NEWSBREAK UPDATE
What's New in Linking, Archiving,
and More
By Paula Hane
Industry news seemed to slow a bit in late August
and early September while people squeezed in their
last days of summertime enjoyment and students headed
back to classrooms. But then the pace surged as companies
rolled out projects and announced products that they
planned to showcase at fall events.
Linking Is Hot
Elsevier and two divisions of the American Chemical
Society (ACS)Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS)
and Publicationsannounced that they will provide
linking between their services by the end of2003. Users
of Elsevier products and services (such as ScienceDirect,
MDL databases, and ChemWeb) will be able to link directly
to ACS scientific journals. Users of CAS products and
services (SciFinder, STN, and others) will be ableto
link, via ChemPort, directly to Elsevier scientific
journals. And in 2004, Elsevier journals will join
ChemPort Reference Linking, which will allow Elsevier
users to access ACS scientific journals and CAS database
records.
H.W. Wilson announced that JSTOR, an archive of more
than 320 scholarly journals, now joins the sources
accessible via WilsonWeb's WilsonLink service. Ingenta
also announced a new reference-linking initiative with
JSTOR.
JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization
with a mission to create and maintain a trusted archive
of important scholarly journals while improving and
extending access to them. It originated as a pilot
project of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 1994.
JSTOR now has 210 participating publishers and serves
more than 1,700 institutions in 76 countries.
OCLC recently added three sets of MARC records for
JSTOR collections to the WorldCat Collection Sets,
making them available for purchase. The sets are the
JSTOR Business Collection, the JSTOR Ecology and Botany
Collection, and the JSTOR Language & Literature
Collection. With these additions, OCLC offers the complete
MARC record sets for all JSTOR titles.
Dialog has expanded the number of e-journals that
can be linked to seamlessly from Dialog-retrieved abstracts
and citations. In recent months, an additional 77 publishers
of STM information have begun working with Dialog to
offer new e-Journal Links. (For more, see the interview
with Dialog CEO Roy M. Martin Jr. on page 1.)
The Disappearing Act
Dialog has been providing linking and beefing up
its products, but a small notice in the September/October
issue of its Chronolog newsletter caught my eye:
At the request of the American Medical Association,
the AMA collection of medical journals (File 442),
which includes 10 titles, was removed from Dialog.
These titles, which were also previously available
in individual files on a subscription basis, will be
removed as well. The AMAjournals are comprehensively
indexed in MEDLINE (Files 155, 154), EMBASE (Files
72, 73), Current Contents Search (File 440), and others.Alternative
sources of full-text medical information include The
New England Journal ofMedicine (File 444), Gale Group
Health and Wellness Database (File 149), NewsRx Weekly
Reports (File 135), Gale Group Newsletter Database
(File 636), and Periodical Abstracts PlusText (File
484).
AnAMArepresentative did not provide a reason for
the removal but did supply additional information about
access: "The contract with Dialog was suspended June
30, 2003. That means no new content for DataStar and
Profound.New content is available on the JAMA/Archives
Web site by subscription and also on Ovid, ProQuest,
and EBSCO. Document delivery services exist on Infotrieve
and ISI as well as directly from the AMA on the JAMA/Archives
Web site."
In other news, barnesandnoble.com will no longer
sell e-books. The company, which is the online retail
business of Barnes & Noble, said limited technology
and poor sales led to its decision.
Convenient Product Packaging
Dialog has bolstered its Dialog Company Profiles
service with an improved search interface, more robust
navigation features, and an expanded roster of authoritative
reference sources. The reference titles are supplied
by Gale, another Thomson company. They include Encyclopedia
of American Industries, Encyclopedia of Emerging
Industries, Encyclopedia of Global Industries, Market
Share Reporter, and World Market Share Reporter,
along with a larger pool of newspaper business sections
from around the world. Dialog Company Profiles provides
an integrated package of company information blended
from a variety of sources and data types.
As this issue went to press, LexisNexis announced
enhancements to Company Dossier and Industry Dossier,
which was launched in June. The Dossier products will
now provide more content, display charts automatically,
and offer improved functionality. The number of companies
included will increase from 13 million to 20 million.
