New & noteworthy

Citation

(2000), "New & noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 17 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2000.23917dab.002

New & noteworthy

OCLC and PAISAgree to Merge

OCLC and PAIS, Public Affairs Information Service, have finalized negotiations to merge the two organizations, effective January 1, 2000.

PAIS publishes the PAIS International database, which contains over 460,000 records of abstracted and indexed literature from over 120 countries. OCLC serves over 36,000 libraries in 74 countries.

The merger follows discussion and negotiations that began in June 1999. The joining of resources of the two entities is expected to support the enhancement of the PAIS database, which is currently available via the OCLC FirstSearch service, according to an OCLC release.

Based in New York City, PAIS is a not-for-profit educational corporation founded in 1914 by librarians and chartered in 1954 by the Board of Regents, Education Department, State of New York. It publishes indexes and abstracts that help people identify and locate documents about political, economic, and social issues in public debate throughout the world. PAIS International database records are abstracted and indexed from literature originally published in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

OCLC Public Affairs Information Service will continue to operate in its New York City offices.

PAIS: http://www.pais.org

OCLCInvites Libraries to Help Build Cooperative Online Resource Catalog

OCLC is inviting libraries to participate in and contribute to the development of the OCLC Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC), an international effort to organize and facilitate access to electronic information resources on the World Wide Web.

CORC (corc@oclc.org, http://purl.oclc.org/corc) is a collaborative effort to create a high-quality, library-selected database of Web resource descriptions modeled after the creation of WorldCat, the OCLC Online Union Catalog.

During this development phase, according to an OCLC release, participating libraries use the system to create records and provide feedback to OCLC to enhance the design of the service. CORC provides participating libraries with a database of high-quality, information-rich electronic resources available on the Web and enables libraries to become the portal of choice to the Web.

OCLC and CORC participants will continue to develop the system until release of CORC as a new service, planned for later in 2000.

With its origin as an OCLC Office of Research project, CORC was launched in January 1999 with 50 libraries from around the world using new, automated tools developed by OCLC to create a database of electronic resources. Today, in its development phase, more than 170 libraries are contributing to CORC, and OCLC is now encouraging more libraries of all types and sizes to participate.

The Library of Congress and the US Government Printing Office joined the CORC effort in December.

According to the release, OCLC had originally limited the number of participants to 100 and required a half-time commitment from staff members at participating libraries, but those requirements have been waived and enrollment has been opened up to encourage further growth of this service.

Among the participants are:

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  consortia ­ such as the Galileo Project at the University of Georgia; and RERO, Martigny, Switzerland;

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  national libraries ­ such as the Deutsche Bibliothek, Germany; National Library of Wales, United Kingdom; National Library of Australia, Canberra; and

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  other institutions ­ such as St Joseph County Public Library, Indiana; Washtenaw Community College, Michigan; Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Universidad Autonoma de Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus; N ETLAB/ Desire II Project, Lund, Sweden; National Chengchi University Libraries, Taipei, Taiwan; US Department of Transportation Library, Washington, DC; and Institute of Information Science, Slovenia.

ReleasesDewey for Windows Software, Version 2.00

The latest update for the Dewey for Windows software, version 2.00, is now available from OCLC Forest Press.

Enhancements to this electronic version of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system include additional Relative Index terms and built numbers that do not appear in the print DDC, Library of Congress Subject Headings that have been intellectually mapped to Dewey numbers by DDC editors and statistically mapped from WorldCat records, and updated area tables for France and the Canadian territory of Nunavut.

The new Dewey for Windows software also incorporates the changes to the Dewey Decimal Classification system found in Decimal Classification, Additions, Notes and Decisions (DC&), Vol. 6 Nos. 1-3.

Licenses will be available for Dewey for Windows software by annual subscription only.

Dewey for Windows software is a Microsoft Windows-based version of the Dewey Decimal Classification, Edition 21, on compact disc. It is updated annually and published each January.

