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Technically Speaking
Library consultant for the Lincoln Trail Libraries System in Champaign, Illinois. Column for December 2000 Ingenta on the MarchFormed through a public-private partnership with the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, Ingenta provides electronic distribution and marketing for publishers of scholarly content. It also runs Bath Information and Data Services (BIDS), a bibliographic and journal full-text service for the U.K. higher-education community. Ingenta users can search the full text of over 3,000 journal titles to which the company provides access. To actually view the text, however, a searcher must be authorized by the publisher. In March, Ingenta bought UnCover from the Carl Corporation, in May it began listing on the London Stock Exchange, and in June it acquired the Publisher Communications Group, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm that offers marketing services to scholarly publishers. This last acquisition was a prelude to Ingenta’s most recent announcement: an agreement with Macmillan to host and provide access to the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Life Sciences. By combining free searching of an ever-increasing number of journal databases with hosting and providing portals to specialized databases, Ingenta hopes to become a dominant information aggregator for publisher data that is primarily marketed to libraries. For more information about Ingenta, visit its Web site or e-mail Donald Klein. A setback for DRAIn a press release, DRA has confirmed that it is no longer negotiating a contract with Harvard to install DRA’s Taos system as the basis for Harvard’s next-generation library automation project. Harvard had signed a letter of intent with DRA for purchase of the Taos system in mid-1998. In another potential setback for DRA, the Illinois Library Computer Systems Office, which had selected the DRA Classic system in the fall of 1995, recently decided to request proposals from the ILS vendor community rather than wait for the developing Taos system to meet its needs. ILCSO serves 45 academic libraries in Illinois, and the system that it manages, ILLINET Online, has 7 million titles, 23 million holdings, and 890,000 patrons. The RFP was expected to be out by December, and ILCSO plans on completing contract negotiations with the successful bidder in early 2001. Traveling Low-TechAt the ALA Midwinter exhibits in San Antonio last January, I passed by an exhibitor displaying what looked like a toy computer—a light but rugged-looking plastic keyboard with a 1-by-5.5-inch LED screen. “Have you heard of the AlphaSmart?” she asked. AlphaSmart, I thought; what a pretentious name for a little toy. Then she began to explain to me that the AlphaSmart was being marketed to schools as affordable electronic writing and editing devices for students. As I was half listening to this sales pitch and musing over the little toy in my hands, an epiphany struck: My multiyear quest for the ideal notebook computer never succeeded because what I was really looking for was an easy-to-use portable typewriter I could carry with me all the time but that wouldn’t tire out my arms or strain my back. “You know,” I ventured, “I could probably use one of these things.” One thing led to another, and a month later I arrived home from work to find a package from Cupertino, California, containing an AlphaSmart 3000, an instruction booklet, and a bevy of cables for uploading to a PC or Mac. It came pre-loaded with three AA batteries that, even now, after several hundred hours of use, are still keeping Fred humming. (Just an expression, of course: except for a very audible keyclick, Fred is very quiet.) The AlphaSmart is one of those gadgets that doesn’t need an instruction manual to be useful. I hit the on switch and in literally less than two seconds I was typing away. Since I wasn’t going to be on the road for a while, I just began carrying it around in my briefcase, getting used to the extra two pounds. Then one day I found myself waiting for tires to be mounted on my car, and I began thinking of something I wanted to write down. I whipped out Fred, pressed the on button, and began typing. Later I uploaded my notes to my desktop and reorganized them. Since that day I have been to one library conference, where Fred really got a heavy workout. I’ve decided that a cheap portable typewriter is in some cases a lot handier than a fancy portable computer. If Fred didn’t click so loudly, he’d be an ideal companion. For more information on this low-tech convenience, see the AlphaSmart Web page. E-books for the IT CrowdIbooks.com bills itself as the largest provider of computer-related e-books on the Web. Baker and Taylor, through its new e-commerce venture Informata.com, has just inked a deal with ibooks.com and DigitalOwl to provide computer-related e-books to the library market. Ibooks.com will supply the content, DigitalOwl will supply the “secure digital packaging” (i.e., software to control access), and Informata.com will provide the marketing muscle, the user interface, and acquisitions and circulation-management software. Informata.com expects to launch the new e-book service in January. For more information, visit the Informata.com Web site. Contracts and Agreements
Acquisitions and Alliances
Announcements
Supplier Notes
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By David Dorman