Embracing the enterprise and turning its back on searching the free Web, Northern Light will no longer provide its full search engine capabilities to just anyone. On the Web, you will still be able to search Special Collection, the fee-based portion of Northern Light's content, and recent news. Northern Light subscribers will have Web search access under the new program. According to CEO David Seuss, reached on his way to catch a flight to Chicago, ad sales for the public Web site have been flat. "We have a high quality audience," he said. "They are on a mission to solve a business problem. They don't click on ads." Although Seuss sees a "booming demand" for Northern Light services such as taxonomy building and content integration, he doesn't think the advertiser-supported business model is viable. "This is the second year in a row we've had enterprise subscription growth. That's why we need to focus our resources and investment on that part of the business." Seuss thinks the Special Collection is close to complete when it comes to English language periodicals, but plans to pursue content in other languages. This may well explain the announcement that Northern Light will be providing multiple language support for In-Q-Tel and its government clients, such as the CIA. (www.northernlight.com; 617/621-5990) 
 

ASK JEEVES ABOUT OCTOPUS

Search engine developer Ask Jeeves has acquired the technology assets of Octopus Inc. and plans to use the new products to extend the search capabilities of its enterprise software, JeevesOne, to let users find information stored in back-end databases. Not only does Octopus use natural language searching, it also ties into authentication services, so that only authorized people can see sensitive data. With this acquisition, Ask Jeeves accelerates its transition from a public Web search engine to an Application Service Provider (ASP) providing question and answer services for clients such as Nike, Ford Motor Company, and RadioShack. The only question to put to AskJeeves now is, "When will your acquisitions affect your share price in a positive manner?" (www.askjeeves.com).
 

ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO PUT ON NEWSEDGE

With so many people interested in reading The New York Times, NewsEdge should be pleased that it can now offer the paper electronically on a daily basis across its product lines. Content will come from New York Times Digital and will be full text. Archives will extend back 90 days. This addition of the New York Times material was doubtless facilitated by the fact that NewsEdge is now a Thomson company and Thomson negotiated a similar deal last year Dialog and DataStar. (www.newsedge.com; 718/229-3000)

Under an agreement with OCLC, Ingram Library Services is adding evaluative content and bibliographic records to WorldCat (OCLC Online Union Catalog). As part of the agreement, Ingram is supplying descriptive content to enhance WorldCat records in OCLC FirstSearch; providing catalog information for creating new bibliographic records in WorldCat for Print-on-Demand titles available through Ingram affiliate, Lightning Source; and providing approximately 3,000 cataloging records per month to be added to WorldCat for newly released titles Ingram sells to libraries. (OCLC: 614/764-6189; www.oclc.org;info@oclc.org; Ingram: www.ingrambookgroup.com)

The MLA Directory of Periodicals is now available at no additional charge to subscribers of the OCLC FirstSearch service's MLA International Bibliography database. The directory is updated every six months and provides a listing for many of the journals and series indexed by the MLA International Bibliography. The listings offer editorial and subscription information, and include indexes to editorial personnel, languages, sponsoring organizations, and subjects. (OCLC: 614/764-6189; www.oclc.org; info@oclc.org)

LexisNexis and Knight Ridder have formed an interactive-content alliance, under which Knight Ridder Digital is syndicating its content available to LexisNexis users, and LexisNexis is powering access to 17 Knight Ridder newspapers in 28 markets. LexisNexis customers now have access to the Knight Ridder publications, many with same-day or within a day of publication availability. (LexisNexis: www.lexisnexis.com; Knight Ridder: www.knightridder.com; www.knightridderdigital.com)

Factiva Learning Programs (Factiva, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company) include industry-leading etraining, online tutorials and product demos, Web-based seminars, reference material, and classroom training for corporate users. The programs come in several forms, and are intended to provide product-specific training customized according to user requirements. (646/742-3405; www.factiva.com)

