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Vol. 20 No. 5 — May 2003

Analyst Reports on Search Market Revenues

U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray announced that, over the past 18 months, the prominence of search as the most effective online marketing tool has risen dramatically, while ways to monetize the search age have been expanding as well.

Safa Rashtchy, senior analyst for U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, has written an in-depth research report on the online searchindustry titled "The Golden Search." Rashtchy says that the industry represents a major growth market, which he expects will reach nearly $7 billion in worldwide revenues by 2007, growing at a compounded annual rate of 35 percent. He believes that the key driver of growth is "the increased popularity of search as the most efficient way to find products and information, and simultaneously, the rise of search as the best way for advertisers to find and acquire customers."

To receive a copy of"The Golden Search," contact Dana Wade at dwade@pjc.com or 415/277-1556.

Source: U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, Minneapolis, 612/303-6000; http://www.piperjaffray.com.

NISO Announces Two Initiatives

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has announced an initiative to develop guidelines and standards for the metasearching environment. Across-section of content providers agreed that metasearching—also referred to as cross-database searching, parallel searching, broadcast searching, and federated searching—is a high growth area with many unresolved issues. The NISO Initiative will identify and address these issues while implementations are still in their early stages. Details are available at
http://www.niso.org/committees/MetaSearch-info.html.

NISO also announced a new initiative to revise the leading standard for thesaurus construction, Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri (ANSI/NISO Z39.19). News on this activity is featured at http://www.niso.org/committees/MT-info.html.

Source: NISO, Bethesda, MD, 301/654-2512; http://www.niso.org.

GPO Announces Major Reorganization Plan

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has announced a major reorganization plan to streamline management and bring the agency in line with current business practices.

The plan was created through a participative process involving GPO's 39 senior managers, who considered and debated a wide range of options.Among other things, the reorganization formalizes a model that's widely used in industry, with the Public Printer as a CEO who focuses on organizational policy and long-range planning, while the Deputy Public Printer serves as chief operating officer focusing on the day-to-day operations of the business.

The plan also significantly reduces the number of organizations reporting to the Public Printer and regroups the organizational elements for customer service, printing, and printing procurement.

Source: U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 202/512-1991; http://www.gpo.gov.

Thomson to Acquire Elite Information Group

Thomson Corp. has announced that it will acquire Elite Information Group, Inc., a provider of integrated practice and financial management applications for legal and professional services markets.

Under the terms of the agreement, a newly formed Thomson subsidiary will make a cash tender offer for all of the outstanding shares of Elite common stock, at a price of $14 per share, or approximately $122 million. The Elite board of directors has unanimously approved the agreement, and the transition is expected to close in the second quarter.

Elite will join West, a provider of integrated information solutions to legal professionals in the U.S., as part of the Thomson Legal & Regulatory market group. Elite's management team, led by chairman and CEO Christopher K. Poole, will continue to lead the business from the company's Los Angeles headquarters.

Source: Thomson Corp., Stamford, CT, 203/969-8700; http://www.thomson.com.

Wiley, The Cochrane Collaboration Form Publishing Partnership

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and The Cochrane Collaboration have announced an agreement that names Wiley as the new partner for The Cochrane Collaboration's publishing activities.

The Cochrane Collaboration encompasses an established network of 50 research groups worldwide that cover a range of medical specialties, through which the organization designs, creates, and continually updates The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. By providing up-to-date structured reviews of research studies, The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews helps healthcare professionals and others to evaluate and access the relevant information needed to make well-informed, evidence-based decisions.

Wiley will deliver The Cochrane Library through Wiley InterScience, the company's online publishing platform for professionals in the sciences, technology, and medicine. Wiley will also continue to make the product available on CD-ROM.

Source: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, U.K., 011-44-1243-779777; http://www.wiley.com.

TDNet Teams Up with Harrassowitz

TDNet, Inc., a supplier of electronic resource management solutions, and Harrassowitz, a periodicals subscription agent, will collaborate to provide complete and consolidated access to electronic content for libraries in the U.S. and Canada. The partnership began in April.

Through this agreement, Harrassowitz will act as an agent to supply TDNet services in the U.S. and Canada, making it possible for libraries to manage their electronic resources through one source. In addition, subscription information from e-journals purchased through Harrassowitz will automatically be included in a library's TDNet services.

As a result, libraries will gain consolidated access to all of the e-journals that they're licensed to use, including their individual subscriptions supplied by Harrassowitz as well as those licensed via aggregator or gateway systems. TDNet provides complete e-content management services, such as A-to-Z title lists, searchable tables of contents, links to full text, TOC alerts, usage statistics, and MARC cataloging data.

