Featured Link

Featured Link: World Book Trade (e-books, awards, videos)

Sunday, December 31, 2006

SUNY Cortland professors launch online academic journals

"With the pressure on professors to publish and rejection rates of more than 70 percent at many academic journals, SUNY Cortland professors are turning to online publishing"

Saturday, December 30, 2006

OpenReader Consortium

OpenReader Consortium - "We are a nonprofit organization developing open digital publication standards. We serve publishers, consumers, e-book retailers, librarians, and other key stakeholders in socially responsible ways"

Search Wikia

Search Wikia – "...serves as a platform for the development of a new open source search engine with user-editable search results. This wiki accompanies the development therefore, and is used as a sounding board for ideas, organization and technical stuff. It is a place for the search community to discuss the project and search related issues. Search Wikia itself is not a search engine or a web directory"

Friday, December 29, 2006

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: My Name is Bond. Answers here.

1. What was the first James Bond film - in 1962?
2. Albert Broccoli produced the Bond films until the late 1980s. What was his nickname?
3. What is James Bond's secret agent number?
4. Who recorded the song "Nobody Does It Better" for the Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me"?
5. Who played "M" in the films "Tomorrow Never Dies" and "The World is Not Enough"?
6. Which character was played by Honor Blackman in the film "Goldfinger"?
7. Which Bond film had a title inspired by an advertising slogan devised in 1939 for De Beers Consolidated Mines?
8. Who wrote and performed the title track to the Bond movie "Tomorrow Never Dies"?
9. Which Bond villain had the first names of Ernst Stavro?
10. Which actor, who played James Bond in 1997, was first offered the role of Bond in 1986 but turned it down owing to his television commitments?

Peterson's RSS Page

Peterson's RSS Page "represents a compilation of feeds that have existed for a while now across the Peterson's sphere. The feeds represent a running snapshot of daily updates provided electronically by thousands of traditional and online colleges and graduate programs who partner with us for recruiting services. We've started linking into this page from some key portals such as the brick-and-mortar college search, online college search and graduate search, and it will soon be accessible from nearly all pages on Petersons.com"

Feedbooks

Feedbooks is a new website made from the ground up with e-ink devices in mind. The goal of this website is to provide a whole new experience, delivering books in the public domain, user submitted content and news

EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service now includes access to preprint articles

Preprint articles are now accessible via EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service

SirsiDynix announces investment partnership with Vista Equity Partners

"SirsiDynix, the global leader in strategic technology solutions for libraries, announced today it has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners, a $1 billion private equity firm focused solely on investing in software and technology-enabled businesses" - December 27, 2006 news release

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Librarian of Congress adds home movie, silent films and Hollywood classics to film preservation list

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington has added 25 motion pictures to the National Film Registry to be preserved for all time, bringing the total number of films on the registry to 450

ARL publishes Health Sciences Library Statistics 2004-05

The Association of Research Libraries has announced the availability of the ARL Academic Health Sciences Library Statistics 2004-05. This publication presents compilations and rankings of data that describe collections, expenditures, personnel, and services in 67 medical libraries at ARL member institutions throughout North America

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

CERN workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication - registration

Registration is now open for the CERN workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI5) - 18-20 April 2007 - Geneva, Switzerland

The Music Sack

The Music Sack is a database with 15 million rows of factual data about one million people who have been involved in music. It stores the location of 1.8 million sources of information about these one million people and the activities they have been involved in, and much more. It is an index to almost every music biographical dictionary published since 1595

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Ninth International Conference on Grey Literature

The Ninth International Conference on Grey Literature titled "Grey Foundations in Information Landscape" will be hosted by the Ministry of Flanders, Department of Economy, Science and Innovation on December 10-11, 2007 in the Provincial House in Antwerp, Belgium

30th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference

The 30th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval - 23-27 July 2007 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands

RSS feeds for Emerald journals

Emerald now has RSS feeds for all of it journals

FreePint Index

FreePint Index - an index to all articles by subject appearing in the FreePint Newsletter between November 1997 and December 2006

Librarian: Executive Summary

Librarian: Executive Summary by Marty Nemko for U.S.News & World Report - "Forget about that image of librarian as a mousy bookworm. Librarians these days must be high-tech information sleuths, helping researchers plumb the oceans of information available in books and digital records. It's an underrated career. Most librarians love helping patrons dig up information and, in the process, learning new things..."

The UK Statute Law Database

The UK Statute Law Database (SLD) is the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the United Kingdom made available online. SLD was released to the public on 20 December 2006. Its content is available for viewing and private use free of charge

Saturday, December 23, 2006

EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service

The latest list of journals available on the EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service now covers 14491 titles

Biblio Tech Review - December 2006

The December 2006 issue of Biblio Tech Review is now available

ALCTS Newsletter Online December 2006

The December issue of the ALCTS Newsletter Online is now available

Writer demands to be unlisted from Amazon

A children's author has drawn attention to the plight of independent bookshops by demanding that his book be removed from sale on Amazon's UK website. George Walker, author of Tales from an Airfield, was horrified to find that his new title was featured on the site without his permission, following good sales in bookshops. "What they are actually doing is getting the independents to do their market research," said Mr Walker, a passionate advocate of independents. "When a book gets a certain amount of attention, they will attempt to stock it and cut the independents out. Not with my book!" - ...more in The Guardian

Friday, December 22, 2006

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: Hard Words. Answers here.

1. Where would you find a "spinnaker"?
2. What are the two usual ingredients of the drink which is called a "spritzer"?
3. In which country were the dogs called "Pekinese" or "Pekingese" developed?
4. What kinds of things are made or repaired by a "cooper"?
5. What is a "parquet floor" made of: tiles, bricks or pieces of wood?
6. In which country would you expect to find a kind of entertainment called "Kabuki"?
7. Is a "fulmar" a bird, a snake or a plant?
8. What is a "cheval glass"?
9. What is "hemiplegia"?
10. What is a "shadoof" or "shaduf"?

DELOS Conference on Digital Libraries

DELOS Conference on Digital Libraries - 13-14 February 2007 - Tirrenia, Pisa, Italy

ACLS Cyberinfrastructure Report released

The American Council of Learned Societies has announced that "Our Cultural Commonwealth: The final report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities & Social Sciences" was released December 13, 2006

DPC/PADI What's new in digital preservation

DPC/PADI What's new in digital preservation Issue no. 14 (July - November 2006) is now available. Compiled by Deb Woodyard-Robinson for the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) and Marian Hanley and Gerard Clifton (National Library of Australia)

Cites & Insights 7:1

Cites & Insights 7:1 (January 2007) is now available for downloading

Elsevier acquires Syngress Publishing

Elsevier has announced its acquisition of the business of Syngress Publishing, Inc. "Elsevier and Syngress will mark this alliance by continuing to be first-to-market with leading titles on building and deploying essential security tools for network infrastructures and applications development. Since founding Syngress in 1997, Chris Williams and Amy Pedersen have published books written by numerous IT experts, publishing 40 titles in 2006 and planning to publish over 50 books in 2007"

Every Child Ready to Read @ your library wiki

The Public Library Association and the Association for Library Service to Children have introduced the Every Child Ready to Read @ your library wiki. The wiki allows new and current users of the Every Child Ready to Read @ your library program to share innovative ideas and best practices

Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study

The purpose of this 3-year project is to develop and administer a comprehensive annual study assessing the extent of public access computing, Internet connectivity and Internet-related services, and the impact of public library funding changes on connectivity, technology deployment and sustainability in years 2007-2009. This project is made possible by a generous donation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the American Library Association

YALSA announces new MySpace Page

The Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA), the fastest growing division of the American Library Association, has announced the debut of a YALSA MySpace Page

Future of the Book: The Iraq Study Group Report

Future of the Book: The Iraq Study Group Report - Annotated edition of the ISG Report from Lapham's Quarterly

Thursday, December 21, 2006

British Library announces 2007 commitments on new content strategy

Drawing on responses to the consultation on its new content strategy, which began last April, the British Library has announced a series of commitments to take the strategy forward in the New Year. The 2006 consultation sought the views of stakeholders across the spectrum of research, higher education and the library world in order to refine further the UK national library's approach to meeting the needs of researchers in a hybrid world where print and digital information co-exist

Library Web

Library Web is a rolling Internet news site for library professionals

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - December 21, 2006 now available

Sabrina Pacifici profiled in Law Practice Magazine, December 2006

The December 2006 issue of ABA's Law Practice Magazine features a profile of Sabrina I. Pacifici, founder, editor, publisher of LLRX.com and author of beSpacific

FreePint Newsletter 220

FreePint Newsletter 220 - 21 December, 2006 - now available

The Internet Archive Receives Grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

"The Internet Archive's efforts to digitize content and make it freely accessible online has received a tremendous boost from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The foundation is awarding Internet Archive a grant to bring historic collections from eminent cultural institutions online without any restrictions on their use. In addition to winning this grant, the Internet Archive through its work supporting Open Content Alliance principles of free and open access to knowledge has reached a milestone of 100,000 digitalized books now publicly available"