The Dossier products provide an integrated package
of content, including news, business and financial
information, intellectual property reports, and legal
information.
LexisNexis is also making Company Dossier available
to the academic market as an add-on option to its LexisNexis
Academic product. (Because of license restrictions,
certain content is not available to the academic market.)
In addition, subscribers to Company Dossier will be
able to access new company sources through LexisNexis
Academic, including Bloomberg News, Experian Business
Reports, Investext Current Reports, Business Public
Records, Directory of Corporate Affiliations, BMI Company
Reports, FBR Asian Company Profiles, and Teikoku Japanese
CompaniesDetailed Reports.
According to Wendy Beecham, senior vice president
of LexisNexis' enterprise and library division, the
Dossier products are part of the company's strategy
to deliver an array of business intelligence solutions,
not just news and information. Offerings like Dossier
supply relevant content that's provided in context
in a preferred delivery format.
Beecham said LexisNexis plans to introduce other
Dossier products, possibly on Countries, Executives,
Products, or Market Research. The company is also considering
the addition of nontraditional content sources, including
some that are not available in digital format.
Platforms, Integration
LexisNexis is shifting its focus from content aggregation
to integration. The company will integrate technologies,
content, and products within a customer's applications
and work flow. Last month, I mentioned news about the
company's fundamental move toward a global, integrated
technology platform. (See the NewsBreak at https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030728-1.shtml.)
The goal, according to Jim Peck, LexisNexis' senior
vice president and global product officer, is to provide
access to LexisNexis Group content from anywhere in
the world on a single platform. Standardizing and converting
data to XML will also allow easier and faster product
development, reduce costs, and enable local customization
and adaptation.
In July, LexisNexis announced a new integrated application
called Total Search. The first release is expected
to be available in mid-November. LexisNexis Total Search
lets law firms search both internal and external content
with a single search on the lexis.com interface. Customers
can also choose to begin their research within the
firm's internal documents prior to searching LexisNexis
or other external information providers. LexisNexis
will use FAST's search engine for searching internal
content, but this will be transparent to customers.
Total Search uses an open architecture platform and
works with existing enterprise document-management
systems.
Other companies have also been working to move their
search platforms to the next generation. Earlier this
year, Factiva completed its upgrade to the Factiva product
platform and switched off its legacy products: Reuters
Business Briefing and Dow Jones Interactive. The new
platform is Web-services-based and XML-enabled.
The Roy Martin interview on page 1 features a discussion
of Dialog's integration effortsin both technology
and contentas part of the Thomson organization.
With these sorts of initiatives, customers should experience
the next level of information access.
Archives, Access
Recently, there's been a series of interesting announcements
about access to archives and special initiatives. Digitization
efforts seem to be gaining momentum, as are concerns
for ensuring public access to critical content.
The Government Printing Office (GPO) and the National
Archives and Records Administration (NARA) have agreed
to permanently provide free online public access to
GPO Access archives. Many library organizations applauded
the collaborative agreement that will ensure access
to more than 250,000 federal government titles. Miriam
A. Drake, who wrote a NewsBreak on this topic (https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030825-1.shtml),
interviewed Public Printer Bruce R. James for the September
issue of Searcher (p. 50).
OCLC announced the upcoming availability of the PAIS
Archive, a retrospective database that will contain
electronic versions of records previously available
only in the 62 annually cumulated print editions of
the PAIS Bulletin, 19151976. The PAIS
Archive will be released on FirstSearch in phases,
beginning in spring 2004 with the years 1957 to 1976.
The full file is projected to be available in mid-2004.
Greg Dyke, director general ofthe BBC, has announced
plans to give the public full access to all of the
corporation's program archives. The service, called
the BBC Creative Archive, will permit users to freely
download BBC radio and TV programs from the Internet
for noncommercial use. Dyke said: "Up until now, this
huge resource has remained locked up, inaccessible
to the public because there hasn't been an effective
mechanism for distribution. The digital revolution
and broadband are changing all that. For the first
time, there is an easy and affordable way of making
this treasure-trove of BBC content available to all." No
details have been given on when this will become available.
