Thomson Takes TOC to New York Stock Exchange
On June 11, 2002, The Thomson Corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and will trade using the symbol TOC. The company anticipated raising $500 million from issuing new shares and an additional $1 billion from selling shares held by Woodbridge, Inc., the Thomson family holding company. Priced at $31.20, the 32 million shares represented 14.6 million new shares, and 17.4 million existing shares owned by Woodbridge. It ended the opening day down slightly at $30.98. However, the stock continued to decline, hitting 25 towards the end of July. Thomson intends to continue its Toronto Stock Exchange listing, but cancelled its two listings on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Although Thomson has long been listed in Canada, it has headquarters both in Toronto and Stamford, Connecticut. The NYSE listing will give the company greater visibility outside the information industry and, potentially, a higher valuation. Thomson intends to use funds raised from the offering to reduce debt rather than to make acquisitions [www.thomson.com].

Sage No Longer Spices Up EBSCO, ProQuest
Sage Publications intends to remove its content from EBSCOhost and ProQuest at the end of 2003, citing poor royalty revenues from those aggregators. Due to the 12-month embargo, this means content for 2002 will be available for another year. Cambridge Scientific Abstracts is picking up the slack, with a new joint product scheduled for launch in 2004. Concentrating on the subject areas of Communication Studies, Criminology, Sociology, and Politics/International Relations, Sage journals published on those topics will be available as full-text databases. Intriguingly, Sage journals will not be exclusive to Cambridge Scientific: The journals will remain on ingenta, Minerva, OCLC FirstSearch, divine/RoweCom, SwetsBlackwell/ SwetsNetNavigator, and Hans Huber [www.sagepub.co.uk].

LexisNexis Expands and Contracts Its Universe
The full Dun & Bradstreet global business information file has been added to nexis.com. Previously available only on classic LexisNexis, the D&B data includes its Business Information Report, Payment Analysis Report, Supplier Evaluation Report, Comprehensive Report, Business Background Report, and Dun's Financial Profiles. A new Sounds Like feature has been added to the lexis.com person locator database. Use the guided search form to find peoples' names when the exact spelling is unknown. As part of its continuing rebranding efforts, LexisNexis dropped the Universe name from products such as LexisNexis Academic Universe 10 other Universe products. The products will now be known simply as LexisNexis Academic, LexisNexis Environment, and so on [www.lexisnexis.com].
 

Biomedical

CLINLAW, an online database of clinical trials for all 50 states and the District of Columbia plus federal prisons, is a recent addition to Thomson Publishing Group Inc.'s FDA Library. The database, which covers all requirements users need to achieve compliance with both state and federal regulations, is updated whenever a state or the federal government changes requirements. Subscribers can customize database searches to any combinations of nine categories, the 50 United States, and the District of Columbia [800/677-3789; 202/739-9517; www.thomson.com; www.clinlaw.com].
 

Social Sciences & Humanities

A Metadata Framework to Support the Preservation of Digital Objects is a new report available on the OCLC Web site released by The Working Group on Preservation Metadata, an initiative jointly sponsored by OCLC and RLG. The working group based its activities on preservation metadata element sets developed by several institutions and organizations in the digital preservation community, plus the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model [614/764-6000; www.oclc.org/research/pmwg].
 

Business & Finance

Hoover's Company Capsules are now available free from SkyMinder. The free Capsules can be accessed via SkyMinder's Company function and are delivered in the SkyMinder Ultimate Report. Capsule information includes marketing data, general company information, sales and employees, and data for up to five executives and up to three competitors [877/586-0981; 813/636-0981; info@skyminder.com; www.skyminder.com].

Alacra Model (Alacra Inc.) is a Microsoft Excel add-in that facilitates retrieval, manipulation, and display of company, industry, and country-specific data. The tool was developed for financial and marketing analysts who need to regularly retrieve and analyze quantitative business information. Users can access content on a transaction basis, which helps companies track and bill expenses. Key applications include creation of tear sheets, comparable company analysis, and development of standard financial models [212/363-9620; www.alacra.com].