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Code4Lib 2007 registration is now open

Code4lib 2007 is a loosely structured conference for library technologists to commune, gather/create/share ideas and software, be inspired, and forge collaborations. It is also an outgrowth of the Access HackFest, wrapped into a conference-ish format. It is *the* event for technologists building digital libraries and digital information systems, tools, and software. Code4lib 2007 will be held February 28 to March 2 in Athens, Georgia

EDINA Newsline December 2006

EDINA Newsline December 2006 is now available

Wi-Fi in Libraries Conference 2007

Wi-Fi in Libraries Conference 2007 - 13 March 2007 - London, UK

ALISS Christmas event papers available

Papers from the ALISS Christmas Special : Libraries and open access scholarship - 11 December 2006- are now available

Lara Feigel's top 10 smelly books

Lara Feigel is a tutor of English Literature at the University of Sussex and author of A Nosegay: A Literary Journey from the Fragrant to the Fetid (Old Street Publishing). Here, she chooses her favourite examples of writing on the subject of smell, all of which appear in her book - The Guardian

A Guide to the American Revolution, 1763-1783

The digital collections of the Library of Congress contain a wide variety of material associated with the American Revolution, including manuscripts, broadsides, government documents, books, and maps. This guide compiles links to digital materials related to the American Revolution that are available throughout the Library of Congress Web site. In addition, it provides links to external Web sites focusing on the American Revolution and a bibliography containing selections for both general and younger readers

Ingram acquires Coutts Information Services and MyiLibrary

Ingram Industries Inc. has announced its acquisition of Coutts Information Services and its MyiLibrary affiliate

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - December 14, 2006 now available

LLRX.com December 17, 2006

LLRX.com December 17, 2006 update is now online. LLRX.com is a unique, free Web journal dedicated to providing legal, library, IT/IS, marketing and administrative professionals with the most up-to-date information on a wide range of Internet research and technology-related issues, applications, resources and tools, since 1996

ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians

ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians - August 5-10, 2007 - Cambridge, Massachusetts

The 23rd Jerusalem Internationl Book Fair

The 23rd Jerusalem Internationl Book Fair will be held February 18-23 2007

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Google acquires Endoxon's Internet and Mobile businesses

Google bought Endoxon, a Swiss company focused on web-based geo-information services. With Endoxon's "blue" technology, a user can search for information or he can visualize his own collected information

Blackwell Publishing and IngentaConnect 2007 reminder

A reminder that from January 1 2007, the full text of articles in Blackwell Publishing journals will no longer be hosted on IngentaConnect. The exceptions are the 3 journals of the American Sociological Association, published by Blackwell, which will continue to have full text on IngentaConnect (Sociological Methodology, Sociological Theory and City & Community). Libraries wishing to continue to provide online access to all other
Blackwell Publishing journals should activate their access on Blackwell Synergy

Fifth Annual UK Journal Publishers' Forum

Fifth Annual UK Journal Publishers' Forum: The annual congregation for UK commercial and society publishers sponsored by the PA, ALPSP and STM in a format that allows time for debate, concluding with an informal reception - 2 February 2007 - Institute of Physics, London, UK

Archivists' Toolkit, Version 1.0 released

The University of California, San Diego, New York University, and the Five Colleges, Inc. have announced the release of the Archivists' Toolkit Version 1.0. The Archivists' Toolkit is being offered under an Educational Community License. The AT is the first open source archival data management system to provide integrated support for accessioning, description, donor tracking, name and subject authority work, and location management for archival materials

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography Version 66

Version 66 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 2,830 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet - by Charles W. Bailey, Jr.

This Week in LibraryBlogLand

This Week in LibraryBlogLand - for the week ending December 17, 2006

Library of Congress RSS Feeds

The Library of Congress now offers several RSS feeds for use in an RSS reader or RSS-enabled Web browser. Library feeds consist of headline, brief summary, and a link that leads back to the Library's Web site for more information

COA announces release of proposed changes to 1992 Standards

The Committee on Accreditation (COA) of the American Library Association has announced the release of proposed changes to the Standards for Accreditation of Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies 1992. COA is inviting input and commentary on the draft document proposing changes to the Standards available at the Office for Accreditation web site

Monday, December 18, 2006

Saturday, December 16, 2006

De Lange Conference VI Emerging Libraries

De Lange Conference VI Emerging Libraries - March 5-7 2007 - Rice University, Texas

Swets' Serials Price Increase Report

Swets' Serials Price Increase Report #2 2007 is now available

Directory of Open Access Journals milestone

Directory of Open Access Journals covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. There are now 2500 journals in the directory. Currently 743 journals are searchable at article level. 123086 articles are included in the service

Black History Trove, a Life’s Work, Seeks Museum

From The New York Times: "Behind the dusty stools and the old towels, under the broken telephones and the picture frames, amid the spider webs, sits one of the country's most important collections of artifacts devoted to the history of African-Americans. Painstakingly collected over a lifetime by Mayme Agnew Clayton — a retired university librarian who died in October at 83 and whose interest in African-American history consumed her for most of her adult life — the massive collection of books, films, documents and other precious pieces of America's past has remained essentially hidden for decades, most of it piled from floor to ceiling in a ramshackle garage behind Ms. Clayton's home in the West Adams district of Los Angeles...."

Cambridge Information Group will acquire ProQuest

ProQuest Company has reported that it and its subsidiary, ProQuest Information and Learning Company, have signed a definitive agreement with Cambridge Information Group providing for the acquisition of the ProQuest Information and Learning segment for approximately $222 million

D-Lib Magazine December 2006

D-Lib Magazine December 2006 is now available

Friday, December 15, 2006

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: Cats. Answers here.

1. What is the name for the breed of short-haired domestic cats associated with the Isle of Man, that have no tail, or a mere stump?
2. In Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland", what kind of cat is it that grins a lot?
3. Who wrote the 1955 play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"?
4. What colour eyes do Siamese cats usually have?
5. What is involved in the game of "cat's cradle".
6. Who wrote the 1957 children's book "The Cat in the Hat"?
7. Catgut is made from the intestines of cats: true or false?
8. Name the book by T. S. Eliot on which Andrew Lloyd Webber based his 1981 musical, "Cats".
9. Which rock star's most successful album, in 1977, was called "Cat Scratch Fever"?
10. In the business world, what is the "dead-cat bounce"?

Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo 2007

Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo 2007 - 13–15 February 2007 - London, UK

5th International Convention CALIBER-2007

5th International Convention CALIBER-2007 - "Information and Knowledge Management in Networked World" - 8-10 February 2007 - Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

7th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services

7th Northumbria International Conference on Performance Measurement in Libraries and Information Services - Measuring Library Performance and Organizational Effectiveness: From Research to Practice, an IFLA satellite preconference sponsored by the IFLA Statistics and Evaluation Section - 13-16 August 2007 - Stellenbosch, South Africa

Librarians face pay cuts by Elizabeth Buie

"School librarians are warning that the single status job evaluation process is leading to pay cuts in some authorities and a potential exodus from the profession. There have been accusations that the whole exercise is flawed because it fails to recognise the educational role of school librarians. In North Lanarkshire, where the evaluation process has been completed earlier than in some other authorities, school librarians have been put down a grade. This means that although the basic salary of around 20,000 pounds will be conserved for three years, thereafter it will drop to 17,000 pounds"...more in TES Scotland

School Download Library from OverDrive

OverDrive, Inc. has launched School Download Library, a new service for students, educators, and parents to borrow and download audiobooks and ebooks

The EMBO Journal and EMBO reports to accept author-paid open-access articles

The European Molecular Biology Organization and Nature Publishing Group have announced that The EMBO Journal and EMBO reports will accept open-access articles as of January 2007, subject to payment of a publication fee. The journals are moving to a mixed-revenue model of subscription charges and publication fees. The open-access option will be available to all authors submitting original research on or after 1 January 2007

WorldCat Selection from OCLC

OCLC has released the new WorldCat Selection service to help libraries save time and money, streamlining selection and ordering by moving these processes to the network level for new library materials and delivery of the corresponding WorldCat records

Academic Library Futures by Roy Tennant

"Librarians have every right to wonder what their future holds in an age when Google is digitizing entire research libraries and our users routinely go to Internet search engines for the things they formerly used libraries. My colleagues want to know what they should be doing, what further amazing changes they must learn to expect, and how best to cope"....more in Library Journal

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Supervisory Skills for Library Staff with Cheryl Stenstrom

For first-time supervisors and staff new to the library workplace, supervising and leading can be a daunting task. In addition to working with customers, supervisors need to deal with administration, staff motivation and performance management. Based on the hugely popular Supervisory Skills for Library Staff course in BC's Ministry of Education's Community Library Training Program, this six week online course is a mix of practical exercises and management theory and will give anyone new to libraries or those needing a refresher a chance to strengthen their skills as a team leader. Cheryl Stenström is an independent Library Consultant based in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia - January 15, 2007

