COLUMNS & NEWS
NewsBytes
SLA Partnership Awarded Grant
The U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services
has awarded a $994,369 grant to a partnership led by
the University of North Carolina that includes the
Special Libraries Association (SLA), Syracuse University,
the Association of Research Libraries, and the American
Society for Information Science and Technology. The
grant will be used to conduct a research study focused
on the future of librarians in the workforce.
The 2-year project will identify the nature of anticipated
labor shortages in the library and information science
(LIS) field over the next decade, assess the number
and types of LIS jobs that will become available either
through retirement or new job creation, determine the
skills required to fill vacancies, and recommend effective
approaches to recruiting and retaining workers to fill
positions.
SLA will be involved in the data-collection activities
of the various surveys planned for the project, the
analysis and development of skill/competency requirements,
and the dissemination of the study's findings.
Source: The Special Libraries Association, Alexandria,
VA, 703/647-4900; http://www.sla.org.
Dialog Enters Content Agreement, Expands Dialog
Choice
Dialog announced that it will supply content to Elsag
Solutions AG. The company also announced the expansion
of Dialog Choice.
Content Agreement
Dialog announced that it has entered into a strategic
relationship with Elsag Solutions AG. Under the agreement,
an extensive range of Dialog business news, information,
and research content is available to enterprises subscribing
to Elsag's Sentinel system.
The Sentinel system gives subscribing organizations
the ability to set up automated, seamless links between
an enterprise's internal information assets and relevant
new and archived external content, such as the articles
and reports from around the world, now being supplied
by Dialog. Elsag also provides Sentinel users with
built-in tools to generate analysis and manage information,
such as automatic summarizations, translations, and
graphical representations of data.
Dialog Choice Additions
Dialog announced that it has added databases of global
intellectual property records and business information
to Dialog Choice.
International intellectual property records now available
through the Dialog Choice plan include Internet domain
names (a database of worldwide Internet domain names
with more than 100 million records) and abstracts of
archived and new patent records from the People's Republic
of China.
Business information files recently added to the
Dialog Choice program include company data published
in the American Business Directory and the Canadian
Business Directory. More than 12 million North American
public and private companies are included in the databases.
Source: Dialog Corp., Cary, NC, 919/462-8600; http://www.dialog.com.
FIZ Karlsruhe, Max Planck Society in Strategic
Partnership
FIZ Karlsruhe and the Max Planck Society (MPS) have
been awarded ¤6.1 million to develop a new platform
for Web-based, collaborative scientific work. The funding
comes from the German Federal Ministry of Education
and Research, under the framework of the German national
eScience initiative.
The new project—eSciDoc—will be jointly
managed by FIZ Karlsruhe and MPS. FIZ Karlsruhe will
provide development and IT services and will operate
central services. The intention is to create an integrated
information, communication, and publication platform
for Web-based scientific work so that scientists working
in the 80 research institutes of the Max Planck Society
can collaborate together.
Source: FIZ Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany, 011-49-7247-808-555;
http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de.
IHS Acquires USA Information Systems
Information Handling Services, Inc. (IHS) announced
that it has acquired USA Information Systems, Inc.
(USAInfo).
Under the agreement, the former USA-Info operations
will continue in Virginia Beach, Va., and will become
part of the IHS brand, delivering technical documents
and specifications, procurement, parts, and vendor
information to buyers, suppliers, designers, librarians,
and engineers worldwide. All IHS documents, catalogs,
and integrated content are available to customers in
online, electronic, or print format by subscription,
custom collection, or single-document delivery methods.
Source: Information Handling Services, Inc., Englewood,
CO, 303/397-2410; http://www.ihs.com.
ProQuest, Ediciones Mayo Group in Distribution
Agreement
ProQuest Information and Learning announced a new
agreement with the Ediciones Mayo Group for worldwide
electronic distribution of five Spanish-language medical
journals: Acta Pediátrica Española, El
Farmacéutico Hospitales, Folia Clinica
en Obstetricia y Ginecologia, PA/AP Presión
Arterial, and Quimica clinica.
The full-text titles will be available through ProQuest
Health and Medical Complete with a backfile extending
to January 2004. Subscribers can sign up for the ProQuest
specialized e-mail notification lists at http://www.proquest.com/proqust/em-notecontent.shtml to receive notification when the titles are loaded
and available.
Source: ProQuest Information and Learning, Ann Arbor,
MI, 734/761-4700; http://www.il.proquest.com.
