Gates Foundation donates $1.2 million to OCLC to promote value of libraries

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have this week pledged a $1.2 million grant to the OCLC to promote the value of libraries in a national campaign throughout the U.S, which could be seen as another snub to the US government, writes Daniel Griffin.

Gates has been showing increasing interest in the library sector of late. Last year he agreed a major digitisation deal with the British Library and now his charitable arm is looking to improve public access to libraries, IWR would like to know, just what is driving the sudden passion for libraries in the world of Bill Gates.

The funds will be used by OCLC, a library automation and database specialist that is strong in academic circles, in conducting research and development strategies to enhance user perceptions of library value and the necessity of supporting new initiatives to meet user expectations and ever changing demands.

Studies in the U.S. indicate that over the next five years libraries will struggle to provide improvements to facilities, deliver electronic collections and internet services. But the U.S. public share a nostalgic perception of library services viewing them as predominately book-based, even though 99 % of libraries provide free internet access and other online services.   

Jill Nishi, Manager of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said “Libraries provide opportunities for education and advancement, especially for those in rural or otherwise underserved areas in this country”.

Informa reject Springer bid

Informa, parent company of the academic publisher Taylor & Francis group, have announced their rejection of Springer Science Business Media’s (SSBM) acquisition offer of 630 pence per share in recent takeover talks which according to FT.com today was because it "significantly undervalues Informa and its future prospects".

Springer, the scientific, technical and medical (STM) and business publishing group made the offer last month in an attempt to create a powerful organisation to rival the likes of market leader Reed Elsevier, the world’s principal STM publisher and would have been worth around £4bn. The takeover bid is believed to have been launched by Springer’s chief shareholders, the private equity groups Candover and Cinven who had confirmed they were working with UBS the investment bank with debt financing in place with Barclays Bank.

The initial bid raised eyebrows in the industry as it was expected Informa would move to take over Springer after making a number of acquisitions since 2005 – the largest being events company IIR Holdings for £784m paid in cash to its owner Lord Laidlaw, the Conservative Party Peer.

Frivolous use damages Freedom of Information Act

Today's November issue front page story on the Labour government planning to reduce access to public information, is a sad tale of a government out of touch and the mis-use of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act.

The box text on Frivolous Requests is both funny and saddening. Using FoI to trace bachelors within the Hampshire constabulary, or the number of times people have been charged with having sex with animals in Wale,  merely adds fuel to the argument of this government that it is correct in reducing our free rights to information.  There could be a genuine reason behind researching how much is spent on a particular brand of chocolate, but why was it narrowed down to one brand?

If there are to be changes made to FoI we need to see a much wider range of statistics on how the act is being used, not just a set of hand picked queries bound to anger the readership of the Daily Mail. 

This government has no respect for the public and their right to information, that was clearly seen in the watered down nature of the original FoI, and now they plan to reduce our rights even further. Information professionals need to be front line fighters to ensure the information they manage is freely available to the public and not abused by the Labour party.

Scholarpedia is a wiki form of open access

Could this be another milestone in the evolution of academic publishing? Scholarpedia is the first "free peer reviewed encyclopedia" – a kind of morphing of open access publishing with wiki technology.

Initial reactions may be: "Oh god, not another Wikipedia wannabe!", especially as the ink is barely dry on Larry Sanger's Citizendium manifesto, which he described as a "progressive fork" of the Mother of All Free Online Encyclopedias. But this one could be very different.

Although it was suffering from a few gremlins when we took a look, it has quite a potential to disrupt existing publishing models. For a start it takes the headache out of having to set up and maintain an online publishing operation if you're an academic or group of scholars inclined to develop your own OA journal.

Eugene M Izhikevich, editor-in-chief of Scholarpedia, points out its based on the same MediaWiki technology engine behind Wikipedia, and that's now a pretty proven force. The difference with Wikipedia is that each article in the encyclopedia has an expert editor attached to it as a "curator", who approves all changes and effectively ensures the actual article is an approved version.

What sets it apart from Citizendium is that it is not as elitist. Anyone can suggest changes to an article, and there's an anonymous forum for initial peer review. It appears far more inclusive and less obsessed with creating something worthy of "intellectuals".