Informaworld

Informaworld is a one-stop site hosting journals, eBooks, abstract databases and reference works published by Taylor & Francis, Routledge, Psychology Press and Informa Healthcare

TAPE workshop on management of audiovisual collections

TAPE workshop on management of audiovisual collections - 18-24 April 2007 - Amsterdam, The Netherlands. TAPE = Training for Audiovisual Preservation in Europe

Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area

European Commission Conference: Scientific Publishing in the European Research Area - The goal of the conference is to bring together stakeholders concerned with access, dissemination and preservation issues in connection with scientific publication and data in an effort to provide policy options for scientific publishing under FP7 and in the European Research Area - 15-16 February 2007 - Brussels, Belgium

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice latest issue

Evidence Based Library and Information Practice - Vol 1, No 4 (2006) is now available

Nestle Children's Book prize winner

A debut novel set in London's theatreland in the 1790s, The Diamond of Drury Lane, has won this year's Nestle Children's Book prize. Written by a former diplomat, Julia Golding, the book has already been awarded the Ottakar's Children's Book prize - From The Guardian

Libraries transform communities award

Friends of Libraries USA (FOLUSA) has announced a new $1,000 award sponsored by the Lana and Michael Porter Foundation. This award will recognize an outstanding essay focused on how libraries transform communities. Deadline extended to January 2, 2007

Open Access and Digital Libraries community group

Open Access and Digital Libraries is a community supporting and promoting Open Access to scholarly literature and developing Digital Libraries for Open Access

Google Patent Search

Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Most overrated and underrated books of 2006

"Books of the year features can seem pretty pointless, ladling hype on books that have already been fulsomely praised. In order to elicit livelier responses, Prospect asked a range of contributors to nominate their "most overrated and underrated books of 2006." Some interpreted the words "of 2006" to mean "read by me in 2006," and chose books written in previous years"

MuseGlobal creates customized connections to the Elsevier XML Gateway

"Muse Source Packages allow Scopus and ScienceDirect customers to search and retrieve information from multiple sources simultaneously while accessing Elsevier's high-quality content. In addition, they give customers a more stable connection to the Elsevier XML Gateway and better functionality"

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency providing broader access

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is providing broader access to a larger audience by making agency library materials available through its public Web site. Retrieving materials will be more efficient and easier to locate by using EPA's online collection and reference services. To date, more than 22,000 of 51,000 EPA documents are available through the agency's public Web site and all EPA unique documents will be online within two years. Documents from libraries within the network that no longer have physical space will be online as of January 2007

Roundtable on the World Intellectual Property Organization Treaty On the Protection of the Rights of Broadcasting Organizations

The United States Copyright Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office have announced a public roundtable discussion concerning the work at the World Intellectual Property Organization in the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights on a proposed Treaty on the Protection of the Rights of Broadcasting Organizations. The roundtable will be held January 3, 2007 in Alexandria, VA

Not your grandfather's library system

"North of Toronto, the 140,000 men, women, and children who are members of Vaughan Public Libraries have become virtual pioneers. The city's eight libraries - seven of the traditional books-on-shelves variety and one e-library - are the first in Canada to offer downloadable videos and television programs through the Internet. Library patrons can access the material from anywhere in the world, any time of day, and they don't have to worry about any fines for late returns: The material simply expires from their computer when the loan period ends" - Bell Globemedia

Bibliographies of Scotland questionnaire

The National Library of Scotland is conducting research into use of its online bibliographies (Bibliography of Scotland, Bibliography of Scottish Gaelic and Bibliography of Scottish Literature in Translation) to assist in planning for their future development. A questionnaire has been mounted on the Library's website and your answers and comments would be welcome. You could win a £25 book token

Bush administration to close E.P.A libraries in San Francisco and nationwide

"The 2007 Federal Budget proposed by the Bush Administration and currently before Congress includes a budget cut that would entirely eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency's 27 libraries nationwide, including San Francisco's own EPA Region 9 library. The Region 9 library provides the public, free of charge, with environmental data on CA, AZ, NV, HA and the lands of 140 tribal nations. The importance of this library cannot be understated in providing citizens with scientific data about pollutants, wildlife, and energy resources in our city, state and beyond" - by Sara A. Fox for BeyondChron

TEL-ME-MOR newsletter

The third and the final issue of the TEL-ME-MOR electronic newsletter has been published. The newsletter summarises the results of the project, provides an overview of the expansion of The European Library achieved in result of the project and takes a look into the future, introducing both running and upcoming projects in the same field: EDLproject, TELplus, and EDLnet

New Mozart Edition online

The Internationale Stiftung Mozarteum has digitized Mozart's music, and in this groundbreaking project is making it accessible to everyone on its web site. The NMA Online is a digital version of the Neue Mozart Ausgabe (NMA; New Mozart Edition), a scholarly edition of Mozart's complete works that was compiled by musicologists from around the world in the last 50 years. "NMA Online" has been produced by the ISM in Salzburg in cooperation with the Packard Humanities Institute in Los Altos, California

SLA Europe Information Professional 2007

"The Board of SLA Europe would be delighted to receive nominations for SLA Europe Information Professional 2007. The annual Information Professional Award recognises outstanding achievement in the information profession amongst those living and working in Europe. This is your chance to gain recognition for a professional colleague or yourself. The winner receives an expenses-paid trip to the SLA Conference in Denver, June 2007. Nominators of the successful candidate receive a magnum of champagne. The closing date for nominations is 28th February 2007"

NIH Launches dbGaP

The National Library of Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health, has announced the introduction of dbGaP, a new database designed to archive and distribute data from genome wide association studies

Search Engine Land officially launched

Search Engine Land is a new search news blog, launched December 11, 2006. Danny Sullivan, along with Chris Sherman and Barry Schwartz, will be providing information about search engine marketing and how search engines work in general, from a searcher's perspective

Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

The charge of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control is to:

- Present findings on how bibliographic control and other descriptive practices can effectively support management of and access to library materials in the evolving information and technology environment
- Recommend ways in which the library community can collectively move toward achieving this vision
- Advise the Library of Congress on its role and priorities

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Librarian's Ultimate Guide to Search Engines

Librarian's Ultimate Guide to Search Engines is a helpful starting point for anyone - librarian, professor, or student - wanting to get a lot more out of web search. By Scott Hawksworth for DegreeTutor

A Survey of Library Services to Schools and Children in the UK 2005-06

LISU, The Library and Information Statistics Unit, Loughborough University, has just published the last in its statistical series supported by the Museums Libraries & Archives Council and its predecessors, summarising activity in library services for young people

CACUL Innovation Achievement Award

The CACUL Innovation Achievement Award, from The Canadian Association of College and University Libraries, is intended to recognize academic libraries that, through innovation in ongoing programs/services or in a special event/project, have contributed to the advancement of academic librarianship and library development. Deadline is February 28, 2007

HuriSearch

HuriSearch is a HURIDOCS project. Its general objective is to facilitate access to human rights information on the web. Its specific objectives are as follows:

-To provide human rights professionals with a powerful web research tool.
-To increase the visibility of information published by human rights organisations, in particular small local organisations with first-hand information.
-To encourage webmasters to use metadata systematically, thus making human rights information searching much more reliable and efficient

This Week in LibraryBlogLand

This Week in LibraryBlogLand - for the week ending December 10, 2006

Supporting Researchers conference

Supporting Researchers: Strategy, Policy and Practice for Library and Information Services - a one-day conference - 19 February 2007 - London, UK

KMWorld & Intranets 2006 presentation links

KMWorld & Intranets 2006 - October 31-November 2, 2006 - San Jose, CA - presentation links are now available

Association for Library Service to Children Wiki

The Association for Library Service to Children has announced its new Wiki. Joining in on the latest technology and communication phenomenon, ALSC established Wiki space to provide its members and others interested in library service to children a place to share ideas and best practices; network with colleagues; discuss issues, trends, and opportunities; and communicate ALSC committee happenings and events

Monday, December 11, 2006

Venturing out of the library: managing outreach in public libraries

Venturing out of the library: managing outreach in public libraries - 18-19 April 2007 - London, UK

International Journal of Nanomanufacturing

International Journal of Nanomanufacturing is new from Inderscience

Fulfilling Their Potential Conference 2007

Libraries have a crucial role to play in supporting young people and many library services are innovative in their work with this age group. Fulfilling Their Potential (FtP) provides a basis for planning a long term vision and strategy to redefine libraries' relationship with young people. The programme is fully aligned with, and supports, the Every Child Matters and Youth Matters policy agendas. FtP is managed by a steering group which includes representatives from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, the Association of Senior Children's and Education Librarians, the National Youth Agency, and the Society of Chief Librarians. It developed within the Books, Reading and Learning element of Framework for the Future, the government's vision for a modernized public library service and is part of the Building Communities strand of the 2006-08 Action Plan - 5 February 2007 - Chelsea Football Club, London, UK