Source: TDNet, Inc., West Chester, PA, 610/738-0280; http://www.tdnet.com and Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, Germany, 011-49-611-530-200; http://www.harrassowitz.com.

Jupiter Research Makes Content Forecast

Jupiter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corp., announced that consumer spending on paid content will grow from $1.6 billion in 2002 to $2 billion in 2003. However, online advertising remains the best opportunity for most online media businesses, according to the announcement.

According to the report, "Content Revenue Streams: Market Opportunity and Revenue Diversification," paid content will continue to grow at an annual rate of over 20 percent until 2007, when it will reach $5.4 billion. Syndication revenues for consumer content will grow from a very small base in 2003 to $1.4 billion in 2007, but that revenue stream will not reach its full potential without industry consolidation. At the same time, online advertising spending will reach nearly $14 billion in 2007, up from $6.2 billion in 2003.

The complete findings of this report are available to Jupiter Research clients online. For more information, contact Kieran Kelly at researchsales@jupitermedia.com or call 800/481-1212.

Source: Jupitermedia Corp., Darien, CT, 203/662-2800; http://www.jupitermedia.com.

Eliyon Expands into Canada

Eliyon Technologies announced that increasing customer demand has prompted it to incorporate information taken from Canadian Web sites into its database of business personnel profiles.

Eliyon's database already contains information on more than 13 million business professionals in the U.S., with more than 450,000 new executive profiles added monthly. The company has begun accessing some 125,000 Web sites with .ca suffixes.

Eliyon's technology continually scans in excess of7 million individual Web sites, as well as all major press release and electronic news services, SEC filings, and other online sources. From this material, Eliyon automatically extracts biographical and other data from disparate published sources, reassembling it all into single, easy-to-read, and detailed profiles. Data found on executives already in Eliyon's database automatically updates and supplements existing profiles. Additional individual profiles are created and included at an average rate of 15,000 per day as new professionals are identified.

Source: Eliyon Technologies, Cambridge, MA, 617/588-7505; http://www.eliyon.com.

FIND/SVP, Strategic Creativity Corp. Form Joint Venture

FIND/SVP, Inc., a provider of business advisory, research, and consultancy services, and Strategic Creativity Corp., a consulting and innovation services company, announced the formation of The Center for Rapid Innovation, a joint venture to help companies quickly identify and navigate strategic business options for accelerating growth.

The Center for Rapid Innovation's mission is to assist companies in improving business results across areas of significance by identifying and creating breakthrough solutions for achieving competitive advantage and market leadership; building smarter, results-driven teams; and providing the ongoing business intelligence and processes to navigate issues, select alternatives, and quickly create results.

FIND/SVP, Inc. is a knowledge services company that offers a full suite of custom business intelligence, advisory, and consulting solutions to address clients' critical business issues. The company helps executives enhance their business performance and profit from opportunities through targeted research and advisory work, providing its nearly 2,000 member clients with a competitive business advantage.

Source: FIND/SVP, Inc., New York, 212/645-4500; http://www.findsvp.com.

FindLaw to Provide Belo Interactive with Content

FindLaw announced an agreement to provide a comprehensive collection of legal content and resources to Belo Interactive, the Internet subsidiary of Belo.

Under the agreement, FindLaw will supply Belo Interactive consumers with a complete online resource for personal and business legal topics, including employment law, estate planning, family law, intellectual property, and real estate law.

FindLaw is the most visited legal Web site, according to the announcement. Belo Interactive's Web sites KING5.com, affiliated with KING 5 TV in Seattle, and NWCN.com, which is affiliated with North West Cable News, were the first to introduce the new FindLaw service to users.

Source: FindLaw, Mountain View, CA, 650/210-1900; http://www.findlaw.com.

CrossRef Signs More Than 200 Members

CrossRef, a publisher collaborative that enables researchers to navigate online content via DOI-based citation links, announced that it has surpassed the 200-member mark—an increase of 100 publishers in a little more than a year. In addition, several hundred thousand non-journal DOIs, including books and conference proceedings, have been integrated into its extensive linking network. With these new sources, the CrossRef system now covers over 7,600 journals and books, and 7.5 million individual content items.

Unlike URLs, which become obsolete when an online entity changes location, the DOI provides a permanent name associated with an object's location in a directory that can be easily updated. According to the announcement, most libraries today are implementing local link servers and recognize that DOIs enhance their linking capabilities.

Source: CrossRef, Lynnfield, MA, 781/295-0072; http://www.crossref.org.

ATLA to Preserve African-American Religious Serials

The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) has announced an initiative to preserve more than 152 journalspublished between 1850 and 1950 that are representative of African-American religious experiences.

