If you’d like to know more about Mediasurfer, listen to the interview with Gary Kirk, President of Mediasurfer, and Jim Nelson, COO of Mediasurfer.  They provide many more details on the software, hardware, and services offered.

DALLAS – The 2012 Dartmouth Medal – an annual award from the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) recognizing the most outstanding reference work of the year – has been awarded to “Green’s Dictionary of Slang,” published by Chambers.

The dictionary was selected for its comprehensive and inclusive scholarship for slang in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and other English speaking countries. This source covers 500 years of slang usage with 110,000 words and phrases, more than 400,000 citations and 6,000 titles as sources. Scholars of language and history, as well as creative writers, and a wide range of curious readers will enjoy this dictionary for many years.

In addition to the winning title, the award committee also named the “International Encyclopedia of Political Science,” published by Sage Reference in association with the International Political Science Association, as an honorable mention. Its international scope, objective coverage and extensive bibliographies will appeal to a broad readership. This collaborative effort of international scholars from 40 countries contains more than 1,500 articles about political science, foreign policy, law and religion.

The committee will also present a Lifetime Achievement Award to the “Statistical Abstract of the United States,” published by the United States Department of Commerce, which, for the last 133 years, has been one of the premier reference sources. It is the recognized authority for U.S. statistics and serves as an entrée into government documents. It went electronic early, in 1993, and continues to be viable in print. The legacy of the Statistical Abstract will continue as it provides an in-depth snapshot of American life.

The Reference and User Services Association, a division of the American Library Association, represents librarians and library staff in the fields of reference, specialized reference, collection development, readers advisory and resource sharing. RUSA is the foremost organization of reference and information professionals who make the connections between people and the information sources, services, and collection materials they need. Not a member, but  interested in discounted registration rates on conference, preconferences and other events? Join, renew or add RUSA to your ALA membership at www.ala.org/membership. Learn more about the association at www.ala.org/rusa.

Visit www.literarytastes.com any time for access to news and information about all of RUSA’s literary happenings.

Effective February 1, EBSCO will eliminate the legacy NetLibrary fees.  This means eBooks on EBSCOhost will simply be the publisher suggested eBook list price.  So…

• No markups

• No set up fees

• No annual hosting, platform, access or maintenance fees

• No annual Adobe Content Server subscription fees

• No download fees

• No fee for MARC records

…you get the idea — No Markup.  No Fees.  No kidding!

And, through March 31st, all eBooks and Audiobooks purchased on EBSCOhost earn a 5% rebate as part of the Grow Your Collection on Us promotion.

eBooks on EBSCOhost can be ordered via YBP (GOBI); Baker & Taylor’s Title Source or by contacting your EBSCO Publishing sales representative.

RUSA/CODES Reference Publishing Discussion Forum: Life after the Statistical Abstract.

What will the proposed demise of the Statistical Abstract mean for reference librarians and library users?  Now in its 130th annual edition, Statistical Abstract has played a central role in guiding users to statistics since before we were born.   Since finding statistics can be challenging under the best of circumstances, what are our strategies for dealing with this loss? Are there new services and products we would like to see from commercial publishers?

Alesia McManus, owner of the “Save the US Statistical Abstract” Facebook page, moderated the discussion.  About 50 librarians, publishers, and vendors attended.

Alesia McManus, Dan Coyle from ProQuest and Bruce Samuelson from Bernan Publishing all spoke briefly to start the session.

Alesia’s comments:

The Stat Abstract (SA) is often a librarians favorite reference tool and a go to source for statistics.  She started the Facebook page in an effort to get the word out to others about the demise of this long time source. Alesia said people from other fields (non library science) were picking up on the news.  Alesia did several interviews for mainstream media outlets.

Dan Coyle from ProQuest said:

All of the public domain content (90%) of the content, is received at ProQuest.  They ingest the data and use it in a variety of publications.  Their product, Statistical Insight offers a variety of content.  Why don’t we take on the continuation of the SA?  They might.  They have done analysis on the content to determine the source of the information.  Most of the tables in the SA don’t come intact.  Most of this data comes from multiple sets of information and is tabulated together (labor intensive). They reject the argument that content aggregation doesn’t have value today.  Dan compared the SA to a nice bottle of cognac and said, we have access to the vineyard now but would love to be able to offer the cognac.

