NewsLink Issue 47/September 2003 =========================================================================== 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 https://www.infotoday.com or send a blank e-mail to join-infotoday@lists.infotoday.com. =========================================================================== SPONSOR INMAGIC =========================================================================== "Delivering Content that Makes a Difference", a FREE White Paper from Inmagic This paper, prepared by the Gilbane Report, describes the key components of an effective content management system and illustrates how companies benefit from improved decision making by providing users with access to well-organized, highly relevant and timely information. Download your white paper at https://www.infotoday.com/newslink/inmagic090203.htm =========================================================================== IN THIS ISSUE =========================================================================== 1) WELCOME 2) ITI SNAP POLL 3) NEWSLINK MONTHLY SPOTLIGHT 4) NEWSBREAKS 5) FEATURED ARTICLES 6) CONFERENCE CONNECTION 7) BOOKSHELF =========================================================================== 1) WELCOME =========================================================================== Welcome to the September 2003 issue of NewsLink, Information Today, Inc.'s FREE e-mail newsletter for library and information professionals. In this month's spotlight article, Paula Hane analyzes some of the new partnerships that are pairing traditional information providers with mainstream software and search engine companies like Microsoft and Google. Labor Day has come and gone, and that means it's time for the fall conference season. Check out our Conference Connection section for the latest dates and info for industry events. We're very excited about next weeks Web Search University event. The event, taking place at the Washington Hilton in D.C., will boast the best attendance the conference has had since 2001. We hope all those attending enjoy the conference. There is still time to register. Go to http://www.websearchu.com. You can also register on site at the Hilton on Sunday or Monday. 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 reply to newslink@infotoday.com. Best Wishes, Tom Hogan, Jr. =========================================================================== 2) ITI SNAP POLL =========================================================================== Have you implemented (or are you planning to implement) a blog within your organization? Please comment at https://www.infotoday.com/default.shtml. =========================================================================== 3) NEWSLINK MONTHLY SPOTLIGHT =========================================================================== Traditional Information Providers Branch Out By Paula J. Hane I've been noticing some interesting partnerships lately that are pairing traditional information providers with mainstream software companies and popular search engines. It looks like content could really become accessible to the masses-if they want it and will pay. Last spring, Barbara Quint reported on the beta 2 version of Microsoft Office 2003, which offers a new Research Task Pane that incorporates commercial data from third-party vendors (https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030317-1.shtml). The research feature allows users to highlight words or phrases in a document and search databases from within the program. Some research sources are built into Office, such as a dictionary, a thesaurus, translation services, MSN Search, MSN Money Stock Quotes, and Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia. Others are external services requiring an Internet connection. The initial vendor offerings announced at that time included Factiva's Publications Library, Gale's Company Profiles, and Alacritude's eLibrary. All the vendors partnering with Microsoft require payments, either subscriptions or pay-per-view. Users who want access to vendor services can subscribe online immediately. In July, LexisNexis announced that it would partner with Microsoft to add legal research to the 2003 release of Microsoft Office. Users selecting LexisNexis will be able to match their search term against the company's free database of summaries of court decisions found on its LexisONE legal portal. For a fee, users can then expand their research using the LexisNexis Shepard's Citation Service to determine the validity of a case. Future releases will let users access their full LexisNexis subscription. (Back in 1991, LexisNexis inaugurated its Smart Tag connections through Microsoft Office.) Recently, Microsoft announced that a number of healthcare industry software vendors, solution providers, and organizations have developed a range of solutions that take advantage of the 2003 release of Microsoft Office as a platform to increase productivity and improve quality of care. According to Microsoft, these solutions "automate paper-based processes, streamline workflow, and enable workers throughout the healthcare industry to focus on what they do best: healthcare." The technologies implemented in Office position it as a front end to work processes and integrated access to information. Ovid, an operating company of Wolters Kluwer Health, is integrating journal content from its Journals@Ovid database into various Microsoft Office 2003 applications. Healthcare professionals will have access to full-text content from more than 900 medical and health sciences journals. Clinicians or researchers can select an article and view the entire full text, if their institution is an Ovid subscriber, or they can