The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) has designated Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) as the single point of online public access to government-wide federal procurement opportunities exceeding $25,000. As of October 1, 2001, the FAR requires agencies to use FedBizOpps to provide access to public notices of procurement actions over $25,000 currently required to be published in the Commerce Business Daily (CBD), plus associated solicitations and amendments. Effective January 4, 2002, the Department of Commerce ceased publication of the CBD through the U.S. Government Printing Office. Agencies are to now recognize FedBizOpps as the official source for all procurement information and notices to be published under 41 U.S.C416 (a) (2) (B) and the Small Business Act. (877/472-3779; fbo.support@gsa.gov)

Corbis, a photography and fine art image provider, has added a new search filter to its search engine to help users search Corbis' licensed content for images created for commercial or editorial use, or both. The service also now offers the Corbis Sygma Collection of news photos. This collection includes editorial pictures from the past 30 years of international news coverage, searchable in English and French. The collection also includes the Kipa collection—focusing on cinematic, television, productions, and people, plus sports images from the Tempsport collection. (800/260-0444; 425/641-4505; www.corbis.com)

Users searching the Internet Database Service (IDS) from Cambridge Scientific Abstracts can now link search results to full-text documents available through Project MUSE from Johns Hopkins University Press, PsycARTICLES from the American Psychological Association, and Ingenta. With these additions, IDS users can also link from search results to full-text articles from more than 7,500 publications available from other services such as BioOne, CatchWord, EBSCO Online, E*Subscribe, Highwire Press, IDEAL, Kluwer Online, Information Quest, LINK, OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online, ScienceDirect, and SwetsnetNavigator. (301/961-66700; www.csa.com)

FIZ Karlsruhe has added ADISNEWS (Adis Newsletters) to its STN Network, providing access to global biomedical and healthcare issues. ADISNEWS offers information on all aspects of developments in drugs and drug therapy from 1983 to the present. The database is produced by Adis International Ltd. It draws on the Inpharma, Reactions, and Pharmacoeconomics & Outcomes News newsletters, which monitor journals, meetings, conferences, and symposia. ADISNEWS records include bibliographic information, full text of reports, references to documents cited by the newsletters, indexing terms, chemical names, and CAS Registry Numbers. (+49-7247-808-555; www.stn-international.de)

TOXCENTER (Chemical Abstracts Service)—a new database of bibliographic toxicology information from pharmacological, biomedical, and chemical literature published worldwide—is now available STN International, STN on the Web, and STN Easy. Available information includes the toxicological, pharmacological, biomedical, and biochemical effects of drugs, chemicals, and foods, plus methodology, industrial hygiene, and legal issues and standards. Patents as well as scientific literature are covered, with data derived from CAplus, MEDLINE, BIOSIS, and IPA (International Pharmaceutical Abstracts). CAS Registry Numbers appear in each of the four file segments, providing links to additional records in other STN files. Over 2.2 million unique substances are represented. TOXCENTER will be updated weekly, and CAS is planning enhancements with data licensed from other sources. (614/447-3600; www.cas.org)

In keeping with efforts to add new content to its coverage of public and private companies worldwide, SkyMinder has announced new partnerships with ORT and Global Securities Information (GSI). GSI provides legal and financial securities information to law and accounting firms, investment banks, corporation, and the business press. It provides the entire feed from the EDGAR databases daily for user access. The SEC forms are indexed by company and are available for the 14,000 U.S. Public companies incorporated in the U.S. ORT (Reuters Group) offers credit reports on 3,2 million French companies, plus—through a concession from the RNCS—a comprehensive balance sheet database of all 750,000 of those filed by companies legally required to publish. Additional information includes financial analysis, shareholder information, and opinion from the banking sector. (813/636-0981; info@skyminder.com; www.Skyminder.com/gsi-ort-e.asp)

FT.com (Financial Times) has launched FT Pro as a personalized global news search and monitoring service for North American executives and corporations. It provides tailored news, commentary, and analysis, as well as information on customers, suppliers, partners, and competitors. Several multinational corporations, government agencies, and European associations have already registered with the service. North American customers now have unlimited access to FT Pro, with pricing based on an annual fee determined according to the number of company users. (212/641-6611; www.FT.com/FTpro/info)

After evaluating the Canadian Business and Current Affairs (CBCA) product family over the past year, Micromedia has instituted several changes and enhancements. Indexing of all regional newspapers was discontinued in January of this year. At the same time, all titles in the CBCA database were indexed. In 2001, 21 Canadian titles were added to the database, and during the first quarter of 2002 additional new titles will be added. (www.micromedia.on.ca)

