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    September 29th, 2011LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    Innovative Online International Business Resource Helps Students Transform Information into Insight

    Farmington Hills, Mich., September 28, 2011 — Gale, part of Cengage Learning and a leading publisher of research and reference resources for libraries, schools and businesses, today released Gale Business Insights™: Global, a new international online business resource designed to empower students to progress quickly from basic research to higher levels of understanding. The resource will be invaluable for undergraduate and graduate business school students, as well as academic faculty, librarians and professional researchers.

    “We live and work within a growing global economy and business schools today are under a new and increased pressure to develop and integrate global business information into the curriculum,” said David Forman, vice president and publisher, Gale. “Gale Business Insights: Global helps schools do this by teaching students how to research international business topics and compare global economies, companies and industries by providing the data they need with the resources to analyze it. It also helps educators better teach international business topics by enabling them to organize our content around countries, data sets and topics – taking the resource from the research environment to the learning environment.”

    A three-year study, “Globalization of Management Education: Changing International Structures, Adaptive Strategies, and the Impact on Institutions,” commissioned by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) revealed that globalization is both the biggest opportunity and the greatest challenge for business schools worldwide. Schools must supply graduates who can work in a global business environment transcending countries and cultures. According to the AACSB task force, schools are struggling to provide international case studies and broader course content. This echoes market research commissioned by Gale which shows students and professors want a resource that brings together international business and industry reference material, statistical data, case studies, journals and newspapers in one place. The most common assignments in business courses involve reading and analyzing case studies and completing news-related assignments – activities that go beyond the textbook and require students to access different types of information from disparate sources. However, a majority of students and professors say it is not easy to find sources that are credible, relevant and current.

    Gale Business Insights: Global is designed to relieve these pain points and give MBA and business students an edge in the international marketplace. Gale Business Insights: Global integrates case studies, analytical tools and in-depth statistical data with narrative content in a way that will help students succeed with their coursework and in the global business world. Researchers have the ability to download and analyze global data, industry and company profiles and market share information for a complete interactive experience that fosters understanding.

    Some of the features of Gale Business Insights: Global include:

    • Case studies from Gale’s exclusive and timely CaseBase collection, as well as cases from partners worldwide
    • Interactive charting tools for economic and business indicators that let students perform their own analyses and generate custom charts for use in reports and presentations
    • Statistical data from industry and government sources integrated with article content let users explore the broader context behind the trends they perceive in economic data
    • Global industry research reports for specific industries within specific countries
    • Global company and country overviews full of detailed information, as well as interactive rankings and stats, with quick links to associated news, case studies and academic journal articles

    For more information on Gale Business Insights: Global or to request a trial, please visit www.gale.cengage.com/businessinsights or contact Kristina Massari at kristina.massari@cengage.com.

    About Cengage Learning and Gale
    Cengage Learning is a leading provider of innovative teaching, learning and research solutions for the academic, professional and library markets worldwide. Gale, part of Cengage Learning, serves the world's information and education needs through its vast and dynamic content pools, which are used by students and consumers in their libraries, schools and on the Internet. It is best known for the accuracy, breadth and convenience of its data, addressing all types of information needs – from homework help to health questions to business profiles – in a variety of formats. For more information, visit www.cengage.com or www.gale.cengage.com.

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    September 28th, 2011LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    Bethesda, MD –September 27, 2011 –
    The Founding Fathers Library Consortium is live on LibLime Koha. The Founding Father’s Library Consortium is a growing group of special libraries dedicated to preserving materials that document the lives and times of America’s founding fathers. Current members of the consortium include the library at George Washington’s Estate, Museum & Gardens and Gunston Hall Library. The library at Stratford Hall Plantation is scheduled to join in the future. These collections include manuscripts, rare books, subject files, auction sales catalogs, and archives, as well as modern books. Using the features of LibLime Koha, researchers are able to search across libraries or limit their search to one library and limit their search to a specific collection (e.g. manuscripts, rare books, e-resources) or location (e.g. special collections, reading room, closed stacks).
    “Because LibLime Koha is open source, flexible, and customizable, it is the ideal ILS for The Founding Fathers Library Consortium. The collections in the participating libraries are narrow in scope, but broad in formats and our users frequently need to search our collections in a way that is different from users of traditional libraries. With LibLime Koha and the helpful support of both PTFS and Marcive (who did our data conversion), the OPAC integrates our manuscripts, modern books, information files, archives, rare books, and serial publications (including auction sales catalogs) into one searchable catalog. The ability to easily link from the OPAC to our digital asset management system to provide visuals of our special collections--images, manuscripts, staff research, and publications of the respective participants--is an exciting feature that we are just beginning to explore. Thank you to PTFS and LibLime Koha technology and community!”—Joan Stahl, Head Librarian, George Washington’s Estate, Museum & Gardens.