Bruce Samuelson from Bernan Publishing

They publish the SA, 2nd largest title they have sold over the years. The SA has generated the most discussion at the Bernan booth at all of the conferences they have attended in 2011. Moving forward, Bernan is looking to publish it themselves.  He agreed with Dan, it’s a much more challenging task because it covers so many topic areas.  The SA has 3 great virtues – comprehensive data in one location, footnotes for further information, and low price.  They are only looking at a print solution.

Online vs. print

So many different variations of what online could be, the print is so simple to use.  What is the cost to develop print vs. online. Bernan is only looking at print, ProQuest is looking at online and would price as affordable as possible, based on an FTE model.  An online solution from ProQuest would include some deeper indexing of the tables (not just a PDF of the print). Most of the comments on the Facebook page were in favor of the print copy due to the ease of use. Attendees expressed an interest in the simplicity of an online interface, not wanting to sort through data sets in an online product. There was caution against making the product too complicated (overheard: we need the “playschool” version).

Compendium role

It’s not as much about the sophistication of data analysis, but as a way to find out sources of data. The SA offers that.  Statistics are thought by many patrons to be such a simple question, but in reality, they can be the most complicated.  The SA offers the simplicity.  Keeping track of time series (tracking data over time) is another important role of the compendium. It was an alert to librarians that some agencies ceased collecting/publication of certain data. Used the SA as a breadcrumb trail.  Not necessarily the data in the SA that is important, but knowing what agency produces it and being able to follow up on their site for more info.  The tables in the SA are also compilations of various tables, so other agencies are often identified as sources of information.

Is our concern deeper than the existance of the SA?

Is the data reported in the SA also in threat?  Will the Superintendent of Documents support the ongoing collection of data. Some feel the SoD didn’t do enough to support the continuation of the SA. Lobbying can’t be done by the SoD but should be done by the ALA.  Many would like to see the ALA Lobbyists to be more active in this discussion (silent applause by many here). Is this just the beginning?  Will other government information also cease?   A lot of the data collected into the SA also comes from private entities.  Will these private companies give the data to someone else? The publisher may have to pay a licensing fee to those companies for getting the data, which in turn must go into the cost of the book.

Open Access/Grant Funding

There is a potential user group that haven’t used the SA.  They might be interested in this data if there are no barriers.  What mechanisms are there to discovery of the content on google back to the source of the info (at the library) to grow the use of the product.  Is there an opportunity for an IMLS grant to support the continuation of the SA?  The discussion again turned to the complexity of collection the data and creating custom tables from a variety of sources. This requires a lot of editorial work.  A grant will help you for one year, but it’s not sustainable.

What’s next?

Statistics Canada-Great model, which is a private/public partnership. Can we use this as a benchmark for the future?

What would be an annual cost of producing this publication each year? The 2.9 million in funding (which was cut) supported more than the SA.  Would this cost publishers as much? They already have a workflow in process which could cut down on the cost.

Can librarians create a wiki that crosswalks the type of data sets with the original source.  This wouldn’t require the actual production of a SA.  Can we compile a list of resources?

Should we continue to foster this conversation in a forum other than facebook?  Where can we go to connect about this topic?  Alesia will look into creating some type of website for this, but needs help with the content.

FedStats website?  It hasn’t been updated in ages, but we should go to the site and request updates, show our interest.

What can we do to get ALA more active in advocating for this issue?   What is the right channel?  What can members do to get the lobbyists working for this?  We should all feel free to contact the ALA Washington Office.

What committees are represented here at the meeting that we could collaborate with?  BRASS, RUSA, GODORT, Federal Documents Taskforce (not here, but recommended to contact them)

CapWiz – provided by ALA, it’s a legislative action center within ALA.  We could be using this outlet.

Alesia will continue to maintain the Facebook page.  She will look into establishing an ALA Connect group.

To meet researchers’ evolving needs, ebrary®, a ProQuest business and leading provider of e-books and research technology, today announced it has launched a new app for the iPad®, iPhone®, and iPod touch®.  Available on the App Store ^sm, the free new app gives researchers an optimized way to experience authoritative content – both online and offline – from multiple sources.  With ebrary’s new app, researchers can access content on the ebrary platform, including e-books that their librarians acquire from leading publishers and documents uploaded and integrated by librarians with DASH!™(Data Sharing, Fast).  Additionally, researchers can import their own personal research – outside of the ebrary platform – through the app itself.

To make it easier to use ebrary – with or without the app – ebrary also announced the ability for researchers to sign-in with their Facebook usernames and passwords.

