Press Releases & News

CIG Makes Equity Investment in LibraryThing

LibraryThing's product to be exclusively distributed to libraries worldwide by Bowker and ProQuest

Bethesda, Maryland - January 22, 2009 - Cambridge Information Group (CIG), a privately held investment firm and parent company to Bowker (www.bowker.com) and ProQuest (www.proquest.com), has made an equity investment in LibraryThing, an emerging provider of online book cataloging services and solutions.

Under the terms of agreement, CIG has purchased a minority stake in LibraryThing and has designated Bowker as the exclusive worldwide distributor for the library marketplace of LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL), LibraryThing's flagship library product. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The addition of LTFL to Bowker and ProQuest's growing suite of offerings, including AquaBrowser Library(r), demonstrates CIG's continued commitment to helping librarians and their patrons embrace Web 2.0 technologies to enhance and improve the efficacy of their book search and discovery efforts.

LibraryThing is an online service and social network to help library patrons and booklovers to easily catalog their books. The LTFL product enriches library online catalogs with the power and fun of Web 2.0. With LTFL added to a library catalog, patrons can browse, search and engage in a new and powerful way. LTFL is made up of the Catalog Enhancements, which includes tags, recommendations and other editions and translations, and the Reviews Enhancement, which places 250,000 reviews into library catalogs and lets patrons review books as well. Bowker will make available LTFL as a service level option within its Syndetics Solutions(tm) OPAC enrichment offerings.

"LibraryThing has successfully developed an online service that meets the needs of the 21st century library system," said Andy Snyder, president of CIG and chairman of both Bowker and ProQuest.

"By integrating LibraryThing into Bowker and ProQuest's suite of information services offerings, we will continue to expand our value proposition to the changing global library marketplace."

"CIG is a highly regarded firm that has shown a serious commitment to the library community through its willingness to invest in the development of new resources and solutions that meet the changing needs of libraries in the U.S. and abroad," said Tim Spalding, founder of LibraryThing. "We're delighted to partner with Bowker and ProQuest and look forward to working closely with their respective management teams in the library services marketplace."

Founded in 1872, Bowker is the global leader in bibliographic information management solutions and services for libraries, publishers and retailers worldwide. With corporate roots that trace back to 1938, ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies for libraries of all types and sizes. Together, Bowker and ProQuest deliver information services and solutions to tens of thousands of libraries worldwide.

About CIG

Cambridge Information Group (CIG) is an investment firm primarily focused on education, research and information services companies.

Founded in 1971, CIG continues under the same family stewardship today, with a focus on building companies for long-term success. Headquartered in New York, NY and Bethesda, Maryland, CIG's operating companies employ more than 2,100 people in offices around the world. For more information, please go to www.cigcompanies.com .

Duke University Press to Archive e-Books with Portico

Duke University Press will be archiving electronic books from the e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection with Portico in a long-term strategy to preserve electronic scholarly content. Duke University Press will be the second publisher, after Elsevier, to archive its entire collection of e-books with Portico.

"Libraries increasingly expect publishers to have established reliable preservation arrangements for e-books in much the same way that they have for e-journals," comments Eileen Fenton, Portico's executive director. "We are pleased to work with our colleagues at Duke University Press to respond to this need."

Steve Cohn, director of Duke University Press, adds, "With the shift to electronic publishing, the preservation of scholarly work has legitimately been of increasing concern to libraries. Portico enables us to allay those concerns by providing dependable solutions that assure continuous and perpetual access to archived electronic content. We are very pleased to partner with Portico for the e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection."

The e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection was launched in 2008 and provides online access to scholarly books published by Duke University Press in the humanities and social sciences. The collection is hosted on the ebrary(r) platform, which allows an unlimited number of simultaneous users at a subscribing institution to access content and use ebrary's searching, navigating, archiving, and other research tools.

About Portico

Portico was launched in 2005 with support from JSTOR, Ithaka, the Library of Congress, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Portico's mission is to preserve scholarly literature published in electronic form and to ensure that it remains accessible to future generations of scholars, researchers, and students. In pursuit of this mission, Portico operates a secure, permanent archive of electronic scholarly journals and books.

About Duke University Press

Duke University Press publishes approximately 120 books annually and more than 35 periodicals in a wide range of disciplines within the humanities and sciences. For more information about the e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection and the Press's other electronic collections, please visit dukeupress.edu/library.