Business Monitor International and Economist Intelligence Unit have signed agreements to have their content available through Gale Group's InfoTrac databases and online Resource Centers, increasing coverage in Gale's Business & Company Resource Center. These new agreements add 90 magazines, newsletters, and other publications to the thousands already available through Gale products. (248/699-4253; www.galegroup.com)

The NewsEdge Corporation's Editor's Picks daily news service will be featured on the Lycos Small Business destination of Terra Lycos. Lycos Small Business users will now receive news and information from more than 150 varied topics for small businesses. With Editor's Picks, NewsEdge editors review the news day and night, and sift through stories to select the most important information for small business owners. (NewsEdge: 781/229-3000; www.newsedge.com; Terra Lycos: www.terralycos.com)

Delphion and PATOLIS Corp., a spin-off of the Japan Patent Information Organization (JAPIO) and the first privatized company of a Japanese public organization, have announced an agreement under which PATOLIS will use Delphion's solutions to expand its online patent information service, PATOLIS-web. With Delphion's solutions, the PATOLIS Web site is being enhanced with ecommerce services, additional patent collections, and advanced research technologies, giving users the ability to better research, analyze, and explore all the patents impacting their global markets. (Delphion: 630/799-0630; www.delphion.com; PATOLIS: www.patolis.co.jp/e-index.html)

TRADEMARKSCAN Japan (The Dialog Corporation), the first Japanese trademark database designed for use by trademark professionals outside Japan, is now available for online searching and document retrieval through the Dialog service (File 669). The database is produced by Thomson & Thomson, and currently contains more than 2.5 million active and inactive Japanese trademark registrations and applications, updated monthly. Users can search TRADEMARKSCAN Japan without having to know Japanese. Entries are both translated and transliterated, displaying the trademark as filed plus the phonetics for the trademark. All records are displayed phonetically in Roman characters, regardless of their original character set, and non-Japanese trademarks are restored to their original Roman spelling. (800/3-DIALOG; 919/461-7354; www.dialog.com)

Five practice-area-specific sections are being added to lexisONE, LexisNexis' Web-based resource for solo and small firm attorneys. The new sections are Business Litigation & Bankruptcy; Criminal Law; Estates, Trust and Tax Law; Family Law; and Intellectual Property Law. Content for these sections will be derived from more than 2,500 LexisNexis domestic and international news sources. The new areas will be accessible from dropdown menus within the Breaking Legal News section of the site. (www.lexisnexis.com; www.lexisone.com)

Thomson Corp. is expanding into Latin America with its legal and regulatory business, and recently solidified its position in Brazil by buying the country's largest electronic publisher, Sintese, for an undisclosed amount. Sintese publishes summaries and full-text cases, legislation pieces, and doctrines on CD-ROM. It also produces more than 200 legal books. Thomson perceives Brazil's 20 million Internet users as a waiting market for Internet-based information services, and plans to quickly expand Sintese's customer base by developing more CD-ROM and Web-based products to be marketed throughout the country. (416/360-8700; www.thomson.com) 

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has improved organization and retrieval of the technical content in its ACM Portal. Response time with searches is reduced, and users can execute complex queries across both the fulltexts from the ACM Portal's Digital Library and bibliographic sources from books, journals, proceedings, and theses included in the Portal's ACM Guide. Users are also now able to retrieve documents in PDF (95% of the articles), HTML, Postscript, and other formats. Additional features includes distribution of queries evenly across multiple servers to prevent server overload, and a "fuzzy search" feature that helps users find content despite misspelled search terms. (www.acm.org)

Bibliographic and abstract information from Chemical Abstract Service's entire Chemical Abstracts (CA) collection back to 1907 is now available for searching through STN, SciFinder, and SciFinder Scholar. The CA And CAplus files now include 3.8 million records from CA issues prior to 1967, with the pre-1967 scientific literature including studies in fields other than chemistry. The project to add material from pre-1967 CA issues to CAS' online databases began in 1999. Users can now use STN or SciFinder services to search this literature via words in the abstract text and title, the publication title, author names, publication year and more. (614/447-3847; www.cas.org)

