ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery) announced today that it is providing its institutional library customers with advanced electronic archiving services to preserve their valuable electronic resources. These services, provided by Portico and CLOCKSS, address the scholarly community’s critical need for long-term solutions that assure reliable, secure, deliverable access to their burgeoning digital collection of scholarly works. ACM is offering these services to protect the vast online collection of resources in its Digital Library (DL), which are used by over 1 million computing professionals and students worldwide.
“By partnering with Portico and CLOCKSS, we are able to meet a growing demand in the library community for a trusted, reliable third-party archive, and to ensure that digital collections remain accessible to future scholars, researchers, and students,” said Scott Delman, ACM Group Publisher. “Scientific discovery and the educational process are not possible without reliable access to the accumulated scholarship of the past and secure preservation of the scholarly record, and these agreements are a clear step forward with the relationship between the ACM and the library community.”
By investing in long-term digital preservation of content, ACM’s aim is to make it easier for libraries to accelerate their transition away from print and free up resources invested in print collections in favor of new and innovative electronic products and services.
Much More After a Click
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Archive for the ‘Information Industry’ Category
Digital Preservation: ACM Will Partner with Portico and CLOCKSS for Preservation of Its Digital Library Resources
Friday, November 6th, 2009Open Book Alliance Releases Baseline Requirements for Revised Google Book Settlement Proposal
Friday, November 6th, 2009On Monday (November 9th), a revised proposed settlement (aka Settlement 2.0) from Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publisher will be released. The Open Book Alliance (OBA) has posted on its web site what they call “baseline requirements” for the Settlement 2.0.
The Special Libraries Association and The New York Library Association are members of the OBA.
The Open Book Alliance is issuing the following baseline requirements that the new settlement proposal must meet if it is to achieve those critical objectives. These requirements reflect the collective expression of concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice, authors, publishers, academics, libraries, foreign nations, state Attorneys General, consumer advocacy groups, and many others, and thus we think it appropriate to review the revised settlement within this framework.
[Snip]
+ The settlement must not grant Google an exclusive set of rights (de facto or otherwise) or result in any one entity gaining control over access to and distribution of the world’s largest digital database of books.
+ Authors and other rights holders must retain meaningful rights and the ability to determine the use of their works that have been scanned by Google.
+ The settlement must result in the creation of a true digital library that grants all researchers and users, commercial and non-commercial, full access that guarantees the ability to innovate on the knowledge it contains.
+ All class members must be treated equitably.
+ The settlement cannot provide for competition by making others engage in future litigation.
+ Congress must retain the exclusive authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to set copyright policy.
+ All rights holders impacted by the settlement must have a meaningful ability to receive notice, understand its terms and opt-out.
+ The parties that negotiated the settlement must live under the terms to which they seek to bind others, rather than their own separately negotiated arrangements.
Source: Open Book Alliance
See Also: Press Review: Judge Chin Sets Nov. 9 Deadline For Revised Google Book Settlement (via ResourceShelf, October 7, 2009)
Factiva Expanding Web Presence in Wall Street Journal Professional Edition
Friday, November 6th, 2009The primary attraction for the new Wall Street Journal Professional Edition [an online resource] lies in its incorporation of Factiva content. The service will integrate content from 17,000 Factiva sources with WSJ.com content to create news flows covering key industries, companies, etc. Users will also be able to search a 1-year archive of Factiva and a 2-year archive of WSJ.com content. The price will run $49 a month or about $600 a year; that [our emphasis] will include access to full-text articles for no additional transactional pricing, unlike the $2.95 per article paid under most other Factiva subscriptions. The product has already launched with enterprise customers and will launch for consumers in January 2010.
