SUBSCRIBE NOW! Vol. 27 No. 5 — Sep/Oct 2003 Industry News Compiled by Suzanne Sabroski

Google Advanced News Search
News junkies will be happy to learn that advanced search capabilities are now available for Google News. Some of these functionalities previously existed, but were not documented. Phrase searching, using the normal double quotation marks, makes it easier to pinpoint exact phrases rather than combining terms with Google’s AND default. If you want news from a particular news outlet, use the source: syntax. For a dateline search, or as close as Google comes to a dateline search, use location: syntax. This only works for U.S. states and other countries. You can’t get to a city level. Field searching has been enabled for headlines (allintitle:), body of the article (allintext:), and URL (allinurl:). You can either use the syntax in the Google News search box or go to the Advanced Search page [http://news.google.com].

ProQuest Releases PQNext
In its latest search release, PQNext, ProQuest has added many new features, including browsable lists, results grouping, comprehensive search results, and Open URL support. PQNext also offers on-the fly-formatted bibliographies, better help functionality, library branding, and improved display options. You can now search all the collections with one search, rather than moving from current to backfile to deep backfile. A “more like this” option helps you find similar articles. Clicking on index terms runs a search on those terms. Articles can now be grouped by publication type, so you can restrict your search to newspapers, scholarly journals, or trade publications [www.il.proquest.com/pqnext].

Social Sciences & Humanities

ProQuest has expanded its Early American Fiction collection, which now extends from 1789 to 1875, with the addition of dozens of rare early American novels and short stories. When complete, it will hold more than 750 full-text first editions, all fully searchable. Up-to-date author biographies commissioned for the database and author portraits are included. ProQuest has also re-launched Film Index International, created in cooperation with the British Film Institute. Scholarly yet inclusive, Film Index International provides in-depth indexing to more than 110,000 entertainment films, covering 100 years of international films from silents to the latest summer blockbusters [800/521-0600; 734/761-4700; www.proquest.com].

xrefer is adding 16,000 digital images from the Bridgeman Art Library to xreferplus. The addition of the Bridgeman collection brings the total number of images available to 66,000. It will be integrated with existing content, enabling users to research artists’ works in the context of biographical or historical information from other xreferplus resources. Van Gogh, Velasquez, and Gustav Klimt are just a few of the 4,800 artists whose works feature in the Bridgeman collection. The collection includes paintings, sculpture, and other works of art [xrefer: 617/426-5710; www.xrefer.com; Bridgeman: www.bridgeman.co.uk].

Business & Finance

Thomson Financial announced the development of InSite, an offering that extends corporate visibility by creating Investor Relations microsites on the Yahoo! Finance news and information portal. InSite provides investor relations professionals with the ability to drive traffic directly to IR content that they manage, as well as directly to corporate Web sites [finance.yahoo.com].

Thomson Financial has also formed a partnership with Alacra, Inc., provider of Public Information Book (PIB) building solutions, to deliver its PIB generator Alacra Book via Thomson ONE Banker. The combined content and technologies will eliminate the researching and formatting formerly required to produce the PIBs that investment banks use for detailed analysis of a target company or prospective client. The integration of Alacra Book and Thomson ONE Banker will be completed early in the third quarter of 2003 [Thomson: 215/386-0100; www.thomson.com; Alacra: 212/363-9620; www.alacra.com].

Mergent, Inc. has introduced Mergent Industry Reports, in-depth analyses of key industries in the North America and Asia/Pacific regions. A European edition will be available soon [Mergent: 704/527-2700; www.mergent.com].
SkyMinder has added business credit content from Experian. This adds 15 million new credit reports to SkyMinder’s existing coverage of more than 48 million public and private companies in over 230 countries [813/636-0981; www.skyminder.com].

Kiplinger.com debuted a redesign of its Web site featuring improved viewer navigation, new informational sections, and easier access to basic financial tools. Content is organized according to topics such as Investing, Planning, and Spending. ”Breadcrumb” navigation along the top of the page helps users find additional information by showing where they are in the site. New features include informational sections on Bonds, Budgeting, and Real Estate Planning, and a Yields & Rates page contains the latest averages for mortgage, credit card, and loan rates, as well as the average yields for CDs and other deposit accounts [212/255-8455; www.kiplinger.com].

Peopleware

Inmagic, Inc. has announced that Lynda Roberts, manager of library services for the law firm of Bull, Housser & Tupper of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, is the 2003 InfoHero award winner. The InfoHero award is presented to the customer who is judged to have created an information management solution with an Inmagic product that that has had the most significant impact within their organization.

The reconstituted Northern Light has added three people to its executive management team. Joining C. David Seuss, who bought back his company, is Robert Nelson, senior vice president of corporate development, Patrick O’Malley, senior vice president and general manager of the SinglePoint division, and Igor Razboff, senior vice president of applications engineering.

Factiva has announced the appointment of Alan Scott to vice president and director of global marketing.