Technology Electronic Reviews December 2006

Technology Electronic Reviews, a publication of the Library and Information Technology Association - Volume 13, Number 3, December 2006 now available

Sunday, December 10, 2006

PerX Shared Services Report now available

A Shared Services report is now available from PerX which provides overviews, usage scenarios and implementation reports for infrastructural shared services identifed as being of relevance to the PerX project. These include Service Registries, Identifier and Resolver Services, Terminology Services, and Metadata Schema Registries

MetaPress 2.0 created

From Ebsco.com: "In response to customer needs for more in-depth navigation tools, streamlined searching capabilities and advanced content management, EBSCO's MetaPress® division has created MetaPress 2.0, the industry's first content management system with dimensional navigation across a variety of content types. The service, which provides a primary source online hosting platform for more than 19,000 scholarly publications around the world, provides a comprehensive solution to clients' Web publishing needs; it offers an established way to publish titles electronically regardless of present content or current format. Services include content management, Web hosting, custom branded Web site development and e-commerce support. From simple hosting to seamless integration to building a complete Web application, MetaPress provides custom solutions"

Saturday, December 09, 2006

Royal Society Library Newsletter

Royal Society Library Newsletter - December 2006 is now available

Askville by Amazon.com

"Askville is a place where you can share and discuss knowledge with other people by asking and answering questions on any topic. It's a fun place to meet others with similar interests to you and a place where you can share what you know. You can learn something new everyday or help and meet others using your knowledge. Askville even helps you learn by giving you cool tools to help you find information online while you are answering questions. It's all about sharing - what you know and what you want to know"

AOL Launches "True Stories"

AOL has launched True Stories, a new website dedicated to documentary films, featuring both critically acclaimed independent titles, as well as new projects prior to theatrical release. The catalogue and never-before-released titles will be available to stream free on demand, with ads, or as pay-per-download to own. Generally, prices will range from $1.99 to $14.99. Each month, True Stories will premiere up to two feature-length films

New York Times Librarian Awards

The New York Times has announced the winners of the 2006 New York Times Librarian Awards. Now in its sixth year, the program honors librarians from around the United States who have provided outstanding public service and have had a strong and positive impact on their nominators. This year's winners represent 17 states. Included among the 25 winners for the first time are three academic librarians. In an expansion of the program, librarians working in college and university libraries were eligible to be nominated by college students, faculty and administrators. Nominations for the public librarian awards came from the general public. The Times received more than 1,300 nominations from 45 states this year. The Times will hold a ceremony and reception in honor of the winners on December 13 at which each winner will be given $2,500 and a commemorative plaque from The Times

e-Content and e-Services Showcase

CILIP will present its second annual Showcase for all those supplying eContent and eServices to the UK library community and its Central London offices on 30 March 2007

ALA President hosts national library agenda summit

American Library Association President Leslie Burger will gather dozens of policy and decision makers December 10 and 11 at a conference entitled Toward a National Library Agenda Summit. Participants will help articulate key agenda items that will enhance support for improving libraries, as well as building a case for investing in libraries at the local, state and national level

Friday, December 08, 2006

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: Dogs. Answers here.

1. Which breed of dog is also known as a "sausage dog"?
2. What did Winston Churchill describe as his "Black dog"?
3. In the Northern Hemisphere, are the Dog Days the hottest or coldest days of the year?
4. What was the name of the dog in the film "The Wizard of Oz"?
5. In the Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, what was "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time"?
6. The composer of "Camptown Races" also wrote a song called "Old Dog Tray". What was the composer's name?
7. A song about a dog was a hit for Big Mama Thornton in 1953 but a bigger hit for Elvis Presley in 1956. What was the song's title?
8. Virginia Woolf's "Flush" is a fictional biography of a spaniel belonging to which 19th-century poet?
9. The first school for training guide dogs was established after World War I in which country: France, Germany or Norway?
10. What is a "yellow dog contract"?

New digitization projects at the University of Manitoba

The University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections has announced the launch of its latest digitization projects: The Prairie Immigration Experience and the Thomas Glendenning Hamilton Photograph Collection

2007 NASIG Awards

The North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) has announced the beginning of its application cycle for NASIG's 2007 grants, awards, and scholarships. All awards will be presented at the 22nd Annual Conference in Louisville, KY

eInformation for eScience

eInformation for eScience: This practical one day training event is designed to provide Information Professionals with an introduction on resources and services for Science - 24 April 2007 - University of Birmingham, UK

ProQuest celebrates the 10th anniversary of Literature Online through a new partnership with Oxford University Press

Literature Online marks its 10th anniversary in December. "Doubling the importance of the milestone, ProQuest's Chadwyck-Healey unit is enhancing the resource by including search results from more than thirty literary reference titles from Oxford Reference Online's Premium and Literature collections published by Oxford University Press. Also, subscribers to both Literature Online and Oxford Reference Online can access the full-text of entries within Oxford Reference Online"

Collections Link

Collections Link is a collaboration of more than 20 U.K. professional groups, bodies and associations who are responsible for providing advice and support to museums, archives, libraries and other collections-holding organisations. The aim of the service is to provide a single point of access to best practice in the care and management of collections

New look for Blackwell Synergy - preview now available

Blackwell Synergy, the online journals platform from Blackwell Publishing, will soon be relaunched with a brand new design. This redesign provides easier navigation, faster loading times, and improved access to tools for researchers. In addition, the new website will meet the latest accessibility standards (ADA section 508 and W3C's WAI-AA)

Internet Resources Newsletter - Issue 146

Internet Resources Newsletter - Issue 146 - December 2006 - edited by Roddy MacLeod, Heriot-Watt University, is now available

Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930

Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, is a web-based collection of selected historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the US from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression

Thursday, December 07, 2006

Google Librarian Newsletter December 2006

Google Librarian Newsletter December 2006 issue now available

John Llewellyn Rhys prize winner announced

"A brutal but surprisingly poetic novel about an African child soldier has won this year's John Llewellyn Rhys prize. Beasts of No Nation is a first novel by Uzodinma Iweala who, at 23 years old, is one of the youngest winners of the prize for young writers, which has an upper age limit of 35 years" - The Guardian

Journal of Medical Case Reports

Journal of Medical Case Reports is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal soon to be launched by BioMed Central. It will consider any original case report that expands the field of general medical knowledge

FreePint Newsletter 219

FreePint Newsletter 219 - 7 December, 2006 - now available

Melissa Hagemann is newest SPARC Innovator

SPARC has selected Melissa Hagemann, the Program Manager of the Open Access Initiative at the Open Society Institute, as the newest SPARC Innovator. Hagemann was chosen in recognition of the new possibilities that now exist for scholars, institutions, and the public since the introduction of the Open Access movement and in honor of Hagemann's seminal role in launching the movement with her OSI colleagues

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - December 7, 2006 now available

WOMblink: Word of Mouth Blog Link

WOMblink is a simple way for libraries to encourage word-of-mouth advertising by the blogging patrons -- hence the name, Word of Mouth Blog LINK (pronounced WOMblink). By adding a "blog this" link to your library web pages, you create a one-click way for bloggers to link to your site from their blog post

ALA President Leslie Burger to speak on EPA Library closings at National Advisory Council meeting

On December 14 2006, ALA President Leslie Burger will speak at a meeting of the National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology on the impact of Environmental Protection Agency library closings. The $2 million budget cut that brings about these closings - initially proposed by the EPA and included in President Bush's budget proposals for Fiscal Year (FY) 2007 - reduces the 35-year-old EPA Library Network's budget by 80 percent and forces closure of several regional libraries

Maney 2007 subscription rates

The 2007 subscription rates for Maney journals are now available

ALA Editions announces partnership with Google Book Search

ALA Editions of the American Library Association has announced their recent partnership with Google to offer ALA Editions content through Google Book Search. Users now will be able to preview ALA Editions titles, conduct multiple searches within the books, and browse through the available pages

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Microsoft debuts book search tool

Live Search Books is initially restricted to only include non-copyright books scanned from the collections of the British Library, the University of California and the University of Toronto. Partnerships with the New York Public Library and the American Museum of Veterinary Medicine have also been announced. Live Search Books' "Search inside a book" feature allows users to search the full texts of scanned books. Copyrighted books will be added to the collection later, but only those submitted to Microsoft by publishers or authors

Fellowships in digital librarianship available

The School of Library and Information Science at The University of Iowa invites applications for digital librarian fellowships in its MA program. Fellowships will be awarded to students who clearly articulate career interests and goals related to digital libraries and services. Preference will be given to those who have a background/experience in computing/ information technology. Ten fellows will be admitted in 2007, and another ten in 2008, to the MA in Library and Information Science program with digital libraries as the specialized track

