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 September 2001

Impressive Assistive Technology

Part of one aisle at this year’s ALA Annual Conference exhibits was dedicated to an Accessibility Pavilion featuring vendors of assistive technology products. One of the most impressive of them was a unit that sits under a keyboard and functions as a cursor placement device and a Braille reader. It substituted for a screen, mouse, and keyboard so well that it was five minutes into the demonstration before I noticed that the vendor rep, who was navigating around Windows and various application programs like a hacker, was blind. Called the Alva 544 Satellite, the product was being exhibited by Keyboard Alternatives and Vision Solutions. At $10,000, it’s not cheap, but it sure was effective in enabling a blind person to hear what the computer had to display.

A company called Ai Squared was showing a product called the Bigshot Screen Magnifier. The software, which works with all Windows applications and magnifies screen images from 105% to 200% in 5% increments, costs $99. It can be downloaded from www.bigshotmagnifier.com for a 30-day free trial.

The IBM Accessibility Center out of Austin, Texas, had a booth showing its products and services. The center’s flagship product is the Home Page Reader, which is designed to help blind and low-vision people navigate the Web aurally. Version 3 requires Windows 98 or higher and costs $142—or less if IBM is running a special (in late July the company was offering a $50 rebate).

DBH Attachments signed up as an exhibitor too late to make it into the area assigned to adaptive technology vendors. In a corner booth far away from “Adaptive Alley,” the company was demonstrating two versions of what it billed “the only totally assistive ergonomic computer station you will ever need to purchase.” Every one of the Accessible Computer Station’s many surfaces was independently adjustable, and the main ones could be powered up and down at the press of a button. The product has only been on the market for a year and this was DBH’s first ALA exhibit. A basic unit costs $850 and a fully loaded unit goes for about $1,500. A device called the Wrist Wizard was attached to one of the workstations being shown. It was designed to enable people with no mobility, strength, or control in their arms to type by supporting the wrists over the keyboard.

The AlphaSmart portable writing device and ION’s e-book reader were also exhibiting again. While neither product is designed exclusively for the accessibility market and was not a part of “Adaptive Alley,” each is designed with accessibility in mind; come to think of it, that should be—but isn’t—true of most of the products and services in the information technology marketplace. For more information on these products, go to www.alphasmart.com and www.galaxylibrary.com.

JSTOR Grows

The JSTOR digital archive project has released the first 22 titles in its Arts and Science II collection. When complete in 2002 this new collection will add over 100 titles representing 1.3 million articles to JSTOR’s full-text Arts and Science I collection, which includes the entire back runs of 169 journal titles. A&S II will include the following new disciplines: classics; archaeology; geography; history of science; and African, Latin American, Slavic, and Middle Eastern Studies.

Early English Goes Online

Fifty academic libraries have pledged $50,000 over five years to help underwrite ProQuest’s efforts to convert its collection of 125,000 Early English Books Online from images to fully transcribed and searchable texts. If the project succeeds in recruiting an additional 100 libraries, it will have enough money to digitize 25,000 texts in about five years. More information and sample texts can be found at wwwlib.umi.com/eebo/.

SPARC Travels

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), an alliance of research libraries, library organizations, and research institutions supporting lower-cost alternatives to high-priced science journals, has launched SPARC Europe under the auspices of LIBER, the principal association of the major research libraries of Europe. An alphabet soup of scientific and library organizations in Europe are already sponsoring SPARC Europe, and more support is being solicited.

“SPARC Europe will enable the European research and library communities to take an assertive role in addressing the problem of high journal prices,” said Elmar Mittler, LIBER president and library director at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

Contracts and Agreements

• Endeavor Information Systems has been selected as the vendor of choice by the Illinois Library Computer Systems Organization (ILCSO) for a library management system to serve ILCSO’s 45 academic and research libraries, including the state library and the three campuses of the University of Illinois, to replace DRA at 43 libraries, the NOTIS system at one library, and the Georgetown LIS system at one library; with the Royal Library of Sweden to provide a national bibliographic server system for LIBRIS, a union catalog of Swedish libraries, to replace a Horizon system; with the University of Montana, to replace a Dynix system at the university’s four campuses; and with the University of Pennsylvania library for an ENCompass digital organization and management tool.
• DRA—with Fairfax County (Va.) Public Library to upgrade the library’s DRA Classic system to Taos.
• Epixtech—with the newly amalgamated Ottawa Public Library, for a Horizon system to replace two Dynix systems, a DRA Classic system, an Innovative system, a Nicholas system, and two Winnebago systems.
• Sirsi—with the U.S. National Library of Education for installation of a Unicorn Library Management System to replace the library’s Maxcess system, and for Hyperion Digital Media Archive software; and with the Old Colony Library Network, a consortium of 26 Boston-area libraries, to replace its Dynix system.
• Ex Libris—with the Icelandic Minister of Education, Science and Culture, for the Aleph 500 library management system as well as MetaLib and SFX products for an initial user community of 170 academic, public, school, and special libraries, including the National Library of Iceland. The system is replacing DOBIS/LIBIS, Libertas, Mikromarc (a Norwegian system), and three Icelandic systems: Embla, Bokver, and Metrabok.
• Luna Imaging—with the Research Libraries Group to use Luna’s Insight software to make Amico Library available to subscribers. Amico Library is a repository of art from the Art Museum Image Consortium containing multimedia documentation of over 77,000 works of art in leading museums. Previously, RLG has used an enhanced version of its Eureka software to search for, view, and store Amico Library images.

Alliances and Acquisitions

• Auto-Graphics has purchased the WINGS suite of ILL management software from Pigasus Software. The Pigasus team will continue to manage the development of Wings.
• TDNET, which provides e-journal management services for libraries, has signed a marketing agreement with NELINET. The cooperative will provide marketing support and invoicing to its member libraries in New England for TDNet services, which include searching at the title and article level, SDI and e-mail alerting capabilities, and usage statistics.
• Ex Libris has selected TLC/Carl’s ILL software toolkit to develop ILL management applications for its customers. TLC’s Library.Connect software is middleware that allows developers to build ISO standard ILL applications on multiple hardware and operating-system platforms. Other users of TLC’s toolkit include the National Library of Medicine, the National Library of Canada, and RLG.

Standards News

• NISO continues to increase the public’s access to library standards information. Many standards, draft standards, and technical reports are freely available at www.niso.org, and hundreds of links have been made to other library standards–related Web sites. Hooray for NISO and Pat Harris, its executive director. It’s very NISO them to offer such a useful site.