Much More in the Complete Article including a Screenshot of the WSJ Professional Edition
Source: Info Today NewsBreaks
MLA to Include International Bibliography in the Summon Web-Scale Discovery Service
Friday, November 6th, 2009From the Announcement:
The Modern Language Association (MLA) has signed an agreement with Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest, to include [its] MLA International Bibliography in the Summon web-scale discovery service. The agreement enables the Bibliography to be discoverable through the Summon service…
The MLA International Bibliography provides a subject index to print and electronic books, articles and web sites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Coverage includes literature from all over the world–Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. Folklore is represented by folk literature, music, art, rituals, and belief systems. Linguistics and language materials range from history and theory of linguistics, comparative linguistics, semantics, stylistics, and syntax to translation. Other topics include literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater), history of printing and publishing, rhetoric and composition, and teaching. Compiled by the staff of the MLA Office of Bibliographic Information Services with the cooperation of more than 100 contributing bibliographers in the United States and abroad, it presently includes over 2.2 million records with 72,000 books and articles added annually.
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Wikimedia and comScore Announce Partnership; Top 10 Countries by Engagement on Wikimedia Sites
Thursday, November 5th, 2009Wikimedia Foundation today announced an on-going partnership with comScore that will help expand the Foundation’s awareness of global Web audience trends and demographics, particularly for top ten projects like Wikipedia. To support the partnership, comScore is providing access to its global Web measurement tool, Media Metrix, which the non-profit Foundation will use to augment its global site-usage statistics, interpret project participation and editing trends, and develop a long-term strategy to expand awareness and usage in new markets – such as Asia
Top 10 Countries by Average Engagement on Wikimedia Foundation Sites, September 2009
Worldwide 12.5 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
Japan 17.0 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
New Zealand 16.1 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
Mexico 15.6 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
United Kingdom 15.5 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
Canada 15.3 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
United States 14.7 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
Hong Kong 14.5 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
Australia 14.3 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
Colombia 14.1 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
Puerto Rico 14.1 (Average Minutes per Visitor)
Source: comScore Media Metrix
New Online: A Browsable List of All Magazines Available in Google Book Search Database
Thursday, November 5th, 2009This is really great to see and something we’ve been wanting for a long time.
Remember, Google Book Search also includes some digitized magazines. Many people, including the ResourceShelf team have wanted to know the titles of the magazines/serials in the GBS database. In other words, we wanted a titles list or just some way of seeing all of the publications at one time.
Well, today is our lucky day. Nice work Google!
You can can browse the list (either in list or cover format) and then click to visit the magazine(s) of interest. You can also click the “about the magazine” link (one, two, or three lines below the magazine title) to see what what specific issues are available (organized by year). Another way to get to the same place is by clicking the “Browse All Issues” link (again, one, two, or three lines below the magazine title).
According to a post on Inside Google Book Search (a Google blog) there are 88 magazine available at the moment. We will have to go one by one to get the exact dates available for each title. It will be interesting to monitor how often and how many new titles are added to the list and if the backfiles of the 45 current titles grow larger. Score another one for Google listening to its users.
45 titles is a small amount compares to let’s say a Gale/Cengage General OneFile (7100 full-text titles), ProQuest’s ABI/Inform (Over 3,000 titles), or EBSCOhost’s MasterFILE Premier (nearly 1700 titles) but I mention these comparisons for two reasons. First, don’t count Google out of anything. These days if Google wants to “play” in magazines and serials, they will play and play hard, too. Just look at how Google is shaking-up the GPS device marketplace with the launch of Google Mobile Navigation. Second, for those readers who are not in the info/library profession, it’s quite possible that you have 24×7x365 access to the databases (and many others for free) via your public, university, or special library.
OK, since we now have help with magazines, how about another challenge? A list of journals in the Google Scholar database. True, Google finds material through crawling the open web for “Scholar” content but they also work with publishers to make other content accessible. Even a list of titles and dates from these publishers would be a good start.
We will be on the lookout for new magazine titles, increases in backfiles of the 45 titles currently available, and a Google Scholar titles list. Stay tuned!
Source: Inside Google Book Search
Hat Tip: Larry
Hat Tip: Paula H.