purchase the material through Ovid's PayPerView feature. Bette Brunelle, executive vice president of Ovid, said, "Ovid is dedicated to finding new and innovative methods of integrating content into the enterprise environment that enhance end-user work flow and, by extension, the medical research process." Elsevier announced that it has developed a healthcare reference package compatible with the 2003 release of Microsoft Office. The package includes two of the company's medical reference titles: Dorland's Medical Dictionary and Mosby's Drug Consult. Some of the other healthcare companies that are partnering with Microsoft include Gold Standard Multimedia (which will offer its interactive drug information solution, Clinical Pharmacology, as an add-on product); Allscripts Healthcare Solutions; NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, Inc.; and MICROMEDEX, a division of the Thomson Corp. (which will offer its SaveNotes feature to customize CareNotes Patient Education documents). According to information on the Microsoft site, the Research Task Pane, which uses XML to provide access to data sources, can also search customized corporate data sources. For example, an organization can build a database of information about its products and services, and offer that information through an intranet to its employees. Employees can also incorporate additional third-party data services into their data sources. Microsoft, which had planned to launch Office 2003 in the summer, now says this has been delayed until Oct. 21, 2003, though Office will be pre-installed on some PCs by the end of this month. Google and IEEE Finally, Google, never out of the media spotlight for long, announced that researchers will be able to locate technical papers published by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) using the Google search engine. Google is currently crawling, or indexing, the abstract records for all online IEEE technical documents and standards available through the IEEE Xplore online delivery platform (http://www.ieee.org/ieeexplore). There are now nearly 1 million documents in the IEEE database. The project is expected to be completed this month, at which time Google users will see the linked content in their search results. Abstracts will be available free to everyone, and full-text documents are available to IEEE subscribers or through individual online purchase. Opportunities for Publishers? While it looks like publishers are lured by the wide distribution possibilities these mainstream partnerships can bring, one industry analyst has warned that there are as many dangers as there are opportunities. Check out John Blossom's recent commentary (http://www.shore.com/commentary/newsanal/items/20030825office.html), which cautions vendors to beware of neglecting other distribution channels that might provide them "better opportunities to increase the contextual value of their content." Paula J. Hane is Information Today, Inc.'s news bureau chief and editor of NewsBreaks. Her e-mail address is phane@infotoday.com. =========================================================================== 4) NEWSBREAKS =========================================================================== For a complete listing of previous NewsBreaks visit the Information Today, Inc. Web site at https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks. NewsBreaks for Tuesday, September 2, 2003 ------------------------ Thomson Acquires Techstreet By Barbara Quint Thomson Scientific and Healthcare has acquired a new operation in a move aimed at adding the standards and specifications literature to its document delivery services. Techstreet, Inc., founded in 1997, provides a digital full-text collection of over 500,000 technical information titles, including a master collection of some 150,000 industry standards and specifications. The Techstreet titles also include technical books, materials property data, and technical training material from over a thousand publishers, industry associations, and technical societies. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb030902-1.shtml ------------------------------------------ NewsBreaks Weekly News Digest ------------------------------------------ Elsevier and ACS Agree to Link Elsevier and two divisions of the American Chemical Society-Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) and Publications-announced that they have agreed to provide linking between their services by the end of 2003. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd030902.shtml ebrary Launches Library Center ebrary has launched a new Library Center to provide librarians and students with research materials, industry news, and information related to librarianship and related fields. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd030902.shtml ALA and Others Request Public Input on Homeland Security Procedures On Aug. 26, 2003, 75 organizations representing librarians, journalists, scientists, environmental groups, privacy advocates, and others, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge calling on the Department of Homeland Security to allow public input on procedures for safeguarding and sharing information between firefighters, police officers, public health researchers, and federal, state, and local governments. --> https://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/wnd030902.shtml =========================================================================== 5) FEATURED ARTICLES =========================================================================== For full-text coverage of the following articles please use the hotlinks provided. ------------------------ INFORMATION TODAY Impressions of IFLA By