CR2 Blog the knowledge blog
  • scissors
    September 30th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    The 2010 Red Clay Writers Conference
    The Red Clay Writers Conference educates authors at all levels of expertise.This year's theme is "Don't Ever Give Up." Keynote speakers are Robyn and Justin Spizman.

    Kennesaw, GA, November 6, 2010—Don’t Ever Give Up. The 2010 Red Clay Writing Conference will share that powerful message with attendees, and based on success stories from previous events, this event is certainly the place for both the professional and creative writers to find support, learn great tips for writing, and network with other writers from around the state. “For me, Red Clay has become my "can't miss" annual writers' conference. It's not just how much I learn - and I always learn a lot; it's the opportunity to meet and network with the seminar leaders and fellow authors. If you want to sharpen your craft and keep up with the rapidly evolving writing industry, don't miss it!  (J. Steve Miller, President, Legacy Educational Resources, Author of Enjoy Your Money! How to Make It, Save It, Invest It and Give It.)”…

    Regardless of the genre, all writers are encouraged to attend this day-long event, Saturday, November 6, at the Kennesaw State University’s Student Center (University Room A). This gathering will look at all aspects of writing, from the process of writing to marketing that writing. The panels of professional writers and editors will inspire attendees to write from the heart, transforming their writer’s dream into reality.

    The event will feature breakout sessions covering writing, publishing, editing, technology, and book marketing. In addition, participants will have the chance to hear two inspiring keynote speakers, mother and son duo, Robyn and Justin Spizman, co-authors of Don’t Ever Give Up: The Inspiration of Jimmy V. The Spizmans will share seven lesson writers can learn from the N.C. State Basketball coach who beat the odds by winning the 1993 NCAA Basketball Championship.

    A partial list of speakers includes: National web editor of Skirt! Magazine and Get Married, Stephanie Davis; bestselling and 9 time award-winning young adult author, Gail Karwoski; and radio commentator and syndicated columnist for the Atlanta Magazine, Hollis Gillespie.

    Both beginning and established writers are encouraged to attend this event. Early registration is $60 for members and $70 for the general public. Registration on the date of the event will be $80. Details and registration are available at http://www.georgiawriter.org or call 770-420-4736 for more details.

     

     

  • scissors
    September 30th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    WHITE BEAR LAKE, Minn. (Sep. 29, 2010) – The Roseville Library, part of the Ramsey County Library system, installed Tech Logic’s UltraSort system and CircIT™ self check-out equipment in their newly renovated library. The new Roseville Library held its grand opening on July 10, 2010.

    "It's very exciting," said Lynn Wyman, deputy director of the county library system, during a recent tour of the building as staff worked to place furniture, wire computer terminals, and sort books on an automated materials-handling system.

    The space is bigger, brighter and much, much greener. The library was built with the goal of being certified a Gold LEED structure, meeting strict requirements for environmentally friendly and energy-efficient design. Natural light, locally sourced materials and low-emission paints, adhesives, carpet and wood are used throughout the space. And about 95 percent of the construction waste on the project was recycled. The library's footprint basically remains, but a second floor has bumped up the building's square footage to 73,000 square feet — about 30,000 more than the old space.

    The Ramsey County Library is the first library system in the twin cities area to adopt radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. With RFID, libraries can streamline the processes of inventory and check-in and check-out, and provide better security for items.

    The library implemented Tech Logic’s self check-out equipment, including antennas, RFID tags, touchscreen monitors, and CircIT™ software. CircIT™ 2010 is a dedicated web server based system that integrates with the library's automation system for self check-out, circulation, reports, and RFID tag read/write functions. Tech Logic’s self check-out equipment provides patrons with greater capabilities when checking out items, enabling library staff to handle increased demand without any diminution of service.

    The library also installed Tech Logic’s UltraSort sorting system. The system increases the efficiency of library operations by sorting items with minimal physical intervention, relieving the physical strain of sorting that is normally demanded of staff. The UltraSort system accepts items from a book drop and delivers them through a conveyor system to a 25-bin sort section, where they are automatically checked in and sorted into Tech Logic Smart Bins® through the means of RFID tags. Tech Logic provided all of the engineering, design, manufacturing, installation, training, and support for this project.

    Gary Kirk, Tech Logic’s Executive Director, said, “As the first library system in the twin cities to implement RFID technology, Ramsey County Library has taken a leading technology position. The benefits of RFID, self service check-out, and automated sorting of returns include tremendous return on investment by reducing manual labor costs, better protection of library materials, and the ability to manage significant circulation growth at current staffing levels. We are proud and honored for this opportunity to work with everyone at Ramsey County Library and look forward to serving them for many years.”

    To learn more about Tech Logic’s products and services, contact Gary W. Kirk at gwkirk@tech-logic.com, call 800.494.9330, or visit www.tech-logic.com.