Data Held in Your Google Account Now Accessible From a Single Location
Thursday, November 5th, 2009At a European privacy conference in Spain Thursday, the company unveiled a new service called Google Dashboard that summarizes the data that Google collects in users’ accounts for products like Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, Web History, Checkout, Reader and YouTube. Users will be able to adjust their privacy settings for the various Google products directly from the dashboard.
Much of the information was previously available in the accounts and settings sections for each product, so Dashboard simply brings all that information together in one place.
[Snip]
[Our emphasis] Dashboard provides information only about users’ Google accounts for products that require users to log in or products where the log-in is optional. It does not address the search records of people who are not logged into Google or the cookie data that Google uses to aim ads at people. Many advocates say that the collection and storage of such data may raise the biggest privacy concerns.
[Snip]
Still, privacy advocates hailed the product.
“It is a significant step forward in terms of trying to unite the user experience for people who use Google products,” said Ari Schwartz, chief operating officer of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an independent advocacy group that receives some funding from Google and other technology companies. “We still need a lot more to protect consumers’ privacy.”
Source: Bits Blog, NY Times
See Also: Search Engine Land
EBSCOhost and Summon from Serials Solutions To Offer Mobile Friendly Versions
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009Thanks to ResourceShelf friend (he’s also quoted in the piece), Gerry McKiernan at Iowa State University, for letting us know about a new LJ article by Josh Hedro that discusses new mobile mobile friendly versions of Summon from Serial Solutions and EBSCOhost.
Summon from Serials Solutions
The Summon mobile interface should provide students and researchers most of the same features and options as the regular search interface, including access to both local materials and electronic resources available from the library. The mobile search site will debut today in time for the opening of the Charleston Conference in Charleston, SC.
The mobile search option is an alternative interface, [our emphasis] not a separate downloadable app.
UPDATE: Here is the official news release from Summon regarding their mobile service.
EBSCOhost
EBSCO will soon release EBSCOhost Mobile; according to a post on EBSCO’s support site, “the interface will include many features for an enhanced mobile experience, is optimized for internet-enabled handheld devices, and qualified for all the major SmartPhones (such as iPhone, Blackberry and Treo).”
ResourceShelf has also learned:
+ Mobile functionality can be turned on or off with desired options by the staff who handle online databases
+ The mobile service will be available for all EBSCOhost databases that use the EBSCOhost interface (there are a few that don’t),
+ A library can select which databases to “mobilize”
+ A persistent link is then available which can be placed on the library web site (portal)
+ Another method allows users with an id password to go to new short urls
The article goes on to ask an essential question. Will searchers utilize these tools? Gerry McKiernan says:
“At this point [mobile-specific searches] are supplemental, or impulse, such that if you’re on the road and you want to search a particular resource … you could do that,” he said. But, he added, “The mobile phone is becoming an all-in-one tool for a variety of functions,” and as that happens, users will come to expect some kind of mobile interface to the tools they’re grown accustomed to using.
Source: Library Journal
ProQuest Releases Digitized Archive of the Detroit Free Press (1831-1922)
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009The Detroit Free Press joins many other newspapers as part of ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Overall, the collection contains more than 25 million pages dating back to 1764.
News from the Motor City — from before statehood to the American Civil War to the birth and growth of the automotive industry — is now available in ProQuest Historical Newspapers, the definitive digital archive offering cover-to-cover, full-text, and full-image articles for significant newspapers dating back to the 18th Century. The Detroit Free Press (1831?1922) provides one of the deepest historical files and comprehensive coverage of the social, political and economic development of the Midwest, and offers new avenues into understanding the history of Detroit and Michigan.