Enhanced Book Index with Reviews now available from EBSCO

EBSCO Publishing has announced that the latest version of Book Index with Reviews has been significantly expanded to include information on thousands of music and video titles. In addition to more than four million popular and classic book titles, BIR now features detailed information on more than 450,000 music titles and more than 200,000 DVD/video titles

Guardian first book prize winner

The winner of The Guardian first book prize is Yiyun Li for her short story collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Manuscripts Matter

Manuscripts Matter (MP3, 33 minutes, 13.6MB): A panel of creative writers discuss the author's perspective on the archiving of their own papers; with A.S. Byatt, Peter Nichols, Owen Sheers and Peter Porter. Chaired by Mark Le Fanu, General Secretary of the Society of Authors - From The British Library

TASI workshop programme January-April 2007

TASI (Technical Advisory Service for Images) has announced details of its training programme for January to April 2007

SUNCAT Newsletter

SUNCAT newsletter Issue 3 is now available

CrossRef to add journals from low-income countries

CrossRef has announced that it has reached agreement with three new partners to include journals from developing countries in its linking network. The three organizations are INASP (the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications, who will initially register its Nepal, Bangladesh and Vietnam Journals Online content with CrossRef; NISC (the National Inquiry Services Center, a South African publisher of eight current journals as well as several bibliographic databases and books; and AJOL (African Journals Online, a not-for-profit aggregation of over 250 varied African journals

Transitions: scholarly communications news for the UI community

Transitions: scholarly communications news for the UI community. The purpose of this irregular electronic newsletter is to bring to readers' attention some of the many new projects and developments affecting the current system of scholarly communication, with emphasis on new products and programs, the open access movement and other alternative publishing models - Issue 2.06 - December 2006 - From University of Iowa Libraries

AskCity

AskCity is a search service that allows you to find Businesses, Events, and Movies for most cities in the U.S. Ask combines these features with a number of other helpful services, such as:

-Driving and walking directions
-Drawing tools so you can mark places on your map and add text notes
-Editorial and user reviews of local businesses, concert halls, movie theaters and more
-Options that allow you to save one location while you search for another one on the same map
-"Save Map" option that allows you to save up to ten of your maps

ALA Library launches Web tools to access professional information

The Library of the American Library Association has announced the launch of two new Web tools to aid ALA members, librarians and library workers in accessing professional information online: The Librarian's E-Library and The ALA Professional Tips wiki

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

SearchMash from Google

SearchMash is a new website operated by Google

UCLA Extension Course in Document Imaging and Document Management

UCLA Extension Course in Document Imaging and Document Management - May 4-6 2007 - Enrollment opens on February 14, 2007

BURA from Brunel University

"BURA will make journal articles conference papers, doctoral theses, recordings and images freely available via the internet, allowing users to read, download and copy material for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Presently, there are more than 100 items on BURA and the number is increasing every day"

Ball State University creates digital repository with CONTENTdm

"In 2004, Ball State University Libraries in Muncie, Indiana, decided to use OCLC's CONTENTdm Digital Collection Management Software to create a Digital Media Repository to bring together the various digital collections and activities of the University into a single, cohesive and accessible Web-based environment. Two years later, that effort has resulted in a centralized, coordinated and user-focused resource to serve the teaching, learning and research needs of students, faculty and researchers at Ball State and beyond"

This Week in LibraryBlogLand

This Week in LibraryBlogLand - for the week ending December 3, 2006

Digital Oxygen

Digital Oxygen by Lee Rainie, Director Pew Internet & American Life Project - December 13, 2006 - SirsiDynix Institute Seminar

Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics: A Publisher's Perspective

Blackwell Publishing has announced the launch of their Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics: A Publisher's Perspective, becoming the first publisher to offer such a comprehensive resource to its journal editors and society partners. The guidelines were created to provide practical advice to editors on the major ethical principles of academic publishing and to help inform the editorial policies of their journals

Sunday, December 03, 2006

EDUCAUSE Review November/December 2006

EDUCAUSE Review November/December 2006 is now available

CLA Library Research and Development Grants

CLA is offering Library Research and Development Grants totalling $1,000 to their members. The objectives of the grant are To support theoretical and applied research in the field of library and information services; To encourage and support research undertaken by practitioners in the field of library and information services; To promote research in the field of library and information services by and/or about Canadians. Deadline for submission of proposals is February 28, 2007

The FastTrack MLIS Program

The FastTrack MLIS Program at the University of Pittsburgh is an online program that allows students to receive an ALA-accredited degree without relocating. This program is excellent for students who would like to earn an MLIS degree, but need an alternative to traditional residential programs. Now welcoming applications for the seventh cohort of FastTrack MLIS. This cohort will begin attending classes on May 7, 2007. Two virtual open houses will offer a forum for prospective students to participate in a live chat with Susan Alman, Director of Distance Education & Outreach at the University of Pittsburgh

Margaret E. Monroe Library Adult Services Award

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2007 Margaret E. Monroe Award, given by the American Library Association's Reference and User Services Association. Self-nominations are welcome. Applications must be received by Friday, December 15, 2006

New for December from Facet Publishing

New for December from Facet Publishing:

Supervising and Leading Teams in ILS by Barbara Allan

CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals Yearbook 2006-2007 - Kathryn Beecroft, compiler

Preserving Archives by Helen Forde

Libraries Without Walls 7

Libraries Without Walls 7: Exploring 'anytime, anywhere' delivery of library services - An international conference organised by CERLIM, The Centre for Research in Library and Information Management - 14-18 September 2007 - Molyvos, Aegean Island of Lesvos, Greece

The Ins and Outs of RSS: Really Simple Solutions

The Ins and Outs of RSS: Really Simple Solutions with Geoffrey Harder, Reference Services Coordinator for Cameron Science & Technology Library and Manager of the Knowledge Common at the University of Alberta - Webcast - Tuesday, December 5, 2006

SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #104

SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #104 December 2, 2006 is now available

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Wiley launches extensive program to digitize landmark book series

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. has announced the launch of an ambitious new program to digitize back volumes of select landmark Wiley book series on Wiley InterScience, the company's dynamic online publishing platform. Wiley is digitizing more than 750 volumes from at least 21 book series in their entirety over the next year. With most of the series going back to Volume 1, users can access valuable content that is no longer published in print

Karen Blakeman's Online Information 2006 presentations

Karen Blakeman's Online Information 2006 presentations are now available for download. Please note that these are the original Powerpoint slides and are not annotated. Therefore, unless you were present at the seminar the relevance of some of the screen shots may not be apparent.

Tricks and tips for better web search, Karen Blakeman. Tuesday 28th November 2006, 11.45-12.15. Grand Hall Olympia, London, Theatre E. Powerpoint File (2.9 MB)

What's new in search tools
, Karen Blakeman. Thursday 30th November 2006, 11.00 - 11.30. Grand Hall Olympia, London, Theatre E. Powerpoint File (3.7 MB)

Culture.ca gets new look

Culture.ca, Canada's cultural gateway is for everyone who wants to explore, find, and share the best of Canada's cultural and creative life. This latest version of Culture.ca has more than a new look, it offers you more content organized under new subject categories that include: Arts, Heritage, Nature, Recreation, Society and Tourism. "We're more current with timely cultural articles updated regularly and daily cultural news. The site is also more interactive with popular links as chosen by you, cultural polls and the best of Canada's cultural blogs"

American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine

SAGE has announced the launch of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. Edited by James M. Rippe, MD, this new bi-monthly peer-reviewed journal is the official publication of the American Lifestyle Medicine Association. The first issue will debut in January 2007

AACR JournalLink

The first issue of AACR JournalLink is now available

The World Almanac Blog

"This blog is compiled by the same group of people who research, write, edit, fact-check, and re-fact-check the print version of The World Almanac and Book of Facts, year in and year out. Our goal here is to expand on the millions of essential facts included in The World Almanac, focusing on new or surprising facts about major topics covered in our books; deeper explanations of underreported data currently in the news; and offbeat information and Internet links about a wider range of topics than we could possibly cover in print. Our efforts will be in keeping with the hallmarks of The World Almanac itself - an American institution that millions of people have turned to for trusted facts for nearly 140 years, and the best-selling U.S. reference book of all time"

Antonio Gamoneda wins Cervantes Prize

Antonio Gamoneda has won the Cervantes Prize, the Spanish literary world's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. Spanish Culture Minister Carmen Calvo announced Gamoneda as the winner after the 76-year-old poet was selected by a panel of Spanish and Latin American academics led by Victor Garcia de la Concha, president of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. The literary honour carries a cash prize of 90,000 Euros

Credible and Credited: the rise of media librarians

Credible and Credited: the rise of media librarians - "Newspaper librarians are now more
involved in online research and training than archiving, writes Richard Nelsson,
looking at how the role at the Guardian has evolved from filing cuttings to direct
support for journalists filing stories"

Books - a Forbes special report

The December 1 2006 issue of Forbes includes a Special Report entitled Books. The report includes a series of articles on endurance of books, and the role technology has and will play, in their evolving future role

Teen Tech Week

The Young Adult Library Services Association has announced Teen Tech Week, a new YALSA celebration aimed at getting teens to use their libraries for the different technologies that are offered there, such as DVDs, databases, audiobooks, electronic games and more. Teen Tech Week will be celebrated for the first time March 4-10, 2007

Friday, December 01, 2006

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: Pirates. Answers here.