Ingenta has announced two new appointments as part of an expansion of its U.S. client management and new business team. Janet Fisher was named director, U.S. client manager, and David Durand was named director, electronic publishing services. Ingenta is relocating its U.S. activities from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to its existing software engineering, development, and production unit in Providence, Rhode Island. Additionally, Ingenta has named Arend Küster as European business development manager for PCG, Inc., its specialist marketing services division. He is based in Oxford, U.K.

Alliances & Deals

Swets Blackwell has brokered a further round of deals to migrate all print subscriptions ordered by the Greek consortium HEAL-Link (Hellenic Academic Libraries Link) to electronic only. HEAL-Link is the first national consortium in Europe to close unilateral agreements on behalf of all its members. HEAL-Link’s 57 members are comprised of all academic and research institutions across Greece, as well as the University of Cyprus [Swets: + 31 (0) 252 435 584; www.swetsblackwell.com; HEAL-Link: www.heal-link.gr].

Nstein and BIOSIS announced an agreement that will utilize BIOSIS indexing to create Ncategorizer and Nfinder software designed specifically for the biological, pharmaceutical, and biomedical markets. Users will have the opportunity to incorporate BIOSIS’ subject expertise into their own information collections and to move seamlessly from a search of their own data to the renowned BIOSIS Previews. The extensive BIOSIS authority files will be incorporated into Nstein’s growing line of Nfinder software cartridges, allowing users to automatically identify, label, and extract the names of organisms, diseases, chemicals, pharmaceutical ingredients, and other key life sciences information [Nstein: 514/ 908-5406; www.nstein.com; BIOSIS: 215/231-7500; www.biosis.org].

LexisNexis has entered into an agreement to acquire Applied Discovery, a Seattle-based provider of Web-based electronic discovery services. Applied Discovery’s services include data gathering, media restoration, data processing, online review, and document production and reporting [LexisNexis: 937/865-8838; www.lexisnexis.com; Applied Discovery: www.applieddiscovery.com].

Extenza-Turpin and Kluwer Academic Publishers have reached an agreement to outsource Kluwer Academic Publishers’ worldwide warehousing and physical distribution of books and journals. Extenza-Turpin will make use of the former Kluwer Academic Publishers warehouses located in Dordrecht, The Netherlands, and Pembroke, Massachusetts, while taking over all associated assets and staff. Extenza is a division of Royal Swets & Zeitlinger, delivering outsourced solutions for publishers [Extenza: + 31 (0) 252 435 111; www.extenza.com; Kluwer: +31 (0) 78 6576542; www.wkap.nl].

SAE International (Society of Automotive Engineers) has entered into an exclusive sales contract with Information Handling Services (IHS) for several of its key products, including the SAE TechKnowledge Center. Under the contract, IHS gains exclusive rights to sell SAE’s Digital Library into the international market, as well as in select markets in the United States [SAE: 724/772-8516; www.sae.org; IHS: 303/397-7956; www.ihs.com].

Portals & Intranets

Mandarin Library Automation, Inc. has announced a technology partnership with MuseGlobal, Inc. in developing M3 Web OPAC Deluxe, a portal product that will complement the Mandarin M3 Library Automation software suite. M3 Web OPAC Deluxe will be built on top of the recently redesigned M3 Web OPAC (formerly Web Gateway) and will integrate its functionality (placing reserves, sending ILL requests, saving results to the Bookbag, placing renewals, etc.) with the global search capabilities of Muse technology. Patrons will be able to conduct a search from a single search interface, simultaneously returning results from the local library’s collection, the library’s subscription databases, and Internet search engines [MuseGlobal: 775/832-6698; www.museglobal.com; Mandarin: 800/426-7477; 561/995-4010; www.mlasolutions.com].

Nstein launched version 3.0 of its content management platform, Nserver suite, which includes Nstein’s concept extraction, categorization, entity extraction, and summarization tools. Also released is a new guided navigation module, Nretriever, which brings immediate context to the search experience for end users [514/908-5406; www.nstein.com].

Ingenta, Inc., an active member of COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources), announced the launch of its library usage statistics solutions, providing patron usage data from ingenta.com and ingentaselect.com to the 14,500 libraries currently registered on the sites. These services will allow library administrators to further analyze the usage behavior of their patrons online.

Sci-Tech

FIZ Karlsruhe added the bibliographic database TEMA to its product portfolio. Available on STN International, TEMA covers a wide range of German and international literature in the areas of technology and management [+49 7247-808-555; www.fiz-karlsruhe.de; www.stn-international.de].

BIOSIS has enhanced the availability, functionality, and content of Zoological Record (ZR) to solidify its appeal among animal sciences researchers. To this end, BIOSIS has made ZR available through new vendors such as OVID, NISC, and EBSCO; bolstered content with additional abstracts; and embedded more information in each citation for flexible searching. Enhancements include Systematics, an animal’s taxonomic information, Taxa Notes English vernacular names, and the updated ZR Thesaurus [215/231-7187; www.biosis.org].

