Technically Speaking

By David Dorman
American Libraries Columnist
ddorma@ltnet.ltls.org

Library consultant for the Lincoln Trail Libraries System in Champaign, Illinois.

Column for October 2000

Ebsco’s Evolution

Remember when Ebsco was just a periodical subscription service? The time before the firm began offering periodical A&I services and access to full-text articles now seems like ancient history. In the past year Ebsco has moved in new strategic directions:

K–12 curriculum-support services. In support of its information content marketing to the K–12 school library market, EBSCO has been developing a number of curriculum-support, learning, and study services. The company has developed a Web site called Web4Classroom that contains software for parents, students, teachers, and school administrators designed to support K–12 education. The service includes the three-part Ebscolearn series to assist student learning and provide curriculum support for teachers: Reading Series, Science Series, and Social Science Series. The curriculum-support aspect of this initiative was recently repackaged into a service called Reading Room. These and other Web4Classroom services are available to all K–12 Ebscohost subscribers. Ebsco seems to be positioning itself to become a one-stop-shopping source for information and software support services for K–12 education in North America.

NoveList expansion. NoveList, the reader’s advisory service for fiction, is undergoing a major overhaul under Ebsco. Since the company purchased NoveList from Carl, it has put significant development and promotion resources behind the service. In the product’s most recent enhancement, Ebsco announced that NoveList now includes reviews from Library Journal, School Library Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly. In addition, Duncan Smith, NoveList’s developer, and the staff of the Minnesota Office of Library Development and Services have teamed up to produce a 125-page publication titled Talking with Readers: A Workbook for Readers’ Advisory Services. The workbook is available for downloading in PDF by NoveList customers from the product’s For Staff Only section.

Jake support. Ebsco and Yale University have collaborated to implement a direct link from results in Ebscohost to detailed journal information through jake (Jointly Administered Knowledge Environment), an open-source application designed to find, manage, and link online journals and journal articles. Jake is freely available for anyone to use, modify, copy, or redistribute under the term of GNU General Public License.

OCLC Forms ILL GAC

OCLC has formed the Global Sharing Group Access Capability (GAC) to foster international resource-sharing initiatives. Any existing OCLC member can join the GAC without cost. To join, a library must agree to the following rules for borrowing and lending around the world:

• Lending to all participants within the GAC is mandatory.
• The OCLC ILL Fee Management service is the only payment method accepted.
• Airmail or courier are the only delivery methods accepted for returnable material.
• Fax or Internet document delivery (such as Ariel) are the only delivery methods accepted for nonreturnable material.

At this time there are 50 participating libraries around the world. To apply for membership in the Global Sharing Program, or to find out more about it, visit the OCLC Web site.

Contracts and Agreements

• Academic Press, a Harcourt Science and Technology company—with the Russian Foundation of Basic Research and the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, for access to IDEAL by the 210 academic institutions throughout Russia that have Internet connections. IDEAL, the International Digital Electronic Access Library, contains primarily scientific-, technical-, and medical-journal literature as well as three specialized medical encyclopedias.
• SIRS Mandarin—with the state of Utah, for access to the SIRS Government Reporter and the SIRS Renaissance reference databases by over 850 school, public, and academic libraries throughout the state.
• Sirsi—with the Capitol Region Library Council, for a Unicorn system for 34 libraries in the greater Hartford, Connecticut, area; with the Hazelwood School District in suburban St. Louis, for the Unicorn system for the district’s 24 schools.
• Epixtech—with the Burnaby Public Library in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, for a Horizon system to replace the library’s aging JES (formerly Ulysses) system.

New Products and Services

• Britannica.com has announced that its Educational Division now offers BritannicaSchool.com, a Web-based education site to support research, study, and teaching in high schools. The service includes study guides and research aids for students, and curriculum development resources and class preparation support for teachers.
• Veicon Technology of Beaverton, Oregon, now offers an under-$500 Internet device that uses Microsoft’s thin-client Windows environment and is designed for library patrons.
• Computers By Design, a developer of software that manages network and Internet access, has released a new version of its One-Site browser program that, when used with the company’s CybraryN software, allows libraries to offer both filtered and unfiltered Internet access from the same PC, based on patron login.