Here’s a list of ProQuest Historic Newspapers:
Atlanta Constitution—1868-1945
The Baltimore Sun—1837-1985
The Boston Globe—1872-1926
The Chicago Tribune—1849-1986
The Christian Science Monitor—1908-1996
Detroit Free Press—1831-1922
Hartford Courant—1764-1984
Los Angeles Times—1881-1986
The New York Times with Index—1851-2006
New York Tribune—1841-1922
San Francisco Chronicle—1865-1922
St. Louis Post-Dispatch—1874-1922
Wall Street Journal—1889-1992
Washington Post—1877-1993
International Newspapers:
The Guardian & The Observer—1791-2003
Irish Times & Weekly Irish Times—1859-2008
The Scotsman—1817-1950
Black Newspapers:
Atlanta Daily World—1931-2003
The Baltimore Afro-American—1893-1988
Cleveland Call & Post—1934-1991
Chicago Defender—1910-1975
Los Angeles Sentinel—1934-2005
New York Amsterdam News—1922-1993
The Norfolk Journal & Guide—1921-2003
The Philadelphia Tribune—1912-2001
Source: ProQuest
Ken Aulleta, Author of “‘Googled’: Biography Of A Company, And An Age” Chats with Terry Gross on NPR
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009Noted author Ken Auletta’s new book, ‘Googled’: Biography Of A Company, And An Age, was released earlier this week and on Monday, November 2, 2009 he was interview on NPR (National Public Radio).
Linked Here You’ll Find:
+ A 30 Minute Radio Interview with Ken Auletta on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. You can listen online or download the file.
+A Text Transcript of the Radio Interview
Source: NPR
Hat Tip: All Points Blog
Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle Profiled in Forbes
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009Brewster Kahle has many titles. These days he’s best known as founder of the Internet Archive (home of The Wayback Machine) and founding member of the Open Content Alliance.
“We have to have universal access to everything, just like a library,” he says. “Do we want that under a single corporation’s control? It is openness, not corporate control, that propels capitalism.”
[Snip]
Digital libraries will shape education, creativity and our shared intellectual heritage, Kahle declares. As founder and director of the Internet Archive, Kahle has posted online digital copies of 1.7 million books, 100,000 hours of television, 200,000 video clips, 70,000 concerts and 415,000 audio recordings. All that material can be downloaded for free from the Archive’s Web site.
[Snip]
Bookserver* uses a range of open source and proprietary electronic book standards, search algorithms, editing tools and libraries. The architecture, as Kahle calls it, potentially separates manufacturers of devices from control over much of the content inside them. It also preserves the idea of the lending library–if you “check out” a volume, others cannot access it in the time allowed to you. Publishers sell their books in the system using credit cards.
The article continues with more about Google Book Search and Kahle’s background.
We were surprised not to see The Wayback Machine mentioned in the stats about the Internet Archive listed above. At the moment (and we know of nothing coming), “Wayback” is probably the best chance a researcher has to access a page no longer on the Internet. Material in “Wayback” dates back to 1996 and as of today, contains more than 150 BILLION archived pages. The Internet Archive also offers a fee-based service that helps organizations organize and archive their web content. It’s called, Archive-It.
Source: Forbes
Dialog and Its RSS Feeds
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009Last week Dialog announced it now has a Twitter feed.
While we were on the site the other day we came across several RSS feeds that have escaped our attention. All of the following links below point directly to the RSS feed except where noted.
+ Dialog Updated Blue Sheets
You’ll be notified as they are updated/released.
+ Database Changes
This is a new page but the RSS feed is not working. We will monitor.
“Details about new fields, reloads, and other recent and forthcoming database-specific updates.”
+ Dialog Training News
This feed has not been updated since late September.
Quantum2 is the Dialog leadership development program for information professionals. It provides the resources to help you transform your organization…the power to lead change.
Nice Job: MSN Goes Live with a Preview Version of Completely Redesigned Home Page
Wednesday, November 4th, 2009Direct to MSN Home Page Preview
Overall, a much improved clean look to the page and after only a few minutes on the site we found it easy to navigate.
If you want to compare the old design with the new one, here are the links:
Old Design ||| New Design
Most significant redesign in 10 years
Cut clutter and reduced links on home page by 50%
Neighborhood news and video is part of the home page
Cool! Easy access from the homepage to Facebook, Twitter, and Windows Live services
One of the options in the settings (top right on page) allows you to change the font size
Other Notes
A Bing search box is at the top of every page.