With concerns continuing to mount about errors in Wikipedia (many put there for malicious reasons) and even hackers using it to hide malware, then something more managed and controlled like this may well be an answer to feely available scholarship online.

Scholarpedia has also narrowed its initial ambitions by restricting itself to just three disciplines: Computational Neuroscience, Dynamical Systems, and Computational Intelligence. Izhikevich describes them as "seeds" that could branch out into related disciplines. Then all sorts of fields could come into play. Few people expected Wikipedia to grow into the phenomenon it has become.

Will Scholarpedia be the second generation wiki that really makes the grade?

The wiki comes of age?

It's been quite a month for the wiki community. A kind of coming of age. SystemOne came out of the shadows, as did Itensil. SocialText officially released its 2.0 version and now it has a version that integrates with Microsoft's Sharepoint. Then to crown it all, Google went and bought JotSpot.

SystemOne and Itensil are wikis that hope to be better known for their discovery and workflow respectively. Both are fundamentally wikis but each has been extended in extremely useful ways. SystemOne shows you all the documents which relate to what you're working on at any moment. Itensil lets you embed your wiki work inside permanent or ad hoc workflow processes.

By moving to Google, JotSpot appears to have consolidated its position in the consumer space. Some of its more corporate clients are seriously considering a move to Socialtext or Atlassian's Confluence. Apparently, the idea of Google hosting company information does not appeal. They would prefer, it seems, to pay their supplier to host their wiki and its data. Some will take the open source, appliance or self-install route with Socialtext. The same, or similar, seems to apply to Atlassian, although it no longer has an appliance.

Dave Girouard, Vice President and General Manager, Google Enterprise, was quick to blog, "We're excited about what that could mean for our enterprise customers." But that does rather read as if it came straight out of the PR101 handbook.

For IWR readers the most interesting aspect of all these recent developments is that the wiki now appears to be emerging as a genuine, respectable, collaboration tool. And Socialtext's Sharepoint version, Socialpoint, makes a huge amount of sense commercially because of the massive grip Microsoft still has within organisations.

STN load latest Derwent

An upgraded Derwent World Patents Index (DWPI) is now be available on FIZ Karlsruhe Scientific & Technical Information Network (STN), writes Daniel Griffin.

The enhanced service will offer around 3/4 million abstracts from 1995-99 and an additional backfile of chemical structure indexes, featuring original abstracts and patent titles, including the full names and addresses of inventors and patent agents as well as United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent classifications.

With the additional content there is a new structure for users, the first component - Invention constitutes traditional DWPI content whilst in addition the Members area consists of new information from associated publications in the patent record database, including improved structure for access and use.

David Brown, Executive Vice President, Corporate Markets at Thomson Scientific commented, “This enhanced file extends the functionality, content breadth and performance, of  DWPI.”

DWPI is Thomson’s database resource for value-added patent information used worldwide by patent organisations and researchers.

Socialtext releases SocialPoint, and seeks to lure JotSpot customers

Socialtext, the Californian based enterprise social software producer have released their new enterprise wiki service SocialPoint, which integrates with Microsoft Sharepoint technology, dominant Microsoft server technology platform, writes Daniel Griffin.

The social software allows information sharing across large groups. SocialPoint is able to open up Sharepoint to multiple authenticated wikis. SocialPoint integrated wiki web services will display changes in the wiki as well as the opportunity to edit them through large enterprise user groups, whether business or academic.

CEO of Socialtext, Ross Mayfield stated, “SocialPoint provides Microsoft SharePoint customers with a trusted wiki solution, by extending its functionality in a critically important area”

In a sign of how important Web 2.0 technology is becoming search engine Google has acquired JotSpot a rival wiki-centric company, Socialtext sprang to announce plans for a freely hosted wiki programme for JotSpot customers. “Our experience has been that JotSpot customers convert to Socialtext when they realise they need a real business-class wiki said Mayfield.

In a similar move competitors Atlassian have also offered JotSpot users a 25% discount if they migrate to their Confluence enterprise wiki.