With more than $265,300 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, ATLA will ensure access to more than 152 endangered journals (approximately 1,520 volumes) exploring the African-American church through preservation microfilming and the creation and dissemination of bibliographic records of these journal titles.

Titles will be provided by 21 ATLA member libraries and 53 non-ATLA libraries, many holding just one of the titles included in the project.

Source: American Theological Library Association, Chicago, 312/454-5100; http://www.atla.com.

Imark Communications Launches New Conference

Imark Communications has announced the launch of the Content Management Europe conference and exhibition.

Content Management Europe will take place in London Dec. 2­4, 2003, at Olympia's Grand Hall. It will run within Online Information, the world's largest event for information content, management, and delivery.

Content Management Europe will consist of an exhibition, a VIP conference designed for senior business sponsors and focusing on the business benefits of content management, plus an educational program of seminars and master classes that focus on selecting and implementing content management solutions.

"Recent research has shown that content management is right at the top of the corporate agenda," said Katherine Allen, business development director at Imark Communications. "Content Management Europe will demonstrate the significant business benefits to be gained by creating and reusing content efficiently, and by effectively integrating internal and external content to support decision-making and business processes."

For more information about Content Management Europe, check http://www.cme-expo.co.uk.

Source: Imark Communications, Middlesex, U.K., 011-44-1932-730700; http://www.imark.co.uk.

Nstein Technologies Announces Agreement

Nstein Technologies, Inc., a provider of software applications for managing unstructured data on the Internet and enterprise networks, announced a partnership agreement with IXIASOFT, a provider of XML content servers. This first agreement is a direct result of Nstein's global enterprise strategy, which was announced in March.

The IXIASOFT partnership was sparked by the high-growth demand of the European publishing market to have a complete XML solution that fully enables archiving and precise retrieval functionalities. According to the announcement, the agreement now allows IXIASOFT to offer automated categorization as an added feature to TEXTML and provides a lucrative sales and marketing channel for Nstein.

Source: Nstein Technologies, Inc., Montreal, 514/908-5406; http://www.nstein.com.

West Acquires Andrews Publications

West, a Thomson business, has announced that it has acquired Andrews Publications from Haights Cross Communications. Located near Philadelphia, Andrews is a 30-year-old publisher of litigation reporters, newsletters, special reports, and online services dedicated to assisting attorneys, paralegals, law librarians, and executives track important developments nationwide in specific areas of litigation. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

According to the announcement, the acquisition will support West's strategy to provide litigators with the most authoritative and comprehensive information and solutions to support their practice. This strategy was first announced in February with the launch of Westlaw Litigator, a collection of Westlaw resources that enables litigators to evaluate and prepare cases for trial. The acquisition of Andrews allows West to develop even more robust current-awareness offerings to help litigators keep informed on important litigation developments.

West will maintain Andrews' office in Wayne, Pa.

Source: West, Eagan, MN, 651/687-7000; http://www.westgroup.com.

RILM Now Available on IDS

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) has announced that RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, published by Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), is now available via CSA's Internet Database Service (IDS).

According to the announcement, RILM covers all areas of music research, including interdisciplinary studies of music in its relation to various other fields. All types of media—such as books, periodicals, articles in collections, and electronic media—are abstracted and indexed in RILM. The database now contains more than a quarter-million records, with coverage dating to 1967; it continues to grow by more than 20,000 references a year.

Established in 1966 under the joint sponsorship of the International Musicological Society and the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and Documentation Centers, RILM was the pilot project of the interdisciplinary Bibliographic Center, planned by the American Council of Learned Societies. RILM's Commission Internationale Mixteis composed of distinguished scholars and librarians who represent RILM's sponsoring societies.

Source: Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Bethesda, MD, 301/961-6700; http://www.csa.com.

Vendors Announce Compliance with COUNTER Code of Practice

COUNTER announced that the online usage reports that Blackwell Publishing, ISI, and Oxford University Press (OUP) supply to customers now comply with release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice. All three companies have signed formal declarations of compliance. The list of usage reports covered by each publisher can be found at http://www.projectcounter.org.

Martin Richardson, publishing director of Oxford University Press Journals, said: "As a pioneer of the COUNTER initiative, OUP is proud and delighted to be one of the first publishers to make COUNTER-compliant usage statistics available for its online journals. The COUNTER initiative fits well with our goal of providing the library community with the functionality and feedback they tell us they need, and we look forward to supporting the continuing development of the COUNTER Code of Practice over the coming years."

As of this month, a definitive list of COUNTER-compliant vendors will be maintained on the COUNTER Web site. Only vendors and usage reports included on this list should be regarded as being COUNTER-compliant.

Source: COUNTER, Edinburgh, U.K.; Fax: 011-44-131-558-8478; http://www.projectcounter.org.