Modern Librarian is currently accepting manuscripts for its inaugural issue. The journal's mission is to advance the the profession of librarianship and those who practice it, as well as to examine those questions and challenges faced by the institutions and practitioners of library science. We are dedicated to encouraging and publishing scholarship that is focused on the challenges of librarianship. We particularly encourage work that is grounded in empirical research, but other forms of scholarship are also welcome.

Interested parties should see the journal's submission information page for more information.

~ EBSCO Discovery Service™ Plus an Information Literacy 101 Class Designed to Combine Convenience with Improved Critical Thinking ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — August 24, 2010 — Chadron State College has chosen EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) as part of its overall goal to improve information literacy. The college was looking to wean students off typical search engines while encouraging students to access valuable library resources by reducing the intimidation factor that searching the OPAC typically causes.

The goal was to provide students with a search system that offers the convenience they are accustomed to from searching online while delivering the rich resources they need to complete their assignments—a single search box yielding rich results from the library collection. Providing a single search experience and encouraging critical thinking to improve student assignments were additional factors that brought faculty support for EDS and a new required course.

Director of Chadron’s Reta E. King Library Milton Wolf says the aphorism data, data everywhere but not a thought to think is proving true on college campuses and libraries have to weigh the convenience factor with the need to push students to use the best, vetted, proprietary information. “We know students are not using the OPAC, it is too complex and has become too rarified for students who have become accustomed to searching online—and to making do with the less than adequate results that come from those searches. We know we need to go where the users are; providing the convenience of a single search box while ensuring that the results will bring the user to quality information. With EDS, we can make sure that the first page of results our students see will be far better than the first page of results from a typical search engine.” Customization options available in EDS, including the ability to import Lib Guides, will allow Chadron State to further hone results to direct students to the highest usage materials available in a given subject.

Wolf says the college chose EDS after looking at several discovery systems because of EBSCO’s long history in the library business and because of the company’s plan for discovery. “EBSCO’s discovery strategy is the best possible of any other company and the EBSCO system is the best system out there.”

The addition of EDS comes before Information Literary 101 is added to the course list. Information Literary 101 is a required course being introduced in the fall of 2011. The information literacy course is designed to highlight resources like EBSCO Discovery Service but also to teach students to be critical about the information they are receiving. Wolf says the library staff worked to gain faculty support for the new course and had to show that students will be better informed and better able to do research to find the information they need in their classes.

While improved researching skills leading to more critical thinking and better course work are the college’s goals, Wolf says the benefits are expected to graduate along with students. “Being ‘information literate’ extends beyond school. The type of critical thinking that will come from the required course and the exposure to the resources in EDS will benefit students well beyond their college years—people need to determine how to find quality information from online resources and exposing them to rich library resources and encouraging them to consider the source material will have long term benefits.”

EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box—searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.

The Base Index for EBSCO Discovery Service forms the foundation upon which each EDS subscribing library builds out its custom collection. Beginning with the Base Index, each institution extends the reach of EDS by adding appropriate resources including its catalog, institutional repositories, EBSCOhost and other databases, and additional content sources to which it subscribes. It is this combination that allows a single, comprehensive, custom solution for discovering the value of any library’s collection.

The EDS Base Index is comprised of metadata from the world’s foremost information providers. At present, the EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers. Although constantly growing, today the EDS Base Index provides metadata for nearly 50,000 magazines & journals, approximately 825,000 CDs & DVDs, nearly six million books, more than 100 million newspaper articles, more than 20,000 conference proceedings and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source-types.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator, offering a suite of more than 300 full-text and secondary research databases. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). The company’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search™, Business Source®, CINAHL®, DynaMed™, Literary Reference Center™, MasterFILE™, NoveList®, SocINDEX™ and SPORTDiscus™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases such as ATLA Religion Database™, EconLit, Inspec®, MEDLINE®, MLA International Bibliography, The Philosopher’s Index™, PsycARTICLES® and PsycINFO®. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world. EBSCO is the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ a core collection of locally-indexed metadata creating a unified index of an institution’s resources within a single, customizable search point providing everything the researcher needs in one place—fast, simple access to the library’s full text content, deeper indexing and more full-text searching of more journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com.

EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
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For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Manager
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

An established print and online journal, The Bottom Line's major focus is on library finances, library development activities, dealing with library budgets and personnel, and changes in libraries due to economic challenges. The journal is especially interested in articles on the topics below from archives, museums, and other information organizations as well.

Published by Emerald Group Publishing Limited, the journal is interested in articles of varying lengths, opinion pieces and case studies. The editor will work with authors that are new to LIS publishing, and those who are seeking outlets for reporting on practical uses of budgets and finances in libraries.

Submissions particularly welcome in the following areas (for example):

Library changes and challenges from recent economic turmoil Case studies on library budgeting and finances Case studies on library development activities Downsizing and reorganization of libraries Library budgets and finances from an administrator?s perspective (high-level or middle management) Library budgets and finances from a staff perspective Innovative ways to raise money and awareness of library activities and mission Thought-provoking opinions related to library budgets and finances

Go to the Emerald Insight website to see past tables of contents and sample articles.

August 16, 2010 -- San Mateo, CA -- WORDNIK.COM, the online dictionary and language resource, today launched a new, smarter online thesaurus that shows related words in context to help writers find the right word quickly and accurately.

Traditional online thesauruses show related words, but ignore context. They don't tell you that people like brownies that are moist but not brownies that are damp, or that it doesn't make sense to moisten your enthusiasm.

Wordnik's thesaurus lets you see words in real-world sentences drawn from a vast and constantly updated collection of texts. Whether a word was coined by Shakespeare or Sarah Palin, you'll find high-quality sentences to help you understand how that word is used by others, and how to use it correctly yourself.

Wordnik is also the first online thesaurus to let you compare words side-by-side. Want a more nuanced understanding of 'vacant' vs. 'void'? Viewing their definitions and example sentences next to each other reveals that they're not interchangeable: 'vacant' is often applied to jobs and properties, and 'void' often refers metaphorically to emptiness. Those nuances are missing from traditional online thesauruses and dictionaries.

The Wordnik.com thesaurus launched on August 16, 2010, and is available now at http://www.wordnik.com/thesaurus. Screenshots can be viewed at http://www.wordnik.com/preview/thesaurus. Wordnik CEO Erin McKean is available for interviews.

ABOUT WORDNIK

Wordnik's mission is to gather as much information as possible about as many words as possible and to share that information with as many people as possible. The company has information for more than nine million English words. Founded by Erin McKean, the former editor in chief of The New Oxford American Dictionary, Wordnik’s team includes experts in search engine architecture, social networking, computational linguistics and library science. For more information visit http://www.wordnik.com, follow us on Twitter (http://twitter.com/Wordnik), or email feedback@wordnik.com.

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Media Contact:
Erin McKean, Wordnik CEO, erin@wordnik.com, (773) 426-5938

Wordnik.com
60 E. 3rd Ave.
San Mateo, CA 94401
http://www.wordnik.com