Infotoday Blog Archive

For a man working in the most recessed of the recessed publishing sectors–the news business–Caspar de Bono, managing director, FT Business, was particularly upbeat when we met with him in London.

It might well be the worst of times,and yet de Bono persisted in depicting the current environment as the best of times.

Economic pