Online
Joy Cadwallader, Aberystwyth University (Aberystwyth Online User Group)
Please send your submissions for the next edition to jrc@aber.ac.uk .
Aberystwyth University
http://www.aber.ac.uk/
Professor Chris Price, head of the Computer Science department at the University of Aberystwyth, has produced a new Welsh language phrase book “Learn Welsh” for use on the Apple iPhone 3GS. The app, available for 59p (€0.64) at the iTunes App Store, includes themed sections on greetings, food and drink, and travel and each phrase has been recorded to assist pronunciation. As a Welsh learner himself, Chris felt it was “high time that help of this kind was made available for those learning Welsh”. The app was launched at this summer's National Eisteddfod at Bala.
Google BookSearch
http://books.google.com/
The US Department of Justice has reported on their hearing into anti-trust issues in the settlement to the Google Book Search class-action lawsuit. They have recommended rejection of the settlement in its current form citing copyright issues and the “significant potential” for breaking anti-trust laws, and recommended further talks by interested parties to find an acceptable format. They also recognised “the value the settlement can provide by unlocking access to millions of books”. All eyes have been on the hearing in view of the potential for substantial and far-reaching consequences in the settlement for authors, publishers and readers and the future of libraries and scholarly research. The School of Information at the University of California , Berkeley held a conference on August 28 th examining issues from the settlement. including reader's privacy and access rights, and the quality of content and metadata. The Open Book Alliance, a diverse group opposed to the settlement including the National Writers Union, the Internet Archive, Amazon and Microsoft, have been communicating their opposition through a Web site, blog, RSS feed, Twitter feed and by letter to the hearing. Witnesses at the hearing included senior representatives from Google, the Authors Guild, Consumer Watchdog, the National Federation of the Blind, the US Copyright Office, Amazon and the University of Chicago Law School. US District Judge Denny Chin will hold a hearing on October 7 th to decide whether to approve the settlement.
Meanwhile Google has entered into a partnership with a British ebook store for the first time. The Interead site COOLERBOOKS.com now provides nearly half a million books outside the US (and over a million in the US ) for purchase or free access, including a Google API with Google Books out of copyright titles for viewing online and via the COOL-ER eReader. Interead's press release dubs them “the largest store in the world”, delivering titles in the broadest range of formats on the Web.
JISC
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
The Centre for Data Digitisation and Analysis at the School of Geography , Archaeology and Palaeoecology at Queen's University Belfast, in partnership with the JISC Digitisation Programme, has digitised important content from 1780 to the present day from the special collections at Queen's. The Digital Library of Core E-Resources on Ireland, as it is known, will contain at least 75 journals, 200 monographs and 2,500 manuscript pages, available free to UK and Irish FE and HE institutions, UK research councils and publicly funded schools, libraries, archives and record offices in the UK and Ireland. The content is delivered as the JSTOR Ireland Collection. Another JISC-funded digitisation project led by the University of Southampton has produced 19th Century British Pamphlets, which comprises more than 23,000 pamphlets from seven UK research collections, also available free to UK FE/HE, research councils etc through JSTOR. A further collection, Digital Images for Education, due in summer 2010, will consist of 500 hours of film and 56,000 photographs spanning 25 years of local, UK and world history, copyright-cleared for use in education.
Oxford University Press
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/
Martin Richardson, Managing Director of the Academic Journals Division at Oxford University Press has announced changes to their journal pricing model for 2010. The standard price will be for an e-only subscription; print-only will be available for 110%, and both print and electronic at 120% of the e-only price. Current customers will be able to re-subscribe to e-only at no extra cost and OUP will reduce the subscription cost in line with the new pricing model for current customers changing to e-only. The press release cites environmental concerns and recognises the current financial situation. As the UK Research Reserve announce their first 15 members and the processing of 14,000 metres of printed materials, the move towards e-only in HE looks to be gaining further momentum.
TechXtra
http://www.techxtra.ac.uk/
TechXtra has been augmented over the summer with new features and content, including full-text availability indicators on search matches, improved search speeds for Australian and Canadian research databases Arrow and CISTI and the addition of OneStep Jobs and OneStep Industry News services. They have also announced that the open-access academic publisher Hindawi is now cross-searchable in TechXtra, taking their tally of cross-searchable collections up to 32. TechXtra is a free engineering, maths and computing search service, provided by the Library and ICBL (Institute of Computer-based Learning) at Heriot-Watt University , currently comprising over four million items.
Thomson Reuters
http://thomsonreuters.com/
A $10 million lawsuit brought by Thomson Reuters against George Mason University 's Center for History and New Media has been thrown out by a Virginia circuit court judge. Thomson Reuters had alleged that the University had reverse-engineered parts of its EndNote bibliographic referencing application for use in developing their free referencing plug-in for Firefox called Zotero.
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