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    October 23rd, 2008LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    Aurora, Colo., October 22, 2008 — By all measures, the Reference Renaissance: Current and Future Trends conference, held in Denver (CO) this past August, was an unparalleled success. Nearly 500 attendees from five countries and 41 U.S. states participated in two days of thought-provoking, inspiring and practical presentations and workshops focused on established, emerging and merging areas of reference service. Conference presentations now are available, and a print collection of proceedings is scheduled to be published in 2009. Plans even now are underway for a 2010 conference.

    Participants across the board have raved about the variety and quality of the topics. From subjects as wide ranging as text and instant messaging services to marketing and merchandising tactics, predatory reference and new models and products, attendees chose from 36 sessions sorted into six tracks over the two-day conference. “The number and variety of sessions were excellent. We got so much out of two days!” commented one conference participant.

    Attendees also had the opportunity to attend product demos and meet with representatives from more than 20 vendors offering a wide range of products and services from reference databases to online tutoring to reference software. Strong support from sponsors RUSA, tutor.com, OCLC and others helped to make the conference possible.

    Coming from a broad cross-section of the library community including special, academic, public and school libraries, many participants appreciated the opportunity to network with their colleagues. Debbie Rossman, Westlake Porter Public Library (OH) reflected the feelings of many conference participants, saying “…this was absolutely the best conference I have ever attended. I feel recharged! Wonderful ideas and terrific enthusiasm.”

    The keynote address, “Reference in the Age of Wikipedia, Or Not…” was presented by David W. Lewis, Dean of the University Library, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. He examined how libraries attempt to sustain innovation as related to existing values and processes of the organization and how, by watching what customers do, rather than asking them what they want, libraries can become more user-oriented.

    The Plenary Session Panel on the second day created the opportunity for participants to express many diverse opinions. Titled “Theory Meets Practice: Educators and Directors Talk,” the panel presenters included R. David Lankes, Ph.D., Syracuse University; Jamie LaRue, Douglas County Libraries; Marie L. Radford, Ph.D., Rutgers University School of Communication, and Library Studies; and Carla J. Stoffle, Dean of Libraries and Center for Photography, University of Arizona. The discussion touched on the overwhelming need for organizations to budget for continuing education for their staff, as well as the need for good customer service skills along with repackaging information into forms that customers really want and will use. A very good overview of the session can be found on The Shiny Librarian blog.(http://shinylib.com/2008/08/06/plenary-panel-theory-meets-practice/)

    For anyone who was unable to get to all the sessions they wanted or would like more information, links to presentation materials are now available for download in the detailed schedule on the Reference Renaissance website (http://www.bcr.org/referencerenaissance/schedule_details.html). As one conference attendee pointed out, “…there were so many great sessions that they frequently competed with each other, so I had some tough decisions to make.”

    In addition, all conference presenters have been invited to submit research papers and reports from the field. These will be peer reviewed for selection for print proceedings to be published by Neal-Schuman Publishers and edited by Marie L. Radford and R. David Lankes. Publication is scheduled for mid-2009.

    With the success of this year’s conference, BCR has committed to sponsoring a second Reference Renaissance conference tentatively scheduled for August, 2010. Watch the BCR website (http://www.bcr.org/) for date and registration announcements.

    About BCR
    BCR brings libraries together for greater success by expanding their knowledge, reach and power. They offer a broad range of solutions and their hands-on, personal attention to each member enables them to deliver effective and timely solutions that help libraries keep pace with new developments in technology and services. BCR is the nation’s oldest and most established multistate library cooperative. Since 1935, the BCR team has helped libraries learn new skills, reach patrons, increase productivity and save money. BCR (Bibliographical Center for Research) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit headquartered in Aurora, Colorado. For more information, visit www.BCR.org or e-mail info@BCR.org.