Other tabs on the home page include:
+ Movies
+ Maps
+ Jobs
+ Popular Searches
+ Shopping
News Content is divided into categories:
News, Entertainment Sports, Money, Lifestyle
Cursor over any of them and you’ll see more options (aka things to do)
Selecting “More” offers numerous additional features including video, real estate, and shopping
Access to the “Local Edition” is located above the green bar (right side of page).You’ll find news, a clickable map, a local directory, video (if available) and lottery numbers.
Greg Sterling from SEL offers more facts analysis.
45% of Bing’s traffic comes via the MSN portal
The new MSN will roll out globally over the next several months. Interestingly the look of the MSN portal may be slightly different country to country, depending on variables unique to each local market. Microsoft also says that it will bring the new MSN experience to mobile devices as well.
Source: MSN Blog, Search Engine Land
Report Preview: CIBER Completes Global Survey of Library Concerns, Challenges Trends, and Best Practices in Tough Economic Times
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009CIBER research group at University College London today announced the completion of its global library survey that concerns challenges, trends, and best practices in tough economic times.
To register for a free copy of the complete report visit this page. It’s scheduled to be released on Thursday at The Charleston Conference during a presentation by executives from CIBER, YPB, and ebrary.
What Follows are a Few Key Findings From the Study:
+ The current financial year is a tough one for academic libraries, with 34.7% of institutions receiving a total library budget that is at least 5% smaller than the previous year (excluding inflation).
+ The outlook in two years’ time is mixed, with 31.4% expecting their total library budget to be smaller than in the current financial year, 40.1% about the same, and 28.4%
expecting an increase.+ Overall, resource budgets are more vulnerable than personnel, services or infrastructure, with monographs and print journals being the most vulnerable to cutbacks.
+ When trimming their resources budget, libraries were least likely to cut e-books, followed by electronic-only serials and database subscriptions.
+ 52.5% of libraries view the acceleration of print to digital as the most effective option for balancing their budgets, with subscription as the most popular method.
A total of 800 libraries (academic, government, public, and others) from around the world participated in the study.
Summary ||| Register for Full Text (Free)
Source: ebrary
More Digitization Underway: This Time Footnote.com is Digitizing the U.S. Census from 1790-1930
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009Footnote.com is once again partnering the National Records and Administration Agency (NARA) to digitize massive amounts of content and then make that material available, often for a fee, available online. Footnote is becoming–and for some has already become–and important resource for historians, genealogists, students, and others.
This time around, Footnote.com, is digitizing all publicly available Census materials from 1790-1930. These dates represent the period when all materials (including names) from a given census have been made publicly available. Through its partnership with NARA, Footnote.com will add more than 9.5 million pages of content when the census database project is complete. We’ve learned that Footnote.com is digitizing all of this material on their own.
From a Footnote.com Blog Post:
With over 60 million historical records already online, Footnote.com will use the U.S. Census records to tie content together, creating a pathway to discover additional records that previously have been difficult to find.
The Interactive Census Project Home Page offers much more detail and examples. You can also create email alerts when new states are added to the census database. On the lower-left side of the page you can track the progress of each census has been digitized. As you’ll see, the 1860 census is complete and the 1930 census is just about done.
Searching is free, Footnote provides numerous options to refine your search (here’s an example). Accessing the complete record is fee-based either subscribing to the database for a annually or monthly. You can also by individual documents for $2.95. Btw, Footnote.com also sells institutional access to libraries through EBSCO.
Footnote looks at the census project as a “highway” to assist the researcher in finding more information in other databases.
If you’ve been reading ResourceShelf for a while you’ve seen an increasing number of mention their services. Here’s a list of a few of them,
+ In August of 2009. we posted on the release of a joint project with the National Archives (NARA) to digitize holocaust material.
+ In December of 2008, in a partnership with NARA, Footnote released the largest interactive World War II collection online.
+ In March, 2008 we posted about Footnote.com offering an interactive version of the Vietnam Wall.
Our first post about Footnote dates back to January, 2007.
If you run this search using the ResourceShelf database, you’ll be able to see and read all of our Footnote.com posts.