    About George Washington’s Estate, Museum & Gardens Library
    Mount Vernon is the 18th-century home of George Washington (1732-199), located on the Potomac River sixteen miles south of Washington, DC. The Library is committed to being a destination for all who are studying the life and career of George Washington and his plantation, Mount Vernon, by providing access to rich collections of primary and secondary materials in all formats; to serving the research needs of staff and visitors; and to providing responsible stewardship of our special collections. The collections provide a continuous history of the Mount Vernon estate and its owners from the original land patent in 1674 up to the present day.

    About Gunston Hall
    Gunston Hall is the 18th-century home of George Mason (1725-1792), father of the U. S. Bill of Rights. Gunston Hall is located near the Potomac River in Mason Neck, Virginia. Its library collection features monographs, manuscripts, subject files, and a rich modern reference collection; all materials in the collection are focused on the life and times of George Mason and his home, Gunston Hall, as well as colonial history, more generally.

    About Marcive
    Marcive, celebrating its 30th year of business in 2011, is a service company specializing in high quality, cost effective MARC bibliographic and authorities processing for libraries. Marcive's role in this project has been to convert the card catalogs and manual finding aids of the participating libraries into MARC bibliographic format that the LibLime Koha software can recognize, manipulate, and present to researchers. A detailed description of Marcive’s significant role in making this OPAC possible can be found on their website.

    About LibLime, a Division of PTFS
    LibLime – PTFS is the global leader in providing support for the Koha open source ILS. Rather than sell software licenses for static, hard-to-customize software products, the PTFS LibLime Division educates libraries about the benefits of open source, enabling them to make choices about how best to provide their communities and staff with better technology services. The PTFS LibLime Division then facilitates deployment of Koha in libraries by providing outstanding consulting, development, implementation, and support/hosting for libraries of all types and sizes. PTFS is also the developer of the world’s leading content management software, ArchivalWare, and specializes in meeting library personnel staffing requirements, digitization, and metadata keying services. For more information, see http://liblime.com or http://ptfs.com or http://archivalware.net.

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    September 27th, 2011LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    ~ Business Professionals Able to Acquire Business Knowledge Faster with
    Business Book Summaries™ iPhone App ~

    IPSWICH, Mass. — September 27, 2011 — A new iPhone application for Business Book Summaries™ (BBS) from EBSCO Publishing has been released. The Business Book Summaries iPhone app is designed for BBS customers looking for convenient and quick access to concise, yet comprehensive book summaries for the best business books available.

    With the new BBS iPhone app, executives are able to access the most current business thought from anywhere via their Apple iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Available free from the iTunes App Store, Business Book Summaries iPhone app offers easy authentication for users via their BBS profile.

    Features included with the new app include a book carousel home page and the ability to browse by category, new book summaries or summaries available in Audio. The app also provides an option to download PDFs and Audio to the user’s device for offline viewing—allowing users to view the content at time better for them.

    Business Book Summaries is a database providing concise summaries of the leading business books. Designed to help executives acquire business knowledge faster, BBS includes a library of more than 750 book summaries with more than 60 new titles added annually. For each book, experts create 300-word, 650-word, and 4,500-word summaries that present the author’s ideas in a condensed form.

    Business Book Summaries provides summaries of the top business books containing the most current business thought. Additional corporate learning solutions offered by EBSCO Publishing include Corporate Learning Watch™, Learning Centers™, Competency Center™ and Employee Training Center™.