    About Tech Logic

    Tech Logic is the leading provider of innovative Automated Sorting Technologies (AST), circulation staff support tools, and patron self services for libraries. Tech Logic offers unequalled expertise, dedication to quality, and world-class customer support services.

    Tech Logic provides barcode and RFID check-in and check-out systems, material return drops, AST systems, inter-library distribution systems, and patron reserve systems. Tech Logic designs, manufactures, delivers, installs, maintains, and services all of its systems.

  • scissors
    September 30th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) Website Launched

    Robust open-source application makes managing access to digital content simple

    The Publishing Group of the California Digital Library (CDL) announces the launch of the eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) website ( http://xtf.cdlib.org/), supporting a robust open-source application for providing access to digital content. Developed and maintained by the CDL, XTF functions as the primary access technology for the CDL's digital collections and similar projects worldwide.

    XTF excels in supporting rapid, customized application development and deployment. Its high degree of extensibility and performance (even for large documents and large collections) frees implementers to focus on building sophisticated presentations for their digital object collections.

    "It's all about balancing flexibility and ease of use: putting infinite customization ability in the hands of curators and scholars with a driving need to provide deep access to their special collections," says XTF lead developer Martin Haye.

    XTF-based applications range from primary source image collections to publishing platforms and archival finding aid repositories at the University of California and many other institutions, including Northwestern University, the University of Sydney (Australia), Indiana University, Visual Arkiv (Sweden), Morehouse College, Durham University (UK), and the University of Virginia.

    Highly customized implementations include:

    * CDL's eScholarship (http://www.escholarship.org/
    ), UC's open access scholarly publishing platform, which publishes recent research from across the 10 campuses as well as nearly 40 UC-based scholarly journals. XTF customizations include a streamlined facet-selection interface, dynamic PDF snippets called "KWIC Pics," PDF document previews in the browser, and support for a deep hierarchy of contributing academic units.

    * CDL's Online Archive of California (http://www.oac.cdlib.org/
    ), a collection of more than 20,000 archival finding aids and 200,000 digital primary sources (images and texts) from more than 150 archives, libraries, and other institutions in the state of California. XTF implementation features full-text search and display, detailed descriptive metadata, and a robust finding aid interface.

    * Indiana University's The Chymistry of Isaac Newton (
    http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/
    ), a digital repository of transcriptions of Newton's alchemical manuscripts. Site features a seamless blend of various web tools, including XTF as the search technology.

    * The Encyclopedia of Chicago (
    http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/
    ), a collaboration between the Chicago Historical Society, Northwestern University, and the Newberry Library. Site integrates XTF with an image zoomer to display a large collection of historic photographs and maps, as well as using XTF for search and display of descriptive metadata.

    Lightly customized implementations include:

    * OhioLink Finding Aids Repository (
    http://ead.ohiolink.edu/xtf-ead/ ), this consortium of archives, libraries, and other institutions in the state of Ohio uses the default XTF implementation with dedicated branding and other slight modifications.

    * University of Buffalo Finding Aids (
    http://libweb1.lib.buffalo.edu:8080/findingaids/search
    ) uses a basic XTF application to enable browse and search of collection guides from the university's archival and manuscript collections.

    The new site serves as an expanded resource for programmers, librarians, and the general public to explore and implement the Java and XSLT 2.0-based framework. Features include:

    * XTF application download - full release or core updates to
    maintain customizations (http://xtf.cdlib.org/download/ )

    * Documentation, including downloadable deployment guide,
    programming guide, and tag reference (http://xtf.cdlib.org/documentation
    )

    * Video tutorials focusing on basic setup and customization of
    XTF (http://xtf.cdlib.org/getting-started-tutorials
    )

    * Example XTF implementations highlighting customized features.
    (http://xtf.cdlib.org/xtf )

    For a full list of XTF's features and benefits, as well as a technical overview, please visit http://xtf.cdlib.org/about or address queries to Martin Haye at Martin.Haye@ucop.edu.

    ###

    -----------------------------------------------

    Lisa Schiff, Ph.D.

    Technical Lead

    Publishing Group

    California Digital Library University of California Office of the President
    415 20th Street, 4th Floor
    Oakland, CA 94612-2901

    510-987-0881 (t) 510-893-5212 (f)

    Follow eScholarship on Facebook and Twitter

  • scissors
    September 30th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    ~ EDS Continues to Expand its Scope; Full Metadata for H.W. Wilson Databases Available for Mutual Customers ~

    IPSWICH, Mass. —September 30, 2010 —H.W. Wilson (Wilson) databases will soon be searchable via EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) for mutual customers. EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) and Wilson have enjoyed a working partnership for many years where selected Wilson databases are made available on the EBSCOhost® platform. As a natural extension, the two companies have agreed to include the robust metadata of the important Wilson databases available to customers who subscribe to the databases.