1. Name the 2003 pirate film for which Johnny Depp received a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
2. Name the leader of the pirates who tried to seize the treasure map in R. L. Stevenson's story "Treasure Island".
3. The pirate's flag was the Jolly Roger. What was pictured on it?
4. Who wrote the operetta "The Pirates of Penzance"?
5. The pirate Edward Teach is popularly remembered by what nickname?
6. Which 1936 novel by Daphne Du Maurier was the romantic story of a young girl and her pirate lover? It was filmed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1938.
7. In J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan", which pirate was defeated by Peter in a duel and eaten by a crocodile?
8. As the haunt of pirates, the "Spanish Main" referred to which sea?
9. Which film star sang "Be a Clown" with Gene Kelly in the 1947 movie "The Pirate"?
10. Name the Welsh buccaneer who went to the West Indies, and was sent in 1672 as a prisoner to England on complaints of piracy but soon became a hero and was knighted in 1673 and made lieutenant governor of Jamaica.

The International Information Industry Awards 2006

The winners of The International Information Industry Awards 2006 have been announced

Library Student Journal Issue 2

Library Student Journal - An international peer-reviewed Open Access publication of the University at Buffalo Department of Library and Information Studies - Issue 2, November 2006 is now available

eduWeb Conference 2007

The 2007 eduWeb Conference - July 22-24 2007 - Sheraton Inner Harbor, Baltimore, MD

Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research

Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research has just published its first issue

Archives Hub Collections of the Month, December 2006

Archives Hub Collections of the Month, December 2006: Somerville and Ross. Born into land-owning Protestant families in the South West of Ireland in the mid-nineteenth century, Edith Å’none Somerville (1858-1949) and Violet Martin (1862-1915), wrote in partnership as Somerville and Ross. Their novels and short stories intimately detail the social and political conditions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in Ireland

Christmas Book Special: The best fiction for Christmas

From The Independent: "Any honest observer of the book business in Britain will spend much of any year sunk in head-shaking gloom about its condescension to readers, its timid addiction to every passing fad, and its urge to throw good money after feather-light ephemera. Come Christmas, and the chain-store displays wear these marks of shame as badges of pride. Yet plenty of exciting and enduring books do break through the barrier of hype..."

Library Delivery 2.0: Delivering Library Materials in the Age of NetFlix

This article discusses how Netflix and similar services are shaping expectations about product delivery, which in turn are driving libraries to rethink how items are delivered to their customers

IFLA/UNESCO Internet Manifesto Guidelines

The guidelines take the Internet Manifesto in a new direction by moving towards a charter for users, in effect becoming a document prepared by the library community that safeguards and sets out users' rights to information on the Internet in libraries

EXiS Open Choice

From the Royal Society: "EXiS (Excellence in Science) Open Choice is an author pays model that operates alongside our established subscription model. Submission of an article remains free. If accepted for publication, the author is given the choice to pay a fee to have their article made freely available to all"

Thursday, November 30, 2006

1851 & 1861 Scottish Census

In celebration of St Andrew's Day, Ancestry.co.uk
has announced the arrival of a double 1851 & 1861 census special for Scotland. This follows the release earlier this year of the first Scottish census for 1841

2007 ALA Annual Poster Sessions

The 2007 ALA Annual Poster Sessions will be held in Washington, DC, June 23, 24, and 25th. Proposals are due on or before January 31, 2007

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - November 30, 2006 now available

The Advocacy Institute - Midwinter 2006

The Advocacy Institute - Midwinter 2006: "Learn how to become an effective library advocate and develop an action plan that you can use in your community or on campus! This three-part program consists of message development and coalition-building techniques; a lunchtime panel discussion featuring Noted young adult author and trainer Patrick Jones on nurturing advocates through school, young adult and academic phases; and afternoon breakout sessions on topics including increasing library funding, maintaining budgets, and crisis communications" - January 19, 2007 - Seattle, Washington

YBP Library Services to distribute EBL to academic libraries

YBP Library Services has announced plans to market a comprehensive collection of ebooks in partnership with EBL. Slated for launch in the first half of 2007, the deal will make EBL's growing list of over 40,000 ebook titles available to YBP's library customers around the world

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Information: Interactions and Impact - early-bird registration

Information: Interactions and Impact - preliminary announcement of a conference to be held at The Department of Information Management, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK in June 2007. This conference is concerned with the interaction between people and information and how this interaction can bring about change in individuals, organisations, communities and society. Early-bird registration now available

Royal Mail Award for Scottish Children's Books 2006

The winners of the Royal Mail Award for Scottish Children's Books 2006 have been announced

The Costa Book Awards 2006 shortlist

The Costa Book Awards 2006 shortlist has been announced. The Costa Book Awards were originally established in 1971 by Whitbread Plc

First Monday - 6 November 2006

First Monday - Volume 11, Number 11 - 6 November 2006 now available

Free access to passenger lists at Ancestry.com extended

Ancestry.com has announced that free access to its passenger lists collection that covers the years 1820 to 1960 now ends December 31, 2006

Carnival of the Infosciences #60

Carnival of the Infosciences #60 hosted by woodyevans.com. Previous Carnivals can be found here

IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Libraries Bulletin

IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Libraries Bulletin - Volume 3 Issue 1 is now available

Bush Library Courts "Wealthy Heiresses, Arab Nations, Captains of Industry" to "Polish" History

The New York Daily News reports, "President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library." Bush is attempting to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush fund-raisers hope to get approximately $250 million from what they call "megadonations" of $10 million to $20 million each. From Think Progress

DailyMed from the National Library of Medicine

DailyMed - Provides high quality information about marketed drugs in the U.S., including FDA-approved labels. From the National Library of Medicine - Provides high quality information about marketed drugs in the U.S., including FDA-approved labels. From the National Library of Medicine

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Springer eBook Collection webinar

Springer will be offering product presentations on the new Springer eBook Collection via a live online webinar

Xrefer adopts new COUNTER standard for measuring usage of online reference works

Xrefer recently adopted the new COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works for their Xreferplus online reference library. Xrefer was one of the first reference providers to achieve compliance of the standard since its initial publication in March 2006

Oxford Journals new agreement with the National Library of Medicine

Oxford Journals has announced a new agreement with the National Library of Medicine that will allow all content published as open access under its Oxford Open model to be available from PubMed Central. The agreement makes it easier for authors publishing with Oxford Journals to meet the requirements of their funding bodies, including the National Institutes of Health, who request all NIH-funded content to be deposited into PubMed Central within 12 months of online publication

SwetsWise Searcher

"Swets, continuing its commitment to simplify the complexities of e-resource access, acquisition and management, announces the launch of the SwetsWise Searcher hosted service. It is the result of a strategic alliance between Swets and MuseGlobal, Inc. The latest addition to the SwetsWise platform, the new SwetsWise Searcher extends the offering to two versions: SwetsWise Searcher hosted version, which provides an economical federated search option for organizations that prefer off-site implementation and SwetsWise Searcher Enterprise, the existing version that is implemented locally on the customer's servers"

2006 William Hill Sports Book Of The Year

Unforgivable Blackness, the fascinating biography of Jack Johnson, the world's first black heavyweight champion, has been announced as the winner of the 2006 William Hill Sports Book of the Year. Author Geoffrey C. Ward was named the winner at an awards ceremony at Waterstone's Piccadilly on November 27. Ward's previous books include The Civil War and Jazz. Currently living in New York, he is a former winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

IDPF introduces public forum

The International Digital Publishing Forum has created of a Web forum for public discussion of e-book standards

2nd International Digital Curation Conference presentations

Presentations from the 2nd International Digital Curation Conference: Digital Data Curation in Practice - 21-22 November 2006 - Glasgow, Scotland - are now available online

HighWire Press launches its 1000th journal site

HighWire Press celebrates the launch of its 1000th journal site, the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. The Society has been publishing mathematical research papers since 1865, now with the assistance of Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, one of HighWire's premier publishing partners. "Reaching 1000 journals on HighWire is an exciting achievement. Beginning with several high-impact science and medicine journals in 1995, we now offer an affordable and customizable online home to journals from all disciplines," said John Sack, Director of HighWire Press

Copac: New Interface Trial

There is a new Copac interface available for testing on the experimental Copac v3. Note that the interface is still under development and not all the usual features are available. The colour of the interface will change before the live version is released

The Internet Archive receives Microsoft Education Award

The Internet Archive has received the Microsoft Education Award from the San Jose Tech Museum's Tech Award program