Dick Kaser Delegates from all over the world gathered to promote libraries and discuss the barriers to information access. --> https://www.infotoday.com/it/sep03/kaser3.shtml ------------------------ ONLINE Magazine O'Leary Online: E-Book Scenarios Updated By Mick O'Leary Almost 3 years ago in this column O'Leary made sweeping forecasts for the future of e-books. Some of them have occurred exactly as predicted. As for others...well, let's not dwell on the past. --> https://www.infotoday.com/online/sep03/OLeary.shtml ------------------------ COMPUTERS IN LIBRARIES Training Technology Trainers: Lessons from the River By Stephanie Rawlins Gerding Training can be a daunting undertaking-unless you are properly prepared and go in with the right attitude. This author explains that training other trainers is a lot like learning to raft, and how with planning and flexibility it can be just as exciting and rewarding. --> https://www.infotoday.com/cilmag/sep03/gerding.shtml ------------------------ SEARCHER Magazine Criminology Web Sites: An Annotated "Webliography" By Kenneth Fink Whether you're after information on "prosaic" crimes such as murder, rape, arson, and fraud, or more high-tech ones like chemical and biological warfare and nuclear attacks, Ken Fink's article will tell you where to go on the Web to get the facts, from government sites to university holdings and think tank offerings. --> https://www.infotoday.com/searcher/sep03/fink.shtml ------------------------ MULTIMEDIA SCHOOLS The Online Educator: Connecting the Classroom and the Library By Mike Terry and Diane Spear Take a look at how this Dallas, Texas, school uses Web-based library projects to build information-literacy skills. --> https://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/sep03/terry_spear.shtml ------------------------ LINK-UP DIGITAL All About Canada By Pauline Clark The Internet is a great source for facts and fun trivia about our Northern neighbor. --> https://www.infotoday.com/linkup/lud090103-clark.shtml =========================================================================== 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 ------------------------ KMWorld & Intranets Conferences & Exposition October 14-16, 2003, Santa Clara, California The exciting combination of KMWorld 2003 and Intranets 2003 offers attendees a powerful one-stop opportunity to explore the strategic potential of knowledge management and/or master the related technologies of intranets and portals. The complementary aspects of the fields of knowledge management and intranets are numerous, and the workshops, tracks, and sessions you'll find in both conferences combine to offer you a robust selection of expert speakers and relevant topics that will enhance your skills and maximize your on-the-job proficiency. REGISTER TODAY! http://www.kmworld.com/kmw03 CONFERENCE CALENDAR ------------------- September 8-9 WEBSEARCH UNIVERSITY, Washington, DC Contact: http://www.websearchu.com September 16-18 PC EXPO, New York, NY Contact: http://www.techxny.com September 2123 ASIDIC Fall 2003 Meeting, Montreal, Canada Contact: http://www.asidic.org October 14-16 KMWORLD & INTRANETS, Santa Clara, CA Contact: http://www.kmworld-intranets.com November 3-5 INTERNET LIBRARIAN, Monterey, CA Contact: https://www.infotoday.com/il2003 December 2-4 ONLINE INFORMATION 2003, London, UK Contact: http://www.online-information.co.uk For the complete Conference Calendar visit https://www.infotoday.com/calendar.shtml =========================================================================== 7) BOOKSHELF =========================================================================== Assessing Competitive Intelligence Software: A Guide to Evaluating CI Technology By France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer Foreword by Chun Wei Choo As commercial software products for Competitive Intelligence (CI) have begun to emerge and gain acceptance, potential users find themselves overly dependent on information supplied by the software makers. Reviews and surveys are published from time to time, but CI is not a "one-size-fits-all" process and the software that supports it must be highly customized. This new book is the first to propose a systematic method firms can use to evaluate CI software independently, allowing them to compare features, identify strengths and weaknesses, and invest in products that meet their unique needs. Authors Bouthillier and Shearer demonstrate their 32-step methodology through an evaluation of four of the most popular CI software packages. In addition, they identify important sources of information about CI software, map information needs to intelligence outcomes, and describe key analytical techniques. Order your copy today! https://books.infotoday.com/books/AssCompetitveSoft.shtml ------------------- September 2003/hardbound ISBN 1-57387-173-7 Price: $39.50 =========================================================================== SPONSOR INMAGIC =========================================================================== "Delivering Content that Makes a Difference", a FREE White Paper from Inmagic This paper, prepared by the Gilbane Report, describes the key components of an effective content management system and illustrates how companies benefit from improved decision making by providing users with access to well-organized, highly relevant and timely information. Download your white paper at https://www.infotoday.com/newslink/inmagic090203.htm =========================================================================== ©2003 Information Today, Inc. all rights reserved. This newsletter is published by Information Today, Inc. 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