But wait, there’s more. A quick review of the Footnote “press room” offers up even more projects. You can learn about them here.
U.K.: Illegal Downloaders of Music Also Pay for Content
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Those who claimed not to use peer-to-peer filesharing sites such as The Pirate Bay spent a yearly average of just £44 [$72/U.S.].
Almost one in 10 of those questioned aged between 16 and 50 said they downloaded music illegally.
However, eight out of 10 of that group also bought CDs, vinyl and as MP3s.
A total of 1008 people in the UK took part in the online poll commissioned by researchers Demos.
Much More in the Complete Article
Source: BBC
Access the Complete Report (via this Demos Slide Deck)
Source: Demos
Survey of Higher Education Faculty: Use of Print & Electronic Library Collections of Scholarly Journals
Monday, November 2nd, 2009This new report was released today by Primary Research. The full text is fee-based but a few highlights from the report are available online.
The report is based on a representative survey of more than 550 higher education faculty in the United States and Canada. Faculty present their opinions on preferences for print or paper journal formats, degree of problems with archival access, use of url-catalog links to journals, extent to which their college library journal collection satisfies their scholarly needs, and frequency of database access and library visits. Data is broken out by 12 criteria including age, academic field or specialty, type of college, size of college, frequency of library use, and many other factors.
Here are Just a Few Findings From the Report:
+ Canadian faculty were more likely than American faculty to think of the paper copies as a waste of time – nearly 45% thought so.
+ In general, age was highly inversely correlated with the tendency to think of paper copies as wasteful and redundant when online versions were available.
+ Only 13.86% of faculty at research universities prefer paper to online journal formats.
+ Only a third of community college faculty express support for increased spending on academic journals while about 64.3% of faculty in MA/Ph.D. granting colleges expressed such support.
See Also: The Survey of Academic & Research Library Journal Purchasing Practices
Here’s another related fee-based report from a related Primary Research report.
Some Findings:
+ The libraries in the sample acquired a mean of more than 46% of their journal subscriptions in bundles of more then 50 titles.
+ The libraries in sample canceled a mean of 53 journal titles in the past year.
+ Mean spending on print edition only subscriptions was $130,721, less than a sixth of total spending.
+ About a quarter of the libraries in the sample believe that open access has already slowed the increase in journal prices.
+ 15.56% of the libraries in the sample have paid a publication fee on behalf of an author from their institution.
+ For 42.22% of the libraries in the sample, all new subscriptions to journals include electronic access.
+ More than 64% of the libraries in the sample keep track of their various journal subscriptions through use of a commercial software product.
+ In general, subscription agents seem to enjoy a relatively high level of customer satisfaction. On the issue of timeliness of service, none of the libraries in the sample said that they were highly dissatisfied with their subscription agent and only 2.22% said that they were dissatisfied.
+ Non-academic research libraries have done more than their academic counterparts to make sure that contracts renew at the same time. Smaller institutions, those with journal budgets of less than $100,000 per year, were less likely to make such efforts than libraries with higher budgets.
Source: Primary Research
Lists: Amazon.com Unveils Best Books of 2009, Including Editors’ Top 100 Books of the Year
Monday, November 2nd, 2009Well, it really is starting to be year-end list season. Just one post below this entry is the is the Publisher’s Week year-end list.
Now, it Amazon.com’s turn with numerous list, some from editors others from customers based on sales.
Amazon.com, Inc. today announced its picks for Best Books of 2009. This annual feature includes the Editors’ Picks for the Top 100 Books of the Year, Top 100 Customer Favorites, Top 10 lists for both editors and customers in nearly two dozen categories, including Literature & Fiction and Cooking, Food & Wine, as well as videos of the year.
It’s worth noting that twice near the top of the document Amazon.com points out that a “majority” of the titles on their Top 100 Books of the Year list are also available for the Kindle. It will be interesting to see next year at this time how many 2010 books are available for both the nook [coming soon from Barnes & Noble] and Kindle and which titles (if any) will be exclusive to one reader or another. Of course, there are other (with more coming) eReaders out there so we will have to watch closely to see what content is available for each device.
