Volume 8, Number 4
	April 2000

FEATURES

Electronic Books: To “E” or Not to “E”

Stephanie Ardito discusses whether the time has come for electronic books to have a leading role in book publishing, spotlighting the issues, including hardware and software, formatting, copyright, and current trends, as well as the major players involved. [Page 28]

 

Keeping the Web Garden Weeded: Managing the Elusive URL

How do you deal with suspect Web links? Wallace Koehler shares his maintenance strategies for pruning out links that go nowhere fast and clog up your Internet documentation. [Page 43]

 

COLUMNS

Searcher's Voice

In analyzing the current state of the information profession, bq looks at the “Good, Bad, and Indifferent,” acknowledging that what can be seen as professional deficiencies from one point of view can just as easily be recognized as changing tools for changing times from another viewpoint. [Page 6]

 

Internet Express

Calling them “halfway between a portal and a vertical subject search engine with an academic twist,” Irene McDermott looks at meta-indexes in the areas of the humanities, social sciences, government and statistics, economics and business, law, science and engineering, and medicine. [Page 10]

 

The Better Mousetrap

In her annual “That Was the Year That Was,” Nancy Lambert reviews the year 1999 in patent news, looking at changes from such sources as USPTO, Derwent, IFI/CLAIMS, MicroPatent, Questel-Orbit, and STN/CAS. [Page 20]

 

Tools of the Trade

Dave Rensberger actually has found a handful of useful utilities that can help you do a variety of functions, from covering your Web tracks and keeping passwords straight, to finding files, and hassle-free database management. [Page 40]

 

Emmerce

Lysbeth Chuck looks at the “Confusion, Glut, Overload, and Misinformation” abounding with the hunt for online shopping sites, taking a closer look at four price comparison sites: mySimon, bottomdollar.com, Shopper.CNET.com, and LYCOShop. [Page 46]

 

Web Wise Ways

Initial public offerings, or IPOs, have become a hot financial topic, especially with the “dot-com” explosion on the Internet. Amelia Kassel provides a thorough explanation of the IPO process, focusing on IPO databases, particularly EDGAR-Online’s IPO Express. [Page 53]

DEPARTMENTS

Correspondence [Page 67]

Contacts [Page 69]

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