FluentMedia (Tribune Media Services) has added CMP Media LLC, Reed Business Information, Newsbytes, The Daily Deal, and PR Newswire to its industry news sources. FluentMedia delivers customized packages of news, commentary, and analysis to corporations for use on intranets, extranets, and public marketing sites. Content is drawn from newspapers, trade publications, and other sources [323/660-9004; www.tms.tribune.com].

MADCAD, the subscription-based Web site for architectural firm Compu.tecture, Inc., offers access to 16 building code books, including ICC 2000, BOCA, CSI, SBS, NFPA, with more planned. MADCAD is a database of intelligently linked building codes. Users may search through codes by keyword, book, or search engine. Codes are linked to referred sections and separate books are inter-linked [www.madcad.com].

The law firm Thelen Reid & Priest LLP has announced that its ConstructionWebLinks.com Web site, an online guide to construction, engineering, and architecture resources on the Internet, has drawn more than 1 million user sessions and more than 50 million hits. Thelen Reid & Priest LLP, which provides legal service to the construction industry, created and operates the site, which indexes, profiles, and links to more than 5,000 construction-related Web sites. Categories include Topics, Organizations, Tools, and Resources, and Business Bulletins providing weekly updates on related legal issues are also featured [www.thelenreid.com].

E-business Solutions and Telecom Solutions are two new Professional Services modules delivered through Current Analysis' CurrentCOMPETE product. The Professional Modules monitor significant activity on a day-to-day basis, analyzing competitors' services capabilities, positioning, and solution offerings. The E-business Solutions module covers competitors developing Internet-based solutions that create competitive advantage for business. The Telecom Solutions module examines professional services organizations that help service providers and large enterprises leverage their telecommunication infrastructures to support business objectives [703/788-3641; www.currentanalysis.com].
 

Peopleware

Wes Crews has been elected chief executive officer of Infotrieve by the company's board of directors. Former CEO, Joseph Bashoura, has assumed co-chairmanship of the board, with Peter Derycz, Infotrieve's founder and previous chairman. Crews came to Infotrieve in 2001 from Gale Group, where he served as chief operating officer.

Tony Saadat has been promoted from chief operating officer to chief executive officer at EOS International, where he will build on his extensive experience with high technology and relationships within the library communities.

Jack Blount has been named president and chief executive officer for epixtech, responsible for directing epixtech's strategic direction and day-to-day operations. Lana Porter, former president and CEO, has assumed the position of vice chairman of the epixtech board of directors.

AltaVista Company has appointed Fred Bullock senior vice president and chief marketing officer for its Internet division. The company has also appointed Jan Pedersen, Ph.D., chief scientist, responsible for spearheading the company's middle- and long-term product initiatives.

Three e-publishing sales professionals have joined Nstein's Global Sales team as sales directors—Sarah Brezniak, former business development manager for Semio Corporation; Stuart Recher, former channel marketing director at Smartlogic; and Douglas Wear, former enterprise sales manager for divine inc.

H.W. Wilson Company has appointed John O'Connor vice president, administration. O'Connor will hold executive management responsibility for the operation of the Office of Personnel Administration, Maintenance and Security. The company has also appointed Amy Rosenbaum senior manager, International Sales, where she will continue to manage exhibits.

The H.W. Wilson Foundation has elected William E. Stanton, Esq. president, succeeding William V. Joyce, who passed away June 1, 2002. Stanton and Joyce both served as vice presidents for the foundation.

Lou Eccleston has joined Thomson Financial as president, Sales And Trading Group, responsible for Thomson Financial's worldwide sales and trading business. Eccleston most recently served as vice president and general manager, Global Financial Services at Siebel Systems.
 

Portals & Intranets

YellowPen, Inc. has released a software platform designed to help online researchers capture information highlights, such as text and graphic fragments from Web pages, PDF files, Microsoft Office files, and more, that they encounter during searches, When a user drags a highlighted section to the YellowPen window, the content is stored securely on a YellowPen server. Users can edit content and formatting, create notebook taxonomies for organization, and search their collections via keywords or Boolean commands. All data can be centrally backed-up on the server and accessed from anywhere on the Internet. YellowPen also offers collaboration capabilities—such as a "team" or shared secure location to store findings and taxonomies—which include real-time notification and e-mail features [203/865-1001; info@yellowpen.com; www.yellowpen.com].