    About EBSCO Publishing
    EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database and eBook aggregator serving the content needs of corporations, associations and organizations of all types. EBSCO offers a suite of more than 350 full-text and secondary research databases providing content from tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers. Databases provide information for areas ranging from research & development and corporate learning to departmental and industry-specific topics. EBSCO’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Business Source® Corporate, Business Book Summaries™, Learning Centers™, Business Basics™, Academic Search® R&D, Nonprofit Organization Reference Center™, and Health Library™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world, and may be integrated into corporate intranets, portals and learning management systems. 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 Director
    (800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
    kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

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    September 27th, 2011LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    9/27/2011
    CONTACT:
    Nathan Curulla
    (888) 900-8944
    sales@bywatersolutions.com

    Corpus Christi Public Libraries Go Live on Koha with ByWater Solutions

    ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the Corpus Christi Public Libraries of Corpus Christi, TX. are now live on their installation of the Koha integrated library system.

    The Library's Koha installation went live in late August with very positive results, and ByWater Solutions will be providing ongoing support services for them. The Corpus Christi Public Libraries are made up of six branches and nine public high school libraries.

    The library serves an immediate population of approximately 280,000 people. The size of the library collection includes over 412,000 items including, compact discs, CD-ROMS, books-on-CD, videocassettes, audiocassettes, large print books, electronic books, and over 600 magazine and newspaper subscriptions. Their customized online catalog can be found at: http://elibrary.cclibraries.com/.

    Alex Hatley, Technical Specialist for the Corpus Christi Libraries commented on their decision to implement Koha with ByWater Solutions:

    "I would say that ByWater Solutions really cares about their customers. After 25 years with our previous ILS vendors, our staff felt as if they did not care about us anymore; we were just a customer number. The staff at ByWater are great. They have given us great customer support with a personal touch that makes us feel like we matter, and have given us fast responses to our outstanding issues."

    He continues; "Many of the issues we encountered with our previous vendor were still not resolved after years of waiting. In addition, the staff at ByWater are very honest regarding Koha's functionality, and that honesty is very refreshing. Overall, many of the staff and I are very pleased with them. It was the right choice to move from a big proprietary system to an open source solution."

    About the Corpus Christi Public Library:

    Corpus Christi Public Libraries serves residents of the city through its La Retama Central Library and five branches. It is also a Major Resource Center, one of the ten in the state, and headquarters South Texas Library System and Inter Library Loan. The library is home to LINCC, Library Information Network of Corpus Christi, which supports a wide area network for city libraries and nine public high school libraries. The library actively seeks partnerships and affiliations with complementary organizations and programs. For more information, please visit: http://www.cclibraries.com/

    About Koha:
    Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

    Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies--XHTML, CSS and Javascript--making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://www.koha-community.org

    About ByWater Solutions:
    With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, top ranked support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: http://www.bywatersolutions.com

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    September 27th, 2011LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    Call for Papers (and apologies for cross-posting):

    The Code4Lib Journal (C4LJ) exists to foster community and share
    information among those interested in the intersection of libraries,
    technology, and the future.

    We are now accepting proposals for publication in our 16th issue.
    Don't miss out on this opportunity to share your ideas and experiences.
    To be included in the 16th issue, which is scheduled for publication
    in late January, 2012, please submit articles, abstracts, or proposals at
    http://journal.code4lib.org/submit-proposal or to journal@code4lib.org
    by Friday, October 28, 2011.  When submitting, please include the title
    or subject of the proposal in the subject line of the email message.

    C4LJ encourages creativity and flexibility, and the editors welcome
    submissions across a broad variety of topics that support the mission
    of the journal.  Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

    * Practical applications of library technology (both actual and
     hypothetical)
    * Technology projects (failed, successful, or proposed), including
     how they were done and challenges faced
    * Case studies
    * Best practices
    * Reviews
    * Comparisons of third party software or libraries
    * Analyses of library metadata for use with technology
    * Project management and communication within the library environment
    * Assessment and user studies

    C4LJ strives to promote professional communication by minimizing the
    barriers to publication.  While articles should be of a high quality,
    they need not follow any formal structure.  Writers should aim for the
    middle ground between blog posts and articles in traditional refereed
    journals.  Where appropriate, we encourage authors to submit code
    samples, algorithms, and pseudo-code.  For more information, visit
    C4LJ's Article Guidelines or browse articles from the first 14 issues
    published on our website: http://journal.code4lib.org.

    Remember, for consideration for the 16th issue, please send proposals,
    abstracts, or draft articles to journal@code4lib.org no later than
    Friday, October 28, 2011.

    Send in a submission.  Your peers would like to hear what you are doing.

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