    Whether accessing these databases via EBSCOhost, directly from Wilson (via WilsonWeb) or from another vendor, those customers who rely on EBSCO Discovery Service to bring more value and usage to their collections will see this value extended to the Wilson databases to which they subscribe.

    Wilson joins a long list of publishers and other content partners who are taking part in EDS to bring more visibility to their content, such as: the British Library, Baker & Taylor, NewsBank, Readex, LexisNexis, Alexander Street Press, and Web of Science (for mutual customers). With more partners such as Wilson, the end result is a huge win for EDS customers and their end users as more and more of a library’s collection becomes available through the most powerful searching components—deep indexing, abstracts and full text.

    EBSCO Publishing’s President Tim Collins says the goal of discovery is to expose a library’s complete collection to the end users. “This arrangement makes perfect sense for all parties. In the end, it’s about usage. Customers want their collections to become more visible and more heavily utilized. EDS offers that dynamic, and Wilson is now part of the fold for customers who rely on their databases.”

    EBSCO Discovery Service is quickly becoming the discovery selection for many libraries and an obvious partner for content providers. Because the service builds on the foundation provided by the EBSCOhost platform, libraries gain a full user experience for discovering their collections/OPAC - which that is not typical in the discovery space. Further still, in the many universities and other libraries where EBSCOhost is the most-used platform for premium research, users are not asked to change their pathways or habits for searching. There’s simply more to discover on the familiar EBSCOhost platform, and the same can be said for library administrators who can leverage their previous work with EBSCOadmin.

    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 EDS Base Index 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 H.W. Wilson
    WWW.HWWILSON.COM
    For more than a century, H.W. Wilson has provided libraries with the highest-quality reference services for libraries around the world. The Company offers 75 databases on the award winning WilsonWeb platform. These include full text databases delivering full articles from thousands of the most important periodicals; retrospective databases offering the complete journalistic record of people, developments and controversies in a wide range of fields; biography databases with in-depth profiles of newsmakers in all areas of endeavor, image data bases and more.

    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.
    ###
    For more information, please contact:
    Kathleen McEvoy
    Public Relations Manager
    (800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
    kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

  • scissors
    September 28th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    ~EBSCO Discovery Service™ Steps in Where its Existing Service Left Off with More Robust Searching Designed to Answer to the Needs of the End User ~

    IPSWICH, Mass. —September 28, 2010 — Illinois State University (ISU) has selected EBSCO Discovery Service™ from EBSCO Publishing as its discovery solution—providing a single search experience and fast, simple access to the library’s print and electronic content. The university was looking for a new option to update its existing Search It resource to open up library resources to users.

    When Illinois State University first introduced its Search It federated search technology was new, consortial funding was available and hopes were high. A few years later, with federated search a less than impressive experience and no more outside funding available, ISU began looking for a better option. Discovery services were offering to do what federated searching had promised to do so ISU began the process by requesting funding and initiating the RFP process. The library was looking for a resource that had a variety of features, provided access to a large amount of content and promised to increase access to the library collection.

    The library compared EBSCO Discovery Service alongside other services and since it wanted a discovery option that would work with a federated search option, ISU determined that EDS plus EBSCOhost Integrated Search™ was the best option. The two EBSCO solutions provide students with the one stop search experience they have become accustomed to when using the Web while offering students and faculty the ability to search resources that cannot be locally indexed. ISU understands that while discovery services can be exceedingly comprehensive, not every library resources is appropriate or available for inclusion, hence the option of discovery plus federation. By using a rich discovery tool plus an added integrated search option, ISU is able to include resources such as citation-only databases both within the rich EDS search experience and via the optional integrated search—a feature that can pull additional resources into the discovery experience.
    ISU Electronic Resources Librarian, Anita Foster, says students had mixed reactions to the federated search system behind the original Search It tool while faculty members were heavy users of the resources requiring federation. “EDS is an intriguing technology that helps us reach out to the entire university population. EDS brings our resources to students with the Google-like quality that students seem to want while giving faculty members the rich searching capability they require.” Because EDS is able to expand the number of resources available within the discovery result list, while also letting the library include results from traditionally federated sources, ISU is able to provide faculty members with a richer set of options and results while decreasing the number of federated connectors and lowering the cost of federation.

    EDS also helps students and faculty explore resources that weren’t in the catalog creating a bridge between the link resolver and the discovery service and exposing researchers to information the library previously had difficulty letting users know about. Foster says a single search box will be highlighted on the library’s website. “We are planning to put the search box prominently on the current Web page as well as anticipating it will be prominent on the redesigned page.”

    While the name Search It will not change, Illinois State University will promote the service to students returning in the fall as a new and improved Search It powered by EBSCOhost®. The customization options in EDS will allow the library to change the colors and include logos that will serve as visual cues that this is a new system for searching both the electronic and print collection at ISU.

    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.
    ###
    For more information, please contact:
    Kathleen McEvoy
    Public Relations Manager
    (800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
    kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

  • « Older Entries