shock Waves By Paula J. Hane Not a day passes that I don’t get some communication relating to Google’s ongoing projects, either announcing, reacting, or speculating. Since Google introduced its initiatives that directly impact libraries and the information industry—Google Print, Google Library, and Google Scholar—the buzz and debate continue to send shock waves through our landscape. Bloggers are commenting, librarians are investigating, vendors are wondering, and conference presenters are exploring the issues. And, the issues relate to some core questions: copyright, access, search problems (dates, multiple copies, etc.), digitization projects, distribution, partnerships, business models, and more. At the NFAIS annual conference, going on right now in Philadelphia and blogged live by ITI’s editors, Marydee Ojala and Dick Kaser (http://www.infotodayblog.com), Google’s director of business development, Cathy Gordon, gave the opening keynote about "Capturing Diverse User Mindshare." Ojala noted that Gordon’s talk contained "an implicit criticism of the traditional online hosts, as she noted that Dialog and LexisNexis underestimated the power of the Internet, preferring in the 1990s to concentrate on PC interfaces. They also were never successful in reaching the broad global audience that Google has." And, Gordon used to work for both Dialog and LexisNexis. Much of the NFAIS conference seems to focus on if and how content producers should embrace new opportunities and business models in an age of Googlization. Discussions with Google representatives highlighted details of Google’s three projects and Kaser reported that conference delegates "were urged to think about how their materials might be of use and interest to a wider market." Of course, the supposition is that Google would be the enabler to those wider markets. Ojala reported that John Lewis Needham (Google’s strategic partner development manager) said that Google Scholar was expanding beyond STM to social sciences and humanities, and he announced that Google Scholar was adding JSTOR journals (said to be only 10 journals, at this point). Ojala wrote: "As far as I can tell, they're all in the discipline of economics." Sessions dealing with "the Google effect" are also planned for a number of upcoming conferences and events. At Computers in Libraries (March 16-18 in Washington, D.C.), Stephen Abram is speaking on how libraries should "take on Google." The ASIDIC Spring 2005 meeting (March 20-22 in New Orleans) will address the battle for the desktop between search engine providers and the scholarly information industry. Speakers will present their views of what the next generation of scholarly products will look like. Other programs and panels are planned for ALA, SLA, etc. The February newsletter from CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org/01company/10newsletter.html) reported on an evaluation of the CrossRef Search Pilot with Google and its consideration of Google Scholar. (The pilot project was announced in April 2004. For information, see: https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb040503-1.shtml.) The CrossRef board has approved continuing with the CrossRef Search Pilot in addition to "engaging with Google to express publishers’ concerns about certain aspects of the Google Scholar Beta and establish a more formal business relationship between Google and CrossRef." There are now 35 of the 350 CrossRef member publishers and societies participating in the Search Pilot. The results have come from the regular Google index, but, starting in April 2005, results from CrossRef Search will be delivered from Google Scholar. The latest list of participants is at http://www.crossref.org/crossrefsearch.html. According to the newsletter, Google agreed with the principle that if there are multiple versions of an article shown in the Google Scholar search results, the first link will be to the publisher's authoritative copy. Google would like to use the DOI as the primary means to link to an article so CrossRef and Google will be working on this as well as a template for common terms and conditions for use of publishers full-text content. Finally, the snap poll question on the Infotoday site has been asking our visitors about using Google Scholar. There have been some interesting and thoughtful comments, pro and con. Some stressed its value as a complementary source to more traditional resources. One called it a helpful tool and wrote that it "can be handy for verifying articles requested through interlibrary loan, and for looking for online full text." Several people noted that it is hard to tell what is and is not included; its comprehensiveness is also questionable, even when it claims to cover a publisher’s site. Nick Tomaiuolo pointed to Péter Jacsó’s Side-by-Side Native Search Engines vs. Google Scholar site (http://www2.hawaii.edu/~jacso/scholarly/side-by-side2.htm). According to Jacsó: "Preliminary tests have shown that Google Scholar often retrieves far fewer unique items than the native search engines of the publishers. On the positive side, Google Scholar links to citing references if the document was cited by journals indexed in Google Scholar, and provides the immensely useful citedness score of the documents....When Google Scholar has more ‘hits’ for a query, they often turn out to be duplicates and triplicates." Some observers feel that Google has stepped up to tackle tasks that vendors and librarians should have taken on. It will be interesting now to see whether vendors and librarians can embrace the new challenges and opportunities presented to them. Paula J. Hane is Information Today, Inc.’s news bureau chief and editor of NewsBreaks. Her e-mail address is phane@infotoday.com. |
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| 4) NEWSBREAKS For a complete listing of previous NewsBreaks visit the Information Today, Inc. Web site at https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks. NewsBreaks for Monday, February 28, 2005 Northern Light Adds Market Intelligence
Centers Northern Light has announced it
is adding industry Market Intelligence Centers (MIC) to its subscription-based
Business Research Engine (BRE). The new centers, reached via a click
from the BRE service and available at no extra charge, concentrate the
most important content for an industry in a concise, easy-to-use site
that provides daily updates and dynamic querying. The first industries
to be launched are Chemicals, Energy, Environmental, Oil & Gas,
and Mergers & Acquisitions. Aerospace & Defense and Pharmaceuticals
Market Intelligence Centers will be released over the next 2 weeks.