OCLC Members Council discusses values of the cooperative

OCLC Members Council discussed the history of cooperatives and how OCLC and its member libraries share values that have strengthened each individual institution and the organization as a whole after nearly 40 years in a radically changing environment. Following the three-day meeting, many delegates participated in an event to celebrate the life and accomplishments of Frederick G. Kilgour, founder of the OCLC cooperative, who died July 31

Using Metadata to organise an online collection

Using Metadata to organise an online collection - David Bruce describes a classic information science project to filter, classify and tag the contents for three different categories of user

Monday, November 27, 2006

London: A Life in Maps

From 24 November visitors to the British Library at St Pancras will be able to see London as they have never seen it before. The Library's major winter exhibition, London : A Life in Maps (24 November 2006-4 March 2007) uses historic maps, both iconic and obscure, to reveal the driving passions behind the development of the city over 2000 years. Beginning with a gold coin from 310 depicting the walled Roman settlement of 'Londinium' and progressing through the ever larger, more detailed and spectacular depictions of the Tudor and Stuart eras, to the improvements and squalor of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries and, finally, renderings of the city's Olympic and post-Olympic future, London : A Life in Maps traces an epic visual journey

Dawkins takes fight against religion into the classroom

Richard Dawkins, the Oxford geneticist, best-selling author and campaigning atheist, is to take his battle against God into Britain's schools after setting up a foundation to counter the religious indoctrination of young people. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs for teachers to fight the "educational scandal" that has seen the growth in popularity of "pseudo science" and "irrational" ideas - The Independent

Information Today is blogging Online Information 2006

Information Today is blogging Online Information 2006 from London, UK

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Journal Watch Oncology and Hematology

The Massachusetts Medical Society has announced that Journal Watch Oncology and Hematology is now available online. Journal Watch Oncology and Hematology summarizes important medical journal articles about a wide variety of oncology and hematology topics, including leukemia, anemia, lymphoma, thrombosis, and hemochromatosis

Information World Review to blog Online Information conference

Information World Review will be blogging live from the Online Information conference. The blog also has an RSS feed

CyberWatcher

CyberWatcher has launched a new search engine developed specifically for the news industry. An automated rating of news combined with a patented crawler enables a fully personalized news service

CAB Abstracts Plus has been released

CAB Abstracts Plus is designed to provide users with access to thousands of additional documents that are considered difficult to obtain, yet are central to a researcher's knowledge needs. These include a range of rare material from journals and conference proceedings to distribution maps of plant pests and diseases and are linked directly from the CAB Abstracts database

LibWorm

LibWorm is intended to be a search engine, a professional development tool, and a current awareness tool for people who work in libraries or care about libraries. LibWorm collects updates from about 1400 RSS feeds (and growing). The contents of these feeds are then available for searching, and search results can themselves be output as an RSS feed that the user can subscribe to either in his/her favourite aggregator or in LibWorm's built-in aggregator

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Coffee's on, dusty books are out at UMass library

To its 3 million volumes of books, the personal papers of US Representative Silvio O. Conte, and the works of William Butler Yeats, the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts has added more features: a café, a lounge, and cellphone isolation booths. With students shunning its 28 stories and opting to conduct research by mouse click, the library is on an outreach offensive, shelving once-forbidding rules and replacing an old circulation counter with a coffee bar, where hot drinks and soda are for sale and an assortment of pastries are on display behind the counter. Chicken wing deliveries are allowed, along with other previously banned activities, like cell phone chatter - Boston.com

Weblogs Compendium has a new home

Please note that the Weblogs Compendium has been moved to a new server. Please update your bookmarks

Organising Digital Information and Knowledge

Organising Digital Information and Knowledge - This one-day course covers all modern tools for organising information, focusing on taxonomies and thesauri, and gives participants the chance to construct an outline organisation of their own - 14 December 2006 - London, UK

British Book Design and Production Awards

Winners of the British Book Design and Production Awards have been announced

e-publications@Bond

e-publications@Bond is a repository of research and scholarly output of researchers at Bond University (Australia). The service is offered by the University Library. Faculty, researchers, and students associated with Bond University are invited to deposit digital materials for long-term preservation and world-wide electronic accessibility

CLA/3M Canada Award for Achievement in Technical Services

CLA/3M Canada Award for Achievement in Technical Services - To recognize achievement in technical services in order to encourage innovation and excellence; share new ideas or innovative approaches to technical services problems with other libraries so that they can incorporate them or build on them, as appropriate; foster high morale in technical services units; and raise the profile of technical services within individual libraries and across the Canadian library community

International Journal of Digital Curation

The International Journal of Digital Curation is a new peer-reviewed journal entirely devoted to papers, articles and news items on curation of digital objects and related issues. The journal is published in electronic form, twice a year

Friday, November 24, 2006

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: General Knowledge. Answers here.

1. Which famous detective first appeared in the 1887 story "A Study in Scarlet"?
2. Who founded the Franciscan order of friars?
3. In which city is Karl Marx buried?
4. Is the River Limpopo in Africa, India or South America?
5. In the American flag, the Stars and Stripes, how many stripes are there?
6. Which famous Indian was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in 1948?
7. What is the highest mountain in the Alps?
8. In which country was film actor Arnold Schwarzenegger born?
9. Who was prime minister of Britain from 1951 to 1955?
10. In the Scottish city of Edinburgh, there is a memorial to a dog who watched over the grave of his master from 1852 to 1872. By what name is the dog known?

Springer and AOCS in publishing partnership

Springer has announced a new publishing partnership with the American Oil Chemists' Society (AOCS). Beginning in January 2007, Springer will publish AOCS's three journals Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society, Journal of Surfactants and Detergents, and Lipids. All three journals are peer-reviewed and edited by leading experts in the respective fields

Virtual Rules OK? Developing a Policy for the Digital Collection

UKeiG Course: Virtual Rules OK? Developing a Policy for the Digital Collection - 28 March, 2007 - The John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester. Course outline: One of the greatest responsibilities librarians have is that of developing and managing a pertinent and dynamic collection - indeed, it may be one of the fundamental arts of the librarian. Collection management comprises a series of complex activities and procedures which now encompass the virtual collection as well as the physical collection. These activities include selection, evaluation, acquisition, collection evaluation and review, preservation and promotion

Ingenta wraps up more publisher signings

Ingenta recently announced that a further 8 new publishers have contracted to include their content in the IngentaConnect scholarly research platform. "The company's increased stability and strengthened proposition has encouraged a total of 28 new publishers to partner with IngentaConnect thus far in 2006, a more than 50% increase on the number of publishers signed up in the whole of 2005"

LISU Annual Library Statistics 2006

LISU has just published the last in its long-running statistical series supported by the Museums Libraries & Archives Council and its predecessors, summarising activity in a broad range of library sectors, the Annual Library Statistics 2006

Biblio Tech Review - November 2006

Biblio Tech Review - November 2006 issue now available

Blawg.org relaunched as Blawg.com

Blawg.org, the source for Legal Blogs, Podcasts & News Feeds, has been relaunched as Blawg.com, with a new interface and features

Thursday, November 23, 2006

Winners of 2006 John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity

John Hope Franklin, 91, and Yu Ying-shih, 76, have been named the recipients of the third John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. Endowed by Library of Congress benefactor John W. Kluge, the Kluge Prize rewards lifetime achievement in the wide range of disciplines not covered by the Nobel prizes, including history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion, criticism in the arts and humanities, and linguistics. Each awardee will receive half of the $1 million prize

Free online journal issues from Blackwell Publishing

Blackwell Publishing is offering free online access to sample issues of leading literature journals. Articles are fully searchable and include hot-linked references to cited articles in other journals through CrossRef. There are also 'forward links' to citing articles, improving the quality of your research time

Netskills workshops

Netskills has announced its programme of workshops for November 2006 to July 2007

Elsevier/LIRG Research Award 2006/7

The Elsevier/LIRG research award is designed to promote research in library and information science. The aim of the award is to encourage and facilitate research by practitioners in the field. The closing date for applications is 28 February 2007

ACS Digital Library

The ACS Digital Library provides international quality, magazines, journal articles and conference papers, covering innovative research and practice in Information and Communications Technologies. This service is provided free to the ICT profession by the Australian Computer Society as part of its commitment to ensure the beneficial use of technology for the community

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - November 23, 2006 now available

CILIP Carnegie Greenaway Anniversary Panel announced

The CILIP Carnegie Kate Greenaway Anniversary Panel has been announced

New features for Google Book Search

Google has announced some new features for its Google Book Search service

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Francisco Partners to acquire Endeavor Information Systems from Elsevier

Francisco Partners has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Elsevier for the acquisition of 100% of the shares of Endeavor Information Systems, Inc., an Elsevier company. Endeavor will be merged with Ex Libris, which was acquired by Francisco Partners earlier this year. The combined entity will retain the Ex Libris Group name and be headed by Matti Shem Tov, president and chief executive officer of Ex Libris