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    October 23rd, 2008LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    IBM today announced a new family of products for archiving email, classifying content and searching multiple information sources -- independent of where and how the content was created, processed and archived. IBM Content Collection and Archiving products are designed to help clients take back control and unlock the business value of their content, while enforcing regulatory compliance and operational policies and reducing total cost of ownership.
    The new family of products deliver comprehensive Content Collection and Archiving capabilities that make information more accessible, manageable and, ultimately, usable by making it easier to locate and analyze information and to extract knowledge and insights.
    IBM Content Collection and Archiving offerings will help clients move beyond e-mail archiving to provide organizations with comprehensive management capabilities for virtually all their business content, including file systems, Lotus Quickr, Microsoft SharePoint, instant messages and other information. These products offer more advanced functionality to meet new legal eDiscovery and records management requirements as well as de-duplication and integration with records retention services, helping to reduce storage and electronic discovery costs.
    Yorkshire Water, a subsidiary of Kelda Group, manages the collection, treatment and distribution of water, supplying around 1.24 billion liters of drinking water each day. With a combined IBM and Neocol UK offering, Yorkshire Water is using IBM software to help them integrate e-mail content with other documents and facilitate retention and archiving with associated storage management.
    "IBM's Content Collection and Archiving offerings will help us to simplify tasks, including managing email archives and records management, while leveraging our existing content management platform to manage and control content over the long run," said Ian Marshall, Senior Technical Analyst, Yorkshire Water.
    "Today, many organizations' needs have outgrown the limited business value of e-mail archiving as they seek better control and management of their content in support of their business goals," said Ken Bisconti, vice president, product and strategy, IBM Enterprise Content Management. "Our Content Collection and Archiving products will help enable clients make more complete use of all their information and content, providing simplified, consistent usability while reducing costs and improving productivity for both business users and IT."
    IBM Content Collection and Archiving Family
    IBM's Content Collection and Archiving products are based on a modular, extensible architecture and are designed to collect content from nearly any source, including email or file attachments, enhance the content by applying modular tasks, and mange the content in an Enterprise Content Management (ECM) repository to be controlled -- consistently and cost-effectively.
    IBM Content Collector and Archiving is based on a secure and scalable IBM ECM platform, and is pre-built to take advantage of IBM ECM capabilities such as advanced classification, records management, and eDiscovery search and analytics to fully optimize the lifecycle of compliant information management.
    IBM Content Collector and Archiving plays a key role in implementing IBM's vision for a new Information Infrastructure in which key technologies and services tackle the massive growth and mobility of data, skyrocketing energy use, growing security concerns and more demanding consumers with the compliance, availability, reliability and scalability clients need today.
    IBM's Content Collection and Archiving family consists of:
    IBM Content Collector for Email: An automated, flexible and scalable offering that is designed to expand e-mail information usage for compliance, ECM, Business Process Management and Business Intelligence applications.
    IBM Content Collector for File Systems: An enterprise offering for controlling documents on a network file share drives, enabling file system control, archiving, and eDiscovery collection.
    IBM Content Collector Preload Edition: A hardware and software offering that will enable clients to quickly install and automate an e-mail management solution, helping users to improve e-mail system performance and to easily and quickly retrieve email to satisfy compliance audit reviews and legal discovery requirements.
    IBM Content Collector Enterprise Bundle: A single Content Collection & Archiving bundle that collects, enhances and manages casually created content types that drive the most potential cost and risk -- e-mail (Domino or Exchange), file systems (Windows NTFS), and SharePoint -- delivered together with advanced Contextual Classification capabilities.
    Key ECM business partners that are supporting IBM Content Collector and Archiving and extending the reach of the new offerings include: Cenit, Electronic Evidence Discovery, Inc., FaceTime, Fritz & Macziol, FTI Consulting, ImageMaker, Integro, Iron Mountain, Neocol, Orchestria and Workgroup Connections.
    IBM Content Collection and Archiving is also supported by IBM Global Technology Services, with new services to provide planning, design and implementation services specifically for archive and retention of information and a new comprehensive enterprise archiving assessment including workshops and roadmaps.
    IBM Content Collection and Archiving is part of IBM's Information on Demand initiative, which applies the company's broad spectrum of global software, hardware, research and industry consulting expertise to provide clients with the means to address their increasing, industry-specific information management challenges, including managing the explosion of application-specific information silos.
    For more information on IBM's Content Collection and Archiving offerings, visit: http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/content-management/archiving.html
    Contact:
    Carol Thornton
    949-433-8508
    carolthornton@us.ibm.com

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    October 23rd, 2008LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    Report Buyer, has added a new report examining the potential impact of digitisation and other trends on the book market in the UK.