Approximately 50 MICs are planned over the next year, corresponding
to the classifications for industries, business functions, and regulatory
issues on the BRE. NFAIS Conference Addresses the
Battle for Mindshare NFAIS, the association for organizations
that aggregate, organize, and facilitate access to information, is holding
its 47th annual event this week. The 2005 NFAIS Annual Conference is
scheduled for Feb. 27 to March 1, 2005, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in
Philadelphia. This year’s conference focuses on “the differences and
commonalities in the search and retrieval behavior of information professionals/librarians
and desktop searchers, and the implications for data providers and librarians
who must offer products and services that will meet the needs and expectations
of these diverse user groups.” NewsBreaks Weekly News Digest Coveo Provides Enterprise Search
Solution for SharePoint Portals Wiley InterScience Launches New
OnlineBooks Sales Model UC Announces eScholarship Postprints
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| 5) FEATURED ARTICLES For full-text coverage of the following articles please use the hotlinks provided. INFORMATION
TODAY When it comes to real-time news,
Moreover offers a wealth of options harvested continuously from more
than 8,000 online news and information sources across 115 countries
in 23 languages. Articles are aggregated from a broad range of publications,
including premium international and regional news sites, corporate Web
sites, government press pages, Weblogs, discussion boards, and more.
Jim Pitkow has led Moreover as CEO since May 2002. In late January,
we talked about Moreover's role as middleman in news provision as well
as the company's plans for 2005. ONLINE Magazine
Open access (OA) is becoming a reality,
with new cost models under development. The various cost models will
have serious short- and long-term implications for libraries and dangerously
impact the scholarly communication network. OA, as a business model,
is neither necessary nor desirable. With or without the often-discussed
author charges approach, it would be almost impossible to obtain the
same amount of total revenue through selected libraries as now exists
from the much larger base of library subscriptions. Read on as David
Stern gives background on the drawbacks and issues concerning OA.
COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES
Having your server attacked by hackers
may leave you feeling as if you've been struck by lightning. But if
you take the opportunity to improve your security procedures and your
systems administrator skills, you will find the sun peeking through
the clouds. Don't miss this feature's lists of what the author now does
differently, based on his two experiences with security breaches.
SEARCHER
Magazine It's a war out there, skirmishes
everywhere. Even within the forces for open and free access, alliances
have begun to blur. Some players fight on two fronts. Some publishers
are enabling authors to self-archive and contribute to institutional
repositories with pre- and/or post-publication, full-text versions of
their articles. Search engines have entered the fray, bringing their
technological resources to make open access content useful and responsive.
Carol Ebbinghouse begins the first of a two-part column on the issues
coming to a head concerning open access, a multi-tiered battle that
she believes will rage on for years. MULTIMEDIA
& INTERNET@SCHOOLS The free Internet, subscription
databases, and e-books make information available outside of physical
library walls, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With the proliferation
of information in electronic format, virtual school libraries must be
entities of the present, not the future. We must provide access to quality
resources and instruction in how to use them, virtually! Learn more
and discover virtual school libraries that represent Best Practices
in the field in Audrey Church's article. LINK-UP
DIGITAL Most people know the old adage about
choosing a wine to pair with food: red with red meat; white with chicken
and fish. But where does pork fit? What about vegetarian food? Suppose
you are having a dark-fleshed fish, such as tuna or salmon. Does it
matter what kind of cuisine you’re eating—Italian, French, Greek, Indian,
or Japanese? And if you’ve decided on red, what then? Will it be a sweet
Chenin Blanc, a dry Beaujolais, or a fruity Zinfandel? Wouldn’t it be
nice if there were some online sources for guidance? Well, there are.
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| 6) CONFERENCE CONNECTION Get the latest event information available for the library and information fields in the Conference Connection. The Conference Report/Update gives you an inside look at the most recent information industry events, while the Conference Calendar is updated monthly to provide you with important contact information for up-and-coming industry events. CONFERENCE REPORT/UPDATE Explore the Future of Content
with Buying & Selling eContent Catch Up with ITI's NFAIS
bloggers Still Time to Register for Computers
in Libraries CONFERENCE CALENDAR March 2005 March 4-7 AMERICAN SOCIEITY FOR
INFORMATION SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (ASIST) INFORMATION ARCHITCTURE
SUMMIT, Montreal, Canada March 7-9 BOOK TECH EXPO, Hilton
New York, New York, NY March 16-18 COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES
2005, Hilton Washington, Washington, DC March 16-19 NORTHWEST COUNCIL FOR
COMPUTER EDUCATION (NCCE), Seattle, WA March 20-22 ASSOCIATION OF INFORMATION
AND DISSEMINATION CENTERS (ASIDIC), New Orleans, LA March 22-23 SCHOOL NETWORKING, Washington,
DC For the complete
Conference Calendar visit https://www.infotoday.com/calendar.shtml
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| 7) BOOKSHELF The Web Library By Nicholas G. Tomaiuolo “This guide to high quality, free and inexpensive online resources will save you a great deal of frustration and expense.” —Péter Jacsó, professor, author, and Internet Librarian Hall of Fame honoree With this remarkable, eye-opening book and its companion Web site, Nicholas G. (Nick) Tomaiuolo shows how anyone can create a comprehensive personal library using no-cost Web resources. And when Nick says "library" he’s not talking about a dictionary and thesaurus on your desktop: he means a vast, rich collection of data, documents, and images that--if you follow his instructions to the letter--can rival the holdings of many traditional libraries. The Web Library provides a wealth of URLs and examples of free material you can start using right away, but best of all it offers techniques for finding and collecting new content as the Web evolves. CyberAge Books
To purchase this title, please go
to https://books.infotoday.com/books/WebLibrary.shtml.
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