CSA/Ulrich's Serials Librarianship Award

Presented by the ALCTS Serials Section, the CSA/Ulrich's Serials Librarianship Award consists of a citation and $1,500 donated by CSA. The awards are given for distinguished contributions to serials librarianship, including such activities as leadership in serials-related activities through participation in professional associations and/or library education programs; contributions to the body of serials literature; conduct of research in the area of serials; development of tools or methods to enhance access to or management of serials; and other advances leading to a better understanding of the field of serials. The deadline for nominations is December 15, 2006

2006 Carnegie medal nominations

The nominations for the 2006 Carnegie medal - the UK's most prestigious children's literary award - have been unveiled, and titles range from Jeanette Winterson's ideas-fuelled novel of time and space, Tanglewreck, to Conn and Hal Iggulden's attempt to get boys climbing trees and building go-carts, The Dangerous Book for Boys. From The Guardian

New NetLibrary Subject Sets now available

OCLC NetLibrary has announced the availability of 32 all-new Subject Sets. The Subject Sets are grouped by four general library types: Academic, Community College, Corporate & Government, and Public. Covering key topics including business, nursing, engineering, career development, information technology and much more, Subject Sets contain front list titles from leading publishers with no duplication from set to set

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Music Library Association 2007 conference

The 2007 joint conference of the Music Library Association and the Society for American Music - February 28-March 4, 2007 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

MOLA 25th Annual Conference

Major Orchestra Librarians' Association 25th Annual Conference - April 13-16, 2007 - Chicago, IL

4th European Semantic Web Conference - ESWC 2007

ESWC 2007 will take place 3-7, June 2007 in the Tyrol region of Innsbruck, Austria. This year's event will host a variety of workshops, tutorials, demonstrations and posters dedicated to the most current trends in Semantic Web technologies. ESWC is hosted by the European Semantic Systems Initiative (ESSI), which is a cluster of major European research projects in the area of Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services

Boston Search Engine Meeting program available

The program for the 2007 Search Engine Meeting (April 2007, Boston) has just been released. Early-bird registration is also now open

Dymocks puts 200,000 books online

Australian owned book chain Dymocks has launched a new website which will allow customers to check out 200,000 book titles online. Pressure from amazon.com and other online sites was forcing Australian bookstores to develop a strong online presence to compete and survive, Dymocks CEO Don Grover said

IMLS launches new conservation initiative

Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), has launched Connecting to Collections: The IMLS Conservation Initiative. In her keynote address to the annual meeting of Heritage Preservation, Dr. Radice described key components of the initiative, which will be the centerpiece of the Institute's tenth anniversary year

Digiblog

ALCTS, the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, is sponsoring Digiblog, a blog created initially in conjunction with the ALCTS Midwinter Symposium (2007), as a forum for dialogue on the critical issues facing our profession

National Library of Medicine Awards $75 Million for Informatics Research Training

Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has announced that the NLM is awarding 18 five-year grants, totaling more than $75million, for research training in biomedical informatics, the discipline that seeks to apply computer and communications technology to the field of health

Openarchives.eu

Openarchives.eu is the European guide to OAI-PMH compliant digital repositories in the world. This is not a search engine to find metadata stored in the repositories but a searchable index of the repositories themselves

LLRX.com November 12, 2006 update

LLRX.com November 12, 2006 update is now online. LLRX.com is a unique, free Web journal dedicated to providing legal, library, IT/IS, marketing and administrative professionals with the most up-to-date information on a wide range of Internet research and technology-related issues, applications, resources and tools, since 1996

Open Doors - Strengthening community and library links

Open Doors - Strengthening community and library links - 25 January 2007 - Leeds Central Library, UK

LITA scholarships available in library and information science

The Library and Information Technology Association has announced that applications are being accepted for three scholarships as follows:
LITA/Christian Larew Memorial Scholarship (sponsored by Informata.com) for $3,000
LITA/LSSI Minority Scholarship for $2,500
LITA/OCLC Minority Scholarship for $3,000

LEADS from LAMA blog

LEADS from LAMA blog - LAMA news and information about ALA and other organizations of interest to LAMA members including awards, conferences, important dates and deadlines and other resources. The blog format will permit news to be published more rapidly and to be available through RSS feeds. Readers may comment on entries, and submit items for posting

Monday, November 20, 2006

National Workshop on LIS Teacher and the Digital Future

National Workshop on LIS Teacher and the Digital Future jointly organised by the Central Library of IIT Madras and IATLIS - 17-19 January, 2007

CLA Task Force on Open Access

In response to member interest, the Canadian Library Association has created a Task Force on Open Access. The mandate of this Task Force is to prepare a report for CLA Executive Council providing:
(1) a draft Policy Statement on Open Access in the Canadian Library Association
(2) recommendations on procedures and practices to implement the Policy should it be approved
(3) a draft CLA Position Statement on Open Access in Canadian libraries

Blackwell acquisition update

The Financial Times reports more details on Blackwell's acquisition by John Wiley & Sons: "Blackwell Publishing, which has been embroiled in a long-running feud between members of the controlling family, has agreed to be acquired by US publisher John Wiley & Sons for £572m in cash. The proposed deal is expected to net £100m for Nigel Blackwell, Blackwell Publishing's chairman and largest shareholder with a 45 per cent voting stake."

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Royal Astronomical Society to publish books

A new series of books, primarily aimed at the academic market, but including history and popular titles for scientists and amateur astronomers, is to be launched by the Royal Astronomical Society. RAS President, Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson, explains: "We are aiming to publish books of a wide variety of types and levels, but all at the highest scientific standard. We are primarily interested in exploiting the Society’s assets – its members, its archives, its meetings – to advance our sciences through all kinds of book publishing". The books will be published by Springer

Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation free trial

The free trial period for the Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation will end on February 28, 2007

Saturday, November 18, 2006

DigCCurr2007

DigCCurr2007 - An International Symposium on Digital Curation - Focus: "What Digital Curators Do and What They Need to Know?" - April 18-20, 2007 - Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Creating a positive media image for your service

Creating a positive media image for your service - In an increasingly media dominated world, funding and support often go to those who present the best image of themselves through the media, rather than the most deserving. Learn how to construct and present the best image for your service to ensure continuing support and encouragement at this one-day course - 10 January 2007 - London, UK

MuseGlobal and Berkeley Electronic Press

MuseGlobal Inc. will be adding Berkeley Electronic Press as the 200th participant in its Content Partner Program, now in its fourth year. Founded by professors committed to solving the scholarly communications crisis, the Berkeley Electronic Press ('bepress') publishes high quality peer-reviewed electronic journals in the social sciences, law, health and medicine, and science and technology at sustainable prices and with library-friendly policies

Internet Librarian 2006 presentations available

Links to presentations given at Internet Librarian 2006 - October 23-25, 2006 - Monterey, CA - are now available

Blatant Berry Blog

Blatant Berry Blog: New views of the library landscape - by Jonh Berry, Editor-at-large at Library Journal

Humphry/OCLC/Forest Press Award for International Librarianship

The American Library Association is accepting nominations for the 2006 John Ames Humphry/OCLC/Forest Press Award for International Librarianship. The deadline for nominations is December 1, 2006. The award consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, which are presented at the International Relations Round Table Reception at the ALA Annual Conference. The award is given to a librarian or person who has made significant contributions to international librarianship

ALCTS announces 50th anniversary events

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services has announced a stellar lineup of events to highlight the ALCTS 50th anniversary celebration, "Commemorating our Past, Celebrating our Present, Creating our Future." Highlights include Midwinter's Anniversary Year Kickoff Reception, the ALCTS National Conference, Gala Dinner Cruise and President's Program featuring Peter Morville, author of "Ambient Findability" and president of Semantic Studios. A special ALCTS Anniversary web site will publicize all events, link to registration and serve up photos, trivia, and other surprises

Friday, November 17, 2006

Wiley to acquire Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd

"John Wiley & Sons, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the outstanding shares of Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd., one of the world's foremost academic and professional publishers. The purchase price of £572 million will be financed with a combination of debt and cash. Wiley has received irrevocable commitments from the principal Blackwell shareholders to sell their shares to Wiley. Additional details will be provided after the closing of the transaction, which is anticipated early in 2007"

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: Place Names. Answers here.

1. Which American city in Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, who gave it a name which, in Greek, means "the city of brotherly love"?
2. Which part of the Mediterranean coastline of northeast Spain has a name which, in Spanish, means "wild coast"?
3. What is the name of the largest city in India, which was named after the village of Kalikata?
4. Which city in Brazil has a name which, in Portuguese, means "river of January"?
5. Which urban settlement in South Africa got its name from being a township southwest of Johannesburg?
6. What is the capital of New Zealand, which was named after a duke called Arthur Wellesley?
7. Which old quarter of Paris, on the right bank of the Seine, has a name which is French for "swamp"?
8. Which state in Mexico is named from the Spanish words for "true cross"?
9. What is the state capital of Hawaii, which gets its name from a Hawaiian word that means "sheltered bay"?
10. How did the Languedoc province of southern France get its name?