“We believe it is our responsibility to keep pace with the progressive ways in which students, professors and other researchers expect to find and use information,” said Kevin Sayar, President and General Manager of ebrary.  “Technology will continue to evolve, and information will continue to surge.  By shipping this new app and extending it to other sources beyond our e-book aggregation, we hope to help researchers more easily access and use the authoritative information they need to be more knowledgeable and productive.”

Key features and benefits of ebrary’s new mobile app include:

• Freely available with any ebrary product for libraries including Academic Complete™, which offers a growing selection of more than 70,000 e-books and enables libraries to upload their own content with DASH!
• Online and offline reading
• Seamless downloading of full titles
• Simple and advanced search
• Multiple navigation controls
• Table of contents with relevancy rankings
• Early check-in of ebrary’s e-books
• Copy and paste with automatic citation for offline documents
• User configurable download size warnings
• Import and use documents from other sources
• Available in English and Spanish
• Sign-in with Facebook user name and password

Demonstrations at ALA

ebrary will demonstrate its new mobile app at ALA Midwinter, January 20-23 in Dallas, Texas, in the ProQuest booth (#2007).

2012 will see the addition of content from Anthem Press, Boydell & Brewer, Edinburgh University Press, Nottingham University Press, Pickering & Chatto and the University of Adelaide Press.

Launched in October 2011, University Publishing Online provides access to thousands of titles from scholarly Presses around the world, accessible through quick, powerful search and browse functionality.

Anthem Press are scheduled to launch in March with 125 titles across a broad range of subjects, from drama and theatre to policy and international relations through to medicine.

The Boydell & Brewer Group publish across the humanities, including history and the arts and is scheduled to launch with over 400 titles. With specialist lists in African, Hispanic and German studies (under the imprints James Currey, Tamesis and Camden House), it has an established partnership with the University of Rochester Press.

Edinburgh University Press will initially make around 210 titles available in May across 16 subjects within the humanities and social sciences and fields across all scientific, technical and medical areas.

Nottingham University Press publish across a wide range of scientific subjects, from animal science to scientific communication and are scheduled to launch around April/May with 44 titles.

Pickering & Chatto will have over 370 titles available on UPO, covering humanities and social sciences subjects from philosophy and religion to economics, finance and business.

The University of Adelaide Press are continuing to build a wide range of titles across all H&SS and STM disciplines and will have 16 titles available initially.

With the addition of these publishers University Publishing Online will offer over 14,000 titles from ten global presses.

To view UPO, go to www.universitypublishingonline.org.

Gale, part of Cengage Learning and a leading publisher of research and reference resources for libraries, schools and businesses, and National Geographic, one of the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organizations, today announced an agreement to provide an online archive of more than 100 years of National Geographic magazine. Available to libraries this spring, National Geographic Magazine Archive, 1888-1994 will include all issues of the magazine in a fully searchable and intuitive interface.

“The National Geographic Society, one of the most respected organizations in the world, has inspired people to care about the planet for more than 100 years,” said Jim Draper, vice president and publisher, Gale. “We are honored to bring National Geographic magazine, the Society’s publication of record, to libraries everywhere, and to open a world of discovery, exploration and appreciation for cultures near and far for all patrons.”

National Geographic magazine has long been the leading global publication in empowering people to better understand the world in which we live, providing authoritative, unbiased content that addresses today’s complex issues, while uncovering the wonders of our time. From the discovery of fossils of human ancestors by Richard Leakey in Kenya to polar exploration, archaeological finds of Maya and Inca cultures and Robert Ballard’s discovery of the wreckage of the Titanic, National Geographic Magazine Archive, 1888-1994 is an essential resource for scholars as well as a fascinating collection for general readers.

“For over a century, through timely articles and legendary photographs and maps, National Geographic magazine has documented life on our planet and beyond and interpreted the world’s sweeping changes through the lens of personal experience,” said Declan Moore, president of National Geographic Publishing. “The vast knowledge base contained within the National Geographic Magazine Archive is an unparalleled resource on cultures, nature, science, technology, energy and the environment.”

Also included in the more-than-100,000-page archive will be every stunning photograph published in the magazine through 1994. Among the first to use color photography, National Geographic magazine is widely known to contain the highest quality photojournalism in the world, with each life-like, authentic photograph allowing readers to visually explore the new worlds they are learning about. In addition to each page and photograph, the archive will include the detailed maps published by the magazine throughout its history. The maps help to provide context and reference for readers who are learning about unknown and often remote regions and cultures for the first time.