“Our editorial team spends the whole year reading new releases with our Best Books of the Year lists in mind, and every year it proves to be our most popular feature among our customers,” said Tom Nissley, senior editor of Amazon.com Books. “Deciding on our Top 100 Books can often get a little contentious, but [our emphasis] this year our choice for the Best Book of the Year, Colum McCann’s ‘Let the Great World Spin,’ was the closest we’ve ever come to a unanimous pick across the entire Amazon.com Books team. Many readers have already fallen in love with this moving story of New York City in the mid-‘70s, centered around Philippe Petit’s audaciously graceful tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with many more.”
Categories Include:
Our top 100 customer favorites are ranked according to customer orders on Amazon.com through October. (Only books published for the first time in 2009 are eligible.)
+ Editors’ Top 10: Literature & Fiction
+ Editors’ Picks: Children’s Books (Picture Books, Middle Readers, Teens)
+ Customers’ Top 10: Mystery & Thrillers
+ Best Books of 2009 on Your Kindle
Editors Picks ||| Customer Favorites
MANY more categories (both “Editors Picks” and “Customer Favorites”) can be found in the left margin of the 2009 list home page. In that same location you’ll find links to lists from 2000-2008.
Source: Amazon.com
The Complete Archive of National Geographic Magazine on Six DVD’s
Sunday, November 1st, 2009Every now and then a fee-based product comes around that we believe deserves your attention. The following is one of them.
Chris Pendleton on the Bing Blog reminds us that a major digitization project, every issue ever published of National Geographic from 1887-2008, is now available (it was officially released yesterday according to this media announcement) on 6 DVD’s or an external hard drive. That’s right, all of the writing, the legendary imagery, the supplement , even the advertisements are included. For many topics, Nat Geo magazine is a resource that documents people, places, and events, on a global scale. In other words, for all of the reasons just mentioned and many others, makes the magazine an important part of the historical record.
By the way, the reason it was mentioned on the Bing Blog is because Bing is providing some the technology that powers the digitized version this recently released collection.
Nat Geo uses Bing Maps in their Geobrowse functionality which allows you to browse a map anywhere in the world to find locations where relevant articles are referenced using geographic metadata.
Yes, we still love paper and those massive collections of past issues of the print version of National Geographic Magazine many people own (where are yours)? They’re also important.
That said, we also hear and read that for today’s student, it’s all about digital access. Yes, of course, that’s rather sad. However, a digitized archive of this size and scope can truly demonstrate the power of digital info technology for people of all ages and turn 120 years of content into important research and learning resources.
Another digitized archive of the magazine was released seven years abut this 120 year collection is the most complete version ever published with more content, more search options, saving/sharing tools, interactive maps, and more. One thing we noticed right of the bat is the that the new version is available for both PC and Mac. The “112 year version” was PC only.
Here are a few fast facts about the new collection. They were gleaned from Nat Geo site (including the video overview) and news release.
+ All Issues from October, 1888-December, 2008 are included
+ Six DVD’s include more than 200,000 pages; 300 wall map supplements, more than 8,400 articles; more than 250,000 photographs
+ All images scanned in high-resolution
+ Flip one page at a time, zoom, print
+ Geobrowse
A new Geobrowse function powered by Bing Maps that allows users with Internet access to search nearly 5,000 locations on a globe that are featured in the magazine’s archive of articles and maps.
+ Search by keyword, date, contributor, and topic; refine by date or content type
+ Browse by month or year
+ Create personalized reading lists; share these lists with other users in the Nat Geo community
+ Pre-loaded “favorite article lists” compiled by experts
National Geographic is selling the DVD’s for $69.95/US and the hard drive version for $199.95/US.
The lowest price we found as of Sunday November 1st was $42.78 from an Amazon.com Merchant. The DVD’s directly from Amazon.com are $44.99/US.
We’ve ordered a copy of the DVD’s and after spending some time with them we will report back.