ProQuest Company's Information and Learning unit has acquired SoftLine Information, an online database producer for libraries and educational institutions. SoftLine's database are now available from ProQuest and offer more than 500 newspapers and magazines from ethnic, minority, native, gender, alternative, and independent press. Titles are organized into five specialized databases—Ethnic NewsWatch, Ethnic NewsWatch History, Alt-Press Watch, Gender Watch, and Diversity Your World. The databases are subscription-based, with Web-based delivery to library users. (800/521-0600; www.proquestcompany.com)

LexisNexis has formed an alliance with WhizBang! Labs, an information extraction products and services provider. LexisNexis will use WhizBang!'s Extraction Framework to deliver current information to LexisNexis Advertising Red Books and Directory of Corporate Affiliations (DCA) users. WhizBang! Labs' extraction technology integrates proprietary software products that automatically find, classify, and extract information from a variety of unstructured sources such as corporate intranets, extranets, Web pages, and document databases. The Framework combs these sources for information relevant to content within the Red Books and DCA databases. (LexisNexis: 301/951-4603; www.lexisnexis.com; www.redbooks.com; www.corporateaffiliations.com; WhizBang!: 801/319-8584; www.whizbang.com)

LexisNexis and DolphinSearch, Inc. have announced an alliance whereby LexisNexis will market DolphinSearch technology to its customers as a standalone knowledge-management solution and as an optional add-on component of the LexisNexis Portal. DolphinSearch has developed and patented a technology that reads text with human-like understanding by learning the meaning of words based on the context in which they are used. The technology has been incorporated into intelligent document retrieval tools for the legal industry. DolphinSearch enables all software applications used by a firm to share knowledge, so that each application need not be searched separately. DolphinSearch is said to know what all the documents are about, where they are located, and which are relevant to a current matter. (LexisNexis: 937/865-8844; www.lexisnexis.com; DolphinSearch: 805/585-2102; info@dolphinsearch.com; www.dolphinsearch.com)

Interactive consumer health information developer, A.D.A.M., Inc., has acquired Integrative Medicine Communications, Inc., a privately-held provider of science-based information on wellness and alternative medicine. Under terms of the transaction, A.D.A.M. will issue 470,000 shares of its common stock for the outstanding shares of Integrative Medicine. The company expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings in 2002. Integrative's core product, Access 2.0, is a peer-reviewed information database on conditions and treatment modalities as well as herbal, supplemental and conventional medicine remedies that provide a foundation for users for dialog with their healthcare providers. (http://investor.adam.com)

Access Innovations, Inc. has partnered with RedDot Solutions Corporation to offer its specialized Data Harmony software suite with RedDot's Web-templating interface and thus provide a tool for enterprise-wide content management. The tool will let users who may not be familiar with HTML, add, edit, and approve content quickly. RedDot's solution is browser-based and operates independently from a company's server. (Access Innovations: www.accessinn.com; RedDot: www.reddot.com)

The Dialog Corporation has appointed Chris Naylor Chief Financial Officer, where she will serve as Dialog's senior financial officer, managing all the company's financial activities worldwide. Prior to joining Dialog, Naylor was a Vice President for West Group.

The Dialog Corporation has also appointed Liz Blankson-Hemans to head the launch of the Quantum² professional development initiative for information professionals in Europe. Blankson-Hemans joins Dialog from Clifford Chance, a leading law practice, where she was Manager of the firm's Central Information Services division.

In conjunction with the launch of its Graduate Education Program, The Dialog Corporation has appointed library training specialists, Allison Evatt and Heidi G. Porth, to serve graduate library schools as field training consultants.

Meg Bellinger has been named Vice President of OCLC's newly-formed Digital & Preservation Resources division, taking on a broader role in addition to her current position as President of OCLC Preservation Resources. 

Online Inc. has promoted Michelle Manafy to Editor, EContent magazine. Manafy formerly served as Associate Editor of Online Inc.'s EMedia magazine, and succeeds Bill Mickey who is joining a private business venture.