The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG (German Research Foundation), together with 37 front-line German libraries, research centers and academic information providers have established a new portal for scientific literature. Designed as a central access gateway, vascoda represents the sum of the German information services that have been established with public funding [German National Library of Science and Technology: +49 (0) 511 762-3485; www.vascoda.de].

Legal

Context Limited has added Electronic Irish Reports and Digests, also available as a CD-ROM, to Justis.com, its online legal research service. The Irish Reports contains the full text of published cases dating back to 1919, longer than any other electronic series of Irish case reports. Covering decisions of the superior courts of Ireland, the reports are compiled by practising barristers and cited authoritatively in Irish courts and tribunals. The Irish Digests provides a summary, including catchwords and headnotes, of each case reported in The Irish Reports, Northern Ireland Reports, Irish Law Reports Monthly, Irish Law Times Reports, Irish Jurist Reports, and Irish Law Journal [+44 (0) 20 7267 8989; www.context.co.uk].

ProLaw Software, a division of West, has announced Exchange-free Microsoft Outlook integration within ProLaw Ready, its small-firm targeted practice management suite. West km 2.0 is now the first knowledge management system in any industry to fully automate the analyzing and indexing of documents to a universally accepted classification system, substantially improving the accuracy of research retrieval. Documents can be indexed consistently to the West Key Number System [215/386-0100; www.thomson.com].

Online Services

Factiva has upgraded its customers to Factiva products and permanently switched off its legacy product lines, including Dow Jones Interactive (DJI), Reuters Business Briefing (RBB), and other related products. Factiva has also completed a content agreement with Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH, providing access to the highly regarded daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), as well as the Sunday edition Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. Over 350 editors and one of the largest networks of correspondents provide exclusive content to 1 million daily readers in 150 countries [609/627-2342; www.factiva.com].

LexisNexis has entered into an agreement to acquire the public-records businesses of Dolan Media Company, a Minneapolis-based provider of electronic public-records information, including bankruptcies, civil judgments, federal and state tax liens, and eviction notices. The acquisition deepens the LexisNexis risk management brand in areas of fraud, ID theft, and homeland security. The Dolan business will become part of the LexisNexis Corporate and Federal Markets division [LexisNexis: 937/865-8838; www.lexisnexis.com; DolanMedia: 612-317-9420; www.dolanmedia.com].

Biomedical

A landmark deal announced by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a joint committee of the U.K. further and higher education funding bodies, and open access publisher BioMed Central places the U.K. at the forefront of the drive to make scientific research freely available on the Internet. More than 80,000 biology and medical researchers working at U.K. universities can now share their research findings freely with fellow researchers, funding bodies, students, journalists, and the general public worldwide. With just 1 percent of the world’s population, Britain funds 4.5 percent of all scientific research and produces 8.5 percent of the research articles that are published worldwide [JISC: +44 (0) 20 7848 2935; www.jisc.ac.uk; BioMed: +44 (0)20 7631 9988; www.biomedcentral.com].

CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) and BioOne are partnering to create a bibliographic database indexing research papers in the journals available through BioOne’s full-text service. CSA is also functioning as BioOne’s exclusive distribution agent for all regions outside the U.S. and Canada [CSA: 301/961-6700; www.csa.com; BioOne: 972/851-8000; www.bioone.org].

Current Drugs has announced the launch of the Strategic Drugs database (SDdb), a business analysis and planning solution for strategists in the international bio-pharmaceutical industries. SDdb provides comprehensive and strategic information available on drugs in development and on the market. Leveraging additional Thomson information sources, including Thomson Financial and Micromedex, it merges scientific and clinical information with marketplace and financial information in order to provide a complete and holistic view of the market available [215/386-0100; www.thomson.com].

Search Engines

Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) acquired AltaVista’s enterprise search business, including more than 200 customers, from Overture Services, Inc. Overture gained the enterprise search business as part of its acquisition of AltaVista. FAST’s acquisition of AltaVista’s enterprise search business allows FAST to provide AltaVista’s customers with uninterrupted support and maintenance on their current platform and an opportunity to migrate to FAST Data Search, FAST’s suite of enterprise search and real-time filter solutions [781/304-2495; www.fastsearch.com].

InfoSpace announced that ABCNews.com will be the first to launch a private-label version of the Dogpile Toolbar, a free browser plug-in that searches the Web using the Dogpile metasearch engine [425/201-8946; www.dogpile.com].

Sirsi is enhancing the search and retrieval capabilities of its Hyperion Digital Media Archive by integrating the product with Convera’s RetrievalWare technology. As a result, Hyperion becomes the first digital media archive product in the library market to offer users the ability to perform full-text searches in multiple languages across multiple data types. The Hyperion Digital Media Archive system provides librarians with an easy way to store, organize, and access their library or archive’s nonbook holdings. Users can access and view full digital images of a collection, such as documents, maps, photographs, and multimedia clips, via the Internet [Sirsi: 877/401-9534; www.sirsi.com; Convera: 800/788-7758; www.convera.com].