Missiontrek has released Cargatio Collaboration Centrale, a Windows-based extranet that lets research professionals organize and dispatch text, images, and documents of every type and publish in HTML. This research collaborative tool allows for sharing of information within an environment of security and control [888/781-0711; www.missiontrek.com].

OCLC Digital & Preservation Resources is offering the CONTENTdm Software Suite to help libraries develop online digital collections. CONTENTdm provides tools for all aspects of digital collection management and is able to handle nearly all media types. CONTENTdm supports collection items including photographs, slides, maps, yearbooks, transcribed diaries, rare books, audio and video clips, postcards, and any other accessible via a Web browser [614/764-6000; www.oclc.org; http://contentdm.com].

Inmagic, Inc. has released Inmagic Gatherer, a spider that crawls specified in-house servers and Web sites, and Inmagic Classifier, an out-of-box solution that provides classification technology based on semantic and syntactic knowledge. Inmagic Gatherer extracts content from major file formats, which can be loaded into an Inmagic DB/TextWorks knowledge base or IntelliMagic, or passed to Inmagic Classifier. Inmagic Classifier provides automated categorization and ensures that new information remains current and relevant. It is scaleable from files on a single PC to systems with 60 million pages. Inmagic partnered with TopicalNet, which develops automated content classification technology and business analytics solutions, to provide searching and categorization capabilities [800/229-8398; 781/938-4442; www.inmagic.com].

Nstein Technologies, Inc. has announced a software licensing sale for small- and medium-sized e-publishing enterprises to index documents using Nstein's Computer-Aided Indexing (CAI) tools. Under the sale, MEI has purchased a software license for Nstein's Nserver Suite and its Taxonomy Builder—a new product MEI will use to build custom taxonomies for its customer base. Taxonomy Builder is available to other third-party service providers in the e-publishing industry, as well as to Nstein's e-publishing, government, and corporate customers and prospects [514/908-5406; www.nstein.com].

Livelink Records Management 2.0 (Open Text Corporation) has been released with new features designed to improve management of physical records (such as paper files, books, images, and CDs) together with electronic records in Livelink. Physical records are searchable via a Web browser and can be included when users collaborate and need access to critical records. Users can circulate physical records and track the circulation throughout an organization, pinpointing location at any time, and holds can also be placed on specific records [519/888-7111; www.opentext.com/livelink].
 

Search Engines

A plain-English search engine is now available on the Lycos Finance Web site (Terra Lycos). The engine lets site users search for financial data and news using plain-English questions, instead of keywords. To provide this feature, Lycos used One Step search technology developed by IPhrase Technologies Inc., whose other customers include the online broker sites of Charles Schwab Corp. and TD Waterhouse Inc., along with the finance section of Yahoo! Inc. [www.lycos.com].

Forbes.com has selected Albert Group's Website Access solution to help Forbes.com users search and retrieve information. Website Access features full-text natural language search support, multilingual search capabilities, misspelling tolerance, and multidomain searches. It is based on the Albert Meaning Interpreter (AMI) Technology, comprised of interrelated components that perform query-, content-, and user-analysis to improve information retrieval. Users enter search queries in ordinary language and AMI works intuitively to infer the underlying meaning behind the search requests, analyzes queries, then creates an expert query that is fed into the system. AMI also learns new word relationships automatically and updates the knowledge base with this information [212/607-0575; www.albert.com].

Surfsecret 4.50 is a privacy Internet tool that allows users to surf the Internet then destroys the trail, preventing profiling by mechanical Web agents and others. Recovered hard disk space is displayed every time it gets cleaned, and Surfsecret cleans instant messenger activity immediately in the background. It also cleans tracks in important window locations, such as the document menu, run menu, find menu, and recycle bin. The tool works with Windows 95/98/NT/ME/2000/XP. It runs from the system tray, and Stealth Mode and Password Protection hide its operation [917/400-3483; www.Surfsecret.com].
 