OCLC: 6565 Frantz Rd, Dublin, Ohio 43017-3395; (614) 764-6237 or (800) 548-5878 #6237 , fax (614) 764-6096, http://www.purl.org/oclc/fp/

BioOneAppoints First Board of Directors

The nonprofit corporation created to develop BioOne (http://www.BioOne.org), an electronic aggregation of information resources in the biological, ecological and environmental sciences, has installed its first Board of Directors. Alan Covich, Professor, Department of Fishery and Wildlife Biology at Colorado State University and President of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), was elected Chair of the Board.

The BioOne Board is responsible for guiding BioOne's policies and progress. BioOne's Board of Directors is comprised of ten individuals from the five organizations that are collaborating to create BioOne: AIBS, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), University of Kansas, the Big 12 Plus Libraries Consortium, and Allen Press. The Board is in the process of adding representation for content providers.

Other board officers include Marilu Goodyear, Vice Chancellor for Information Services at University of Kansas, Secretary of the Board; and Adrian W. Alexander, Executive Director of the Big 12 Plus Libraries Consortium, Treasurer.

A broad selection of the journals published by many of the AIBS' 70 member societies will form BioOne's core offerings. BioOne collaborators are currently working with societies to create model licenses tailored to these publishers' needs.

According to a BioOne release, all research included in BioOne will be extensively hyperlinked, offering cross-journal searches and inter-journal linking from references. BioOne's beta release is scheduled for early 2001, and it will be fully operational soon thereafter.

BioOne: c/o SPARC, 21 Dupont Circle, Ste. 800, Washington, DC 20036; (202) 296-2296, fax (202) 872-0884, http://www.arl.org/sparc

Association of Independent JournalistsCondemns Systematic Campaign to Intimidate Freelance Journalists

Quebec publishers are using strong-arm tactics to force freelance journalists to relinquish all rights to their works so that the publishers may exploit the economic potential of the new electronic media, according to a press release from the Association of Independent Journalists (AJIQ).

According to the release, a dozen Quebec publishing companies have issued contracts that grant them copyright, worldwide, in perpetuity without providing additional compensation for the additional uses. "Freelancers are being threatened by the publishers of newspapers and magazines that if they do not give over their rights completely, they will not be given further work. AJIQ condemns this intimidation and questions its legality. How can such contracts be valid and enforceable when freelancers have been given no choice but to sign, without discussion, and under threat of the loss of their livelihood?"

In response to these actions, AJIQ is releasing to the public the known contracts being used by publishers including La Presse, Transcontinental, Publicor, Le Soleil, Rogers, Maclean Hunter and the Journal de Montreal.

In Quebec, the Association of Independent Journalists (l'AJIQ/FNC/ CSN) has launched a $30 million lawsuit against several of these publishers for infringement of copyright resulting from the publishers' providing CD-ROMs with freelance articles that were then placed on the electronic database.

Association of Independent Journalists: c/o Lyne Fréchet, President, (514) 598-2132, and Periodical Writers Association of Canada National Office, 54 Wolseley St, Suite 203, Toronto, Ontario M5T 1A5; (416) 504-1645, fax (416) 504-8980, pwac@web.net, http://www. pwac.ca

EBSCO and EPIXTECHAnnounce Dynix EDI X12 Claim

EDI X12 format claims are now available to EBSCO Subscription Services customers using the Dynix integrated library system. An interface between the two systems allows Dynix customers to submit claims to EBSCO electronically via file transfer protocol (ftp).

Electronic claims, like their paper counterparts, are produced based on parameters defined by the library. According to an EBSCO release, once a claim has been generated, the library prepares the claim using Dynix's PESC (Process Electronic Serial Claims) menu option. The system builds a Serial Item Contribution Identifier (SICI) file, identifying which issue is being claimed. The generated claim is then sent to EBSCO via ftp.

The Vancouver Public Library in Vancouver, British Columbia, was the first library to transmit the Dynix X12 claim. Dynix is a product of Epixtech, a provider of library information systems that is based in Utah, with offices in Illinois, Canada, Europe, and Australia.

EBSCO: PO Box 1943, Birmingham, AL 35201-1943; (205) 991-1368, http://www.ebsco.com

Epixtech: http://www.epixtech.com