Baker & Taylor Acquires J.A. Majors Co.
Baker & Taylor announced its acquisition of J.A.
Majors Co., a private distributor of medical and scientific
books.
Jam Majors, president of J.A. Majors, explained: "Baker & Taylor
will bring resources and enhanced services to Majors'
customers. The existing Majors' staff will be retained
to continue the excellent personal service for which
it is known."
Majors Scientific Books, Inc., an independent corporation
running medical bookstores in Dallas and Houston, will
continue under the current ownership and as such is
not a part of this acquisition.
Source: Baker & Taylor, Inc., Charlotte, NC,
704/998-3100; http://www.btol.com.
R.R. Bowker Acquires Syndetic Solutions
R.R. Bowker announced the acquisition of Syndetic
Solutions, provider of enriched content for a library's
online catalog. Under the agreement, Syndetic Solutions
co-founder Allan Graham and his team will join Bowker.
The company will maintain its offices in Portland,
Ore., where operations will continue under Graham's
leadership.
"We are very excited to add Syndetic Solutions as
part of Bowker's offerings to libraries worldwide," said
Michael Cairns, president of R.R. Bowker. "We felt
the combination of Syndetic's extensive reach within
the market together with our product development resources
will result in compelling products for the library
community."
Source: R.R. Bowker, New Providence, NJ, 908/286-1090;
http://www.bowker.com.
JSTOR Receives Ford Foundation Grant
Thanks to a $250,000 grant from the Ford Foundation,
24 institutions in India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal will
gain access to JSTOR's Arts & Sciences I and II
journal collections. The collections comprise 239 journals—nearly
9 million pages of scholarly research.
The Ford Foundation selected the institutions, which
range from very small research institutes to large,
nationally acclaimed universities, on the basis of
their commitment to research and scholarship in the
humanities and social sciences. The grant will cover
JSTOR's one-time archive capital fee for each collection,
as well as most of the annual access fee for 3 years.
After that period, the institutions will be responsible
for covering the cost of ongoing access to the JSTOR
archive.
Source: JSTOR, New York, 212/358-6400; http://www.jstor.org.
National Library of Australia Chooses OCLC PICA
The National Library of Australia has selected the
OCLC PICA Central Library System to support the Australian
National Bibliographic Database and Kinetica, the Internet-based
service for Australian libraries and their users.
The OCLC PICA Central Library System will provide
the infrastructure for the creation and management
of the shared Australian union catalog and tools for
nationwide interlibrary loan. The system will be implemented
over the next year and will be operational in December
2005.
Library workstations throughout the country will
be connected to the system that will support a national
catalog of 13 million records. It will enable researchers,
librarians, and students to use one system to search
the collections of more than 1,000 Australian libraries.
Source: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Dublin,
OH, 614/764-6000; http://www.oclc.org.
Thomson Corp. Delivers Patent Info, Adds Content
The Thomson Corp. announced that it has met its goal
of delivering value-added records for all patents from
key patenting authorities to Derwent World Patents
Index (DWPI) within an average of 30 days. The company
also announced the addition of The Times (London)
from 1986 to 1996 into InfoTrac Custom Newspapers.
Derwent Patent Index
The Thomson Corp. delivers value-added records for
all patents from key patenting authorities to DWPI
within an average of 30 days after the date the patent
is published. The key patent-issuing authorities include
the French, German, U.K., Japanese, U.S., and European
patent offices plus the World Intellectual Property
Office.
The 30-day figure is an average based on the turnaround
time for all the documents from these authorities within
each update of DWPI. In many cases, the time from publication
of the original document to inclusion within DWPI is
much less.
InfoTrac Custom Newspapers
Thomson Gale added The Times (London) from
1986 through 1996 into the electronic resource InfoTrac
Custom Newspapers. Researchers can now search 220 years'
worth of The Times content.
Source: The Thomson Corp., Toronto, 416/360-8700;
http://www.thomson.com.
Aries Systems Corp. Becomes CrossRef Agent
Aries Systems Corp. announced that it has become
an authorized CrossRef agent. According to the release,
CrossRef participation by Aries signals the company's
commitment to enhancing its offering with DOI (digital
object identifier) registration as part of the peer-review
process. Release 4.0 (planned for spring 2005) will
enable publishers or journals to automatically assign
a DOI and register article metadata in CrossRef as
soon as a manuscript is accepted for publication.
Source: Aries Systems Corp., North Andover, MA, 978/975-7570;
http://www.editorialmanager.com.
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