For more information on the National Geographic Magazine Archive, 1888-1994, please visit http://gdc.gale.com/ or contact Kristina Massari at kristina.massari@cengage.com. You can also learn more about the archive and other Gale products at the Gale booth (#2219) on the exhibit floor of the American Library Association Midwinter meeting in Dallas, Texas, Jan. 20-23.

Credo General Reference, a core resource serving the research needs of millions of students and other library users will be enriched by the addition of top-quality content from McFarland. Chosen for their academic value and editorial excellence, these comprehensive reference titles provide compelling, relevant coverage on contemporary and historical topics. They include:

Encyclopedia of Capital Punishment in the United States
Encyclopedia of Philosophers on Religion
Encyclopedia of Cuban-United States Relations
Encyclopedia of Chinese-American Relations
Encyclopedia of the Alamo and the Texas Revolution

McFarland joins the more than 80 publishers working in partnership with Credo Reference. These new titles will be explored by learners through Credo Topic Pages, Credo’s interactive visual search, the connected web of related entries, and other innovative tools offered on the Credo platform.

“McFarland is an outstanding publisher with a significant number of award-winning reference titles,” commented John Dove, Credo Reference President. “We’ve chosen a handful of some of their best works to be added to Credo General Reference. It’s exciting to be able to provide them to our General Reference customers.”

“Credo is a growing and essential digital channel through which we can reach library users,” remarked Karl-Heinz Roseman, Director of Sales and Marketing at McFarland. “We’re glad to be part of the exciting momentum that Credo is gathering around the potential of e-reference.”

Here is more from the press release:

Dallas, TX – American Library Association Midwinter Conference, Jan. 19, 2012 – OverDrive, the leading global distributor of eBooks and audiobooks, will release 2011 year-end statistics from its global network of 18,000 libraries and schools in 21 countries at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in Dallas, January 20-23 (Booth 845).  Due to the rapid expansion of device compatibility and consumer awareness, eBook discovery and online reader visits at libraries and schools worldwide experienced triple digit growth in 2011: OverDrive library website traffic more than doubled to 1.6 billion page views and visitor sessions also doubled to nearly 100 million.  At the conference, OverDrive will share statistics and user profile data as well as demonstrate new digital book discovery services to help libraries meet the exploding demand.

Key statistics for library eBooks, audiobooks and digital media from OverDrive-powered ‘Virtual Branch’ websites in 2011 include:

• 1.6 billion book and title catalog pages viewed, up 130% from 2010
• 99.5 million visitor sessions, up 107%
• Mobile device use increased to 22% of all checkouts
• 35 million digital titles checked out in 2011, with 17 million holds
• The OverDrive catalog for libraries now includes 700,000 copyrighted eBook, audiobook, music, and video titles in 52 languages, including 300,000 titles added in 2011
• In 2011 OverDrive Media Console (free eBook and audiobook apps) was installed by 5 million users (up 84%) bringing the total install base to 11 million
• Readers used OverDrive eBooks on all desktop and major smartphone and e-reading platforms including Android, iPhone®, iPod touch®, iPad®, Windows® Phone and BlackBerry®, as well as Kindle®, NOOK™, Sony® Reader and others.

At the ALA Midwinter Conference OverDrive will demonstrate new digital book discovery services to help libraries meet eBook demand.  These include a new OverDrive “All Digital” catalog feed that will provide library visitors immediate access to browse and sample entire publisher and author eBook and audiobook backlist and long tail collections regardless of whether the library has acquired units for lending.  For participating libraries, the service also features patron-driven acquisition options and “Buy it Now” links connecting readers with booksellers, which in turn pay the referring library affiliate fees for all referrals that result in a sale.

During 2011, the Digital Bookmobile (www.digitalbookmobile.com), a high-tech 18-wheeler traveling North America on behalf of public libraries to raise awareness about digital reading, visited nearly 100 libraries and schools.  Since the tour launched in 2008, the Digital Bookmobile has held 400 events and trained more than 87,500 users on digital downloads from the library. The Digital Bookmobile national tour will be on the road again this year, starting in the Los Angeles area in early February.

OverDrive provides digital distribution services for more than 18,000 libraries, schools and booksellers worldwide with support for Windows®, Mac®, iPod®, iPhone, iPad, Sony® Reader, NOOK™, Android™, BlackBerry® and Kindle®.  To find a participating library, visit http://search.overdrive.com.