    “Bookselling: Market report 2008” reports that the greatest challenge facing the bookselling industry is the wholesale digitisation of printed matter.

    The report shows that leading publishers are digitising their backlists and preparing to digitise all their new books. Digitisation will make two things possible: e-books and print-on-demand books.

    Despite the uncertainty of what the market will be for these types of books, it is clear that a market for them has already arrived. Mills & Boon, for example, is preparing to digitise around 2,000 of its back-list titles, at the rate of around £70 a month.

    The study highlights that a growing number of out-of-print books are now available on the Internet through print-on-demand technology and an expanding range of books is being published as e-books, as well as in hard copy.

    Authors of the report note that the digitisation of books is presenting a major challenge to the bookshops: The Booksellers Association (BA) believes that booksellers and publishers need to work together to devise a strategy to exploit this new technology. The BA argues that both parts of the book trade will suffer unless they collaborate more closely, and many experts and observers of the book trade agree with this conclusion.

    “Bookselling: Market report 2008” is available from Report Buyer. For more information, see website.

    Report Buyer product ID: KEY00007

    About Report Buyer
    Report Buyer is a UK-based independent online store supplying business information. The website now carries over 85,000 business information products, including market reports, studies, books and events. Subscribers receive a free monthly newsletter and email alerts on new titles in their areas of interest. A regularly updated blog provides information on the latest market trends.

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    October 23rd, 2008LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    ITHACA, N.Y. - Cornell University announced today the establishment of the DISCOVER Research Service Group (DRSG) to facilitate data-driven science at Cornell by developing cross-disciplinary data archival and discovery tools. DISCOVER will conduct pilot projects in selected strategic areas such as the development of data discovery portals using access-layer protocols now under development at Fedora Commons and the Virtual Observatory.

    "Addressing the magnitude of data being generated by today's large-scale research programs is essential," said Robert A. Burhman, Senior Vice Provost for Research at Cornell and the group's initial sponsor. "That’s why Cornell is expanding our investment in data-driven science by launching a new research service group that is dedicated to systematically tackling some of these data challenges."

    Cornell's Department of Astronomy and the University Library, in partnership with the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing, will work closely with DISCOVER, which is comprised of research groups from multiple disciplines and core data management and curation staff.

    "Assimilating data into knowledge is typically more challenging than acquiring the data," noted James M. Cordes, Professor of Astronomy, who is the DISCOVER Co-PI along with Janet A. McCue, Associate University Librarian. "Many research groups face the same or similar problems in handling their data, so a more collective and synergistic approach will avoid repetition, promote the adoption of best practices, and be more efficient and affordable," explained Cordes. “And, the Library is a natural partner in these efforts,” added McCue. “Many aspects of data curation—from discovery to preservation—fit comfortably with the Library’s mission.”

    The overarching goal of the DISCOVER Research Service Group is to provide accessible paths for the curation, preservation, and mining of scientific data. Systems are needed to make data sets accessible physically over both space (over a wide network) and time (for the indefinite future) and also transparently, using modern Web-based tools that are expected to evolve.

    “DISCOVER will identify the specifications and business model for curation and mining systems that are appropriate to generalization,” said David A. Lifka, Director of the Cornell Center for Advanced Computing, “and it will conduct bona fide research activities needed for the development of such systems.

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    October 23rd, 2008Badan BarmanUncategorized
    Seminar Dates: 23-25 October , 2008.
    Organized By: Department of Library and Information Science, The University of Kashmir (J&K)
    For more information please contact:
    smshafi@kashmiruniversity.ac.in
    shafi_sm2000@yahoo.co.in

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