Digital Images for Education: Community Call

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and JISC Collections invite proposals from the academic sector and publicly-funded institutions, with a goal of life long learning, to provide still and moving images to support education across five broad subject areas:

• History (UK, European and world history)
• Social Sciences (including politics, economics, education and environment)
• Science, Engineering and Technology
• Art and Creative Industries (including images of buildings and works of art)
• Geography (emphasising exploration and the changing world)

The tender will require image rights to be granted for perpetual use within education and bidders will be required to provide metadata that complies with the project criteria. Training sessions in creating metadata will be provided for successful bidders.

Total funding of £750,000 (including VAT) is available for this project . This funding can be used to compile metadata, but not to digitise content.

The deadline for receipt of tenders is 13:00 on Thursday 19 February 2009 .
The successful bidders will be announced by 27 March 2009 .
The deadline for delivery of images and film, inclusive of metadata, is 15 December 2009 .

The full version of this call is available at http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/media/documents/jisc_collections/digital%20images
%20for%20education%20call%20january%202009.doc and further details about the call, and a list of questions and answers on the bidding process can be found at http://www.jisc-
collections.ac.uk/projects_and_reports/digi_ed .

Emerald launches eBook series collections

United Kingdom, January 2009 – Emerald Group Publishing Limited is pleased to announce the launch of its eBook series collections; one focusing on Social Sciences and the other on Business, Management & Economics. These two collections both complement the management focus of existing Emerald journals and extend it into new subject areas such as Psychology and Sociology. In total, they represent over 500 volumes and feature leading international authors in each field covered. They are available now at ww2.emeraldinsight.com/ebookseries.

In addition, the Emerald Insight platform was overhauled to allow the seamless integration of these eBook series to the online journal collections. Users can browse both journal and book series content simultaneously, either alphabetically or by subject, and the type of content is clearly displayed.

Rebecca Marsh, Publishing Director at Emerald, comments: “eBook series represent some of the most important and cutting-edge research undertaken on a particular topic. Expert editors commission the leading authors in the field to write individual book chapters that reflect the latest thinking on a topic and help shape the research agenda for the future. Emerald is delighted to have been able to expand its portfolio to offer over 500 individual book volumes (as part of over 100 book series) online.”

 “A further exciting development”, she adds, “is the combination of the Emerald journal and book series content into one searchable database, allowing customers to download both journal article and book chapter content in a single search. This development reflects Emerald's continuing efforts to provide enriched content delivery and service enhancement for its customers and stakeholders.”

The Business, Management and Economics collection includes 65 series titles. Featuring titles from the highly regarded JAI Imprint , the collection offers access to a selection of 380 volumes covering subjects such as Strategy, Accounting and Finance, Organizational Studies and Economics.

The Social Sciences collection introduces titles in Sociology, Education and Psychology to the Emerald portfolio. It contains over 180 volumes across 37 series titles.

University of Oxford uses CONTENT to digitise rare First World War resource collections

Birmingham, UK, 08 December 2008: The 90th anniversary of the Armistice sees The University of Oxford launch the final element of two remarkable online First World War archives that provide open access to an unrivalled database of primary source material as part of the JISC Digitisation Programme.

The University of Oxford's 'First World War Poetry' and 'Great War' Digital Archives hold over 7,000 and 6,500 digital images respectively and both use OCLC's CONTENT software to store, manage and make available online, these fabulous collections of highly valued materials.

The 'First World War Poetry Archive' builds on the success of the University's existing Wilfred Owen archive, already referenced by teachers and researchers worldwide. Highlights of the collection include poems, maps, letters and diaries from various eminent 'front line' poets. The works of Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas, Robert Graves, Isaac Rosenberg, Vera Brittain and Roland Leighton appear alongside other contextual and teaching resources such as photographs, audio and film material.

In addition the University's 'Great War Archive' website brings together thousands of digital images of items submitted by members of the public. The majority of these images are of treasured family heirlooms which have never been on 'public display' until now.

Obviously due to the nature of these materials they were previously widely dispersed and in very fragile condition. They needed to be digitized in order to preserve, improve usability and widen access - delivering the collections digitally via the Web.

"We chose CONTENT as it best suited our requirements for customisation and the many ways in which data can be exported" explains Michael Loizou, Oxford University's Technical Lead.

Kate Lindsay, Oxford University's Project Leader expands "The Great War is arguably the most resonant period in modern British history. These memorabilia and poetry archives will provide easy access to an unrivalled collection of material which will be of use to anyone interested in getting closer to this world-changing conflict... One of the main reasons for building these archives with CONTENT is its versatility in the types of media that it can handle. Our requirements for these archives were very demanding. We invested time working with and customising CONTENT to meet these needs, that the system supports this is one of its main benefits."

Anyone interested in viewing these archives can do so by visiting www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/ .