On Sept.10, the Library of Congress acquired the
September 11 Digital Archive (http://911digitalarchive.org),
a joint project of the City University of New York
Graduate Center's American Social History Project and
George Mason University's Center for History and New
Media. The archive contains more than 130,000 written
accounts, e-mails, audio recordings, video clips, photographs,
Web sites, and other materials.
The U.S. National Library of Medicine announced that
more than 1.5 million OLDMEDLINE citations will be
added to PubMed. The citations are to articles from
international biomedical journals that cover the fields
of medicine, preclinical sciences, and allied health
sciences. They were originally printed in hard-copy
indexes published from 1953 through 1965.
Dueling Serial Sets
In June, I reported on the Readex project to digitize
the U.S. Congressional Serial Set, a massive archival
initiative (https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030609-2.shtml).
The first phase was due for release by the end of September,
followed by monthly updates. When completed, the Digital
Edition will comprise approximately 13,800 volumes
(from print) and more than 12 million pages from 350,000
publications, including 52,000 maps. The Readex Digital
Edition is based on the masters from its microprint
set, supplemented by Library of Congress, Senate Library,
and Stanford University collections.
Recently, LexisNexis announced a project to create
a digital Serial Set as well, based on the microfiche
set and companion Index created by its Congressional
Information Service (CIS) unit. An ambitious rollout
schedule has been established to release the Serial
Set through monthly updates within a mere 2-year period
beginning in December. (See the NewsBreak at https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030915-1.shtml.)
According to the company, the major source for filming
the CIS collection was the Senate Library, with additional
materials from other primary depositories. A LexisNexis
representative said: "The CIS Serial Set has been known
for years as the best and most complete collection
available. And if we do find omissions, we have a plan
to track those materials down and include them in the
digitized collection."
When asked about providing enhanced indexing, the
representative noted that in addition to the index-access
points in the print index (bill number, report number,
petitioner name, and subject indexing), the company
would add the ability to search by title, issuing source,
author, illustration title, and keywords in the statistical
table titles, as well as SuDoc, Serial Set, and public
law numbers. Userswill be able to limit a search to
only those documents that contain statistical tables
or illustrations. They can also limit by document type
or search only certain segments.
Terminology will be standardized to conform to the
CIS Executive Branch Documents thesaurus (which has
its roots in the CIS Serial Set Index). LexisNexis
is using a combination of data manipulation and human
indexing to handle the enhancements.
Responding to this competitive development, Readex
has moved up its timetable. The entire U.S. Congressional
Serial Set Digital Edition, from theAmerican State
Papers through 1980, will now be completed by December
2008. David Braden, Readex vice president of sales
and marketing, said the company intended to create
a more complete digital resource than any existing
single set. He said, "Readex is building the high-end
product."
LexisNexis hasn't announced pricing information yet,
so it's not possible to compare the services on that
basis. Prospective purchasers should check with the
companies for more details and a demonstration.
Toolbars, Search Engine News
The Internet Archive, which since 1996 has been collecting
monthly snapshots of the Web using Alexa Internet crawlers,
has now added keyword content searching. The collection,
called The Wayback Machine, had provided access by
URL but now offers Recall Search, a beta engine that
was designed by a volunteer. Barbara Quint reported
that the engine searches 11 billion pages of the 30-billion
page archive. It was scheduled to go into full service
on the entire archive in mid-October (https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030908-1.shtml).
Quint says the Internet Archive is one of the great
success stories on the "love" side of the Internet's "for
love or money" saga.
AltaVista introduced a new search Toolbar, which
includes its Babel Fish translation tool, lookup features
for ZIP and area codes,currency exchange rates, and
weather and time in 65,000 cities worldwide. The toolbar
also includes a pop-up blocker. You can download it
for free at http://www.av.com/toolbar.
Google announced that the latest version of the Google
Toolbar is out ofbeta and available for download at
http://toolbar.google.com. Google's free browser utility
enables users to search from any page on the Web. It
offers pop-up blocking, Web-form filling, and a new
Blogger button that makes posting to Blogger.com Web
logs quick and easy. Although this is yet another announcement
from the search engine marketing king, the toolbar
is great.
For the latest industry news, check https://www.infotoday.com every Monday morning.An easier option is to sign up
for our free weekly e-mail newsletter, NewsLink, which
provides abstracts and links to the stories we post.
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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