Online
Joy Cadwallader, Aberystwyth University (Aberystwyth Online User Group).
Please Send Your Submissions for the next edition to jrc@aber.ac.uk
British Library
http://www.bl.uk/
To run alongside their Henry VIII: Man and Monarch exhibition (April 23 – September 6 2009) the British Library has provided an online exhibition. Content includes digital images of primary material, including the last letter from Thomas More to King Henry, Ann Boleyn’s Book of Hours, video clips of David Starkey (taken from the Channel 4 series Henry VIII: The mind of a tyrant) and podcasts of commentary on aspects of Henry’s life and times including music, maps and the Field of Cloth of Gold. Additional features include a blog, an online shop and learning materials for primary and secondary schools and FE.
Elsevier Excerpta Medica
http://www.excerptamedica.com/
The newspaper The Australian has reported that the pharmaceutical company Merck passed off a journal, “The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine”, as peer-reviewed when it was in fact an in-house publication. The report appeared in an article about an Australian lawsuit against Merck in relation to the arthritis drug Vioxx which they withdrew from the market in 2004. Elsevier’s Health Services division have released a statement admitting that their Australian office had published sponsored articles on behalf of drug companies that were made to look like journals between 2000 and 2005. The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine was published in Elsevier Excerpta Medica.
FIZ Karlsruhe
http://io-port.net/
FIZ Karlsruhe’s computer science portal io-port.net, launched three years ago, is now freely available. The portal contains over a million computer science publications from 1931 onwards, with abstracts and summaries available for most references, a new search interface and OpenURL linking. Records from a range of existing resources are searchable in a common format including LNCS (Springer), the IEEE Computer Society Digital Library, DBLP (University of Trier), LNI (Gesellschaft für Informatik), FIZ Karlsruhe’s own CompuScience and publications from a range of academic science publishers. FIZ Karlsruhe are a not-for-profit company (part of the Leibniz Association of German Research Institutes).
Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/
A group of authors led by Gail Knight Steinbeck has succeeded in extending by four months (to early September) the deadline before which authors must decide whether they wish to opt out of or object to the $125 million settlement to the Google Book Search class-action lawsuit. The authors made the case that the extra time was needed to examine the detail of the settlement, reached last year, which allows Google to scan and sell books online, delivers authors a complex system to grant digital rights to their work, and permits authors and publishers to claim 63% of online sales revenue. The suit originated from the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers in 2005, when they filed against Google’s book search project over copyright. The $125 million is payable by Google to set up a rights-holders’ registry and meet other legal costs. The group of authors also expressed reservations about the settlement itself, given its unprecedented scope and possible long-term consequences.
An earlier attempt to intervene in the settlement by the Internet Archive had failed. They had indicated concerns that the settlement would give Google a monopoly on out-of-print works with no known copyright holder.
The US Department of Justice has made enquiries to Google and to groups opposed to the settlement with regard to antitrust issues.
The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have also filed comments for consideration, highlighting widespread concern in the library community for library users’ privacy, equality of access to information and intellectual freedom under the new settlement. Further “amicus briefs” from concerned parties in academia and publishing are expected
JISC
http://fe.jiscebooksproject.org/
The JISC e-books for FE project will provide free access to 3000 ebooks in a range of subjects on ebrary for UK FE students, from May 2009 until September 20014. Titles for the project, which is funded by JISC and the Learning Skills Council, were chosen following consultation including a poll of FE colleges who will be able to choose more titles, with discounts, on top of the core set.
LexisNexis
http://www.lexisnexis.com/
As part of an investigation by the US Postal Inspection Service, LexisNexis have sent more than 30,000 letters notifying individuals of a large-scale ID theft by previous customers that took place between 2004 and 2007. Up to 300 credit cards were created from unauthorized access to customer data including names, dates of birth and social security numbers, which were subsequently used to make fraudulent transactions. The letter indicates that the USPIS did not permit LexisNexis to notify their customers at an earlier time in proceedings. LexisNexis’ parent company Reed Elsevier purchased ChoicePoint last year; a company who were fined millions of dollars by the Federal Trade Commission following a data breach in 2005 resulting in the unauthorized disclosure of the personal details of 160,000 customers.
OCLC WorldCat Local
http://www.oclc.org/worldcatlocal/
OCLC have announced a range of integrated library user services, starting with a free service to libraries subscribing to WorldCat on FirstSearch, allowing them to search and return results from their own library catalogue first, before listing those from WorldCat. The service, which will be available through WorldCat Local “Quick Start”, will also provide local branding, OpenURL linking from journal article records, local availability and reservations for a single catalogue, social networking and more. Some features are already available with others to be phased in. Press release information states that “most libraries” with Ex Libris Aleph (Z39.50), Ex Libris Voyager, SirsiDynix Horizon, SirsiDynix Unicorn and Symphony, Innovative Interfaces Millennium and INNOPAC will be compatible for the new services. In a further statement OCLC indicated their extensive plans to provide a range of integrated, web-based, library management services including, “Web-scale delivery and circulation, print and electronic acquisitions, and license management components to WorldCat Local”, beginning this year.
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