Online Services

The Kiplinger Washington Editors has entered into licensing agreements with EBSCO Publishing, Factiva, Gale Group, LexisNexis, ProQuest, and the H.W. Wilson Company. Under terms of the agreements, the full text of Kiplinger's publications can be found in these aggregator systems, including online access to Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, The Kiplinger Letter, The Kiplinger Tax Letter, The Kiplinger Agriculture Letter, The Kiplinger California Letter, and Kiplinger Retirement Report. Through these partnerships, Kiplinger content will be distributed to public, academic, corporate, government, and military libraries worldwide [www.kiplinger.com].

Factiva will add the English-language Nikkei Report and The Nikkei Weekly, published by The Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc. Each business day, Nikkei Report translates more than 100 articles appearing in The Nihon Keizai Shimbun and three other Nikkei newspapers. The Nikkei Weekly is the only English-language economic journal published in Japan. It provides analyses of regional business news and reasons behind current events, plus week-by-week coverage of major business topics. Factiva has also added 18 Chinese language publications from Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Korea. Besides these new sources, Factiva offers more than 700 sources from the region, including more than 34 sources in simplified and traditional Chinese. Further extending its reach in Asia, Factiva has also introduced Chinese and Japanese-language interfaces for the Factiva Search Module and Factiva Track Module. The interfaces join those in English, French, German, and Russian to enhance language capabilities for enterprise-wide intranets and portals [646/627-2593; www.factiva.com].

Globeandmail.com and Micromedia ProQuest will market "Canada's Heritage From 1844," purported to be the most extensive newspaper archive in Canada with 1.4 million pages. The archive is a digitized full-image version of the complete works of The Globe and Mail newspaper since its inception as The Globe in 1844. It covers major Canadian historical events plus images, ads, classified, political cartoons, and birth and death notices from issues of Canada's National Newspaper dating back to the pre-confederation era. The archive will be available via subscription through Micromedia ProQuest Web portal and is targeted at educational and public library markets [800/387-2689; 416/815-4635; www.micromedia.ca; www.proquestcompany.com].

Dialog NewsRoom now boasts 7,000 sources, with more than 1,500 offering a 5-year archive and the remaining, 2-year archives. Dialog NewsRoom is a recently launched database for online searching and article retrieval available on the Dialog online service, DataStar, and Profound. Dialog has also announced a new pricing initiative for enterprise-wide subscriptions with a fixed monthly fee for unlimited use based on the number of organization users accessing the database [800/3-DIALOG; 919/462-8600; www.dialog.com].

Ask Jeeves has integrated Moreover Technologies; Public Feeds and Public Metabase onto its site, citing a 75 percent increase in news-related searches [www.askjeeves.com; www.moreover.com].

Morningstar.com Library Edition is a new financial online service exclusively for libraries based on Morningstar, Inc.'s investment Web site. The service offers stock and mutual fund analysis, screening tools, and portfolio-building features. Librarians may obtain the customized version through Morningstar's Library Services Unit, or sign up for a free 2-week trial at http://library.morningstar.com/trialEX01 [312/696-6241; www.morningstar.com].
 

Legal

Questel•Orbit (QO) has announced a licensing agreement with BizInt Solutions to create a customized version of BizInt Smart Charts for Patents. The BizInt Smart Charts—Questel•Orbit Edition generates tabular reports, combining data from QO's patent files into a single report containing charts, records, and images. Users can use the new service to create and customize tabular reports from QO's platforms, including QWEB and QPAT, conduct statistical analysis, and distribute reports via HTML and other formats. The new QO edition automatically builds tables, and users can manipulate data, apply chart templates, print reports, or export reports in several formats [703/556-7493; www.questel.orbit.com].

Mental Health Law Reports and Prison Law Reports have been added to Context Limited's Justis.com online legal research service. Both include the full text of cases from the U.K. High Court, Court of Appeal, and House of Lords, together with summary and appropriate commentary. Cases from the European Court of Human Rights are also covered. Context Limited has also recently completed the Justis UK Statutory Instruments database with the addition of all Statutory Instruments (SIs) issued before 1986. The archive database includes all modern style SIs published since 1949 plus the legislation published in Statutory Rules & Orders and Statutory Instruments Revised to December 31, 1948 by HMSO in 1950. The archive is available in CD-ROM and Web versions [+44 (0)20 7267 8989; www.context.co.uk; www.justis.com].
 

Sci-Tech

ACD/Name To Structure and ACD/Name are two new chemistry tools from Advanced Chemistry Development now available on ChemWeb.com. ACD/Name to Structure helps chemists generate chemical structure representations from textual-input names of general organic and biochemical compounds. ACD/Name can generate names for almost any organic compound according to IUPAC nomenclature rules. It can handle large and complex structures and supports stereochemical naming. It also lets users customize preferences for name generation [416-368-3435; www.chemweb.com — E-Mail: info@acdlabs.com].

STN Easy for Intranets (Chemical Abstracts Service) helps users create customized sites within their intranets that make the 85 STN Easy-accessible scientific databases directly available to users throughout their organizations. The service includes IP access, no set-up charges, no need for HTML programming or IT support, and a current-awareness alerts feature [614/447-3600; www.cas.org].

ASM International has made its 20-volume ASM Handbook available on a subscription basis using eMeta Corporation's eRights software, an enterprise software solution that manages user authentication and flexible subscription levels. eMeta also powers FT.com and NYTimes.com [800/804-0103, ext. 141; www.emeta.com].

ISI has formed a partnership with WebFeat, Inc., developers of the WebFeat Prism that helps users simultaneously search their entire collection of disparate databases through a single interface. Under the agreement, ISI will deliver an enhanced version of the WebFeat Prism that integrates with the ISI Web of Knowledge and lets users search information resources within the ISI Web of Knowledge while simultaneously searching other databases. Users can also access the Prism search through a library's home page using a variety of search criteria, including Boolean and date constraint. Search results can be organized and presented on the WebFeat Interface [800/336-4474; 215/386-0100; www.isinet.com; www.webfeat.org].

ISI Web of Knowledge will be expanded to include the International Food Information Service's Food Science and Technology Abstracts (FSTA) database. FSTA contains over 600,000 searchable entries, increased by over 20,000 abstracts annually, on the topics of food science, food technology, and food-related human nutrition [800/336-4474; 215/386-0100; www.isinet.com].

True Query Version 1.5 (True Query, Inc.) includes upgraded advanced search features plus several additional information sources. True Query provides content related to information technology and telecommunications issues. Its new advanced search feature guides users through more complex search functions, such as a fuzzy search using the Levenschtein Distance or Edit Distance algorithm, wildcard search, and searching within fields. New industry sources related to the publication collection include M2 Communications, Technology Research News, Info-Tech Research Group, and University Wire [650/522-8442; www.truequery.net].
 

Alliances & Deals

Inktomi has announced plans to acquire Quiver, Inc., after a year of offering users combined solutions with Inktomi as a Quiver technology and marketing partner. The partnership will continue to offer users Quiver's content categorization and taxonomy solutions coupled with Inktomi's information retrieval technology [info@quiver.com].

Progressive Technology Federal Systems, Inc. (PTFS) has formed an alliance with epixtech, Inc. to integrate PTFS' ArchivalWare solution with epixtech's iPac search engine. iPac is a Web-based tool that helps library patrons search Online Public Access Catalogs. ArchivalWare is a Web-based, full-text, search and retrieval system that helps organizations store, access, and manage all digital archives in one system. Integration of ArchivalWare expands iPac's search capability to full-text search of digital documents, permitting search queries using Boolean, concept, and pattern-matching methods. Search queries can be conducted against full-text digital documents, metadata fields, or a combination thereof [301/654-8088; www.ptfs.com].

Thomson Financial has integrated Eliyon Technologies' third-party executive and company databank resource into VentureXpertWeb, a database of global private equity intelligence. Eliyon users can now access more extensive biographical data on more executives and managers at U.S. venture firms and their portfolio companies. Profiles on more than 8 million people in more than 600,000 companies are available, offering information including education, employment history, and business associations. Also available are profiles of mid-level employees who have moved to other companies [Thomson Financial: 646/822-2000; www.thomsonfinancial.com; Eliyon: 617/588-7133].

On behalf of a Swedish consortium, Swets Blackwell recently negotiated an agreement with the Institute of Physics Publishing (IoPP) to distribute the IoPP's Axiom Web-based research service across eight organizations. Axiom features the INSPEC, Compendex, and Derwent World Patents Index databases [+31 252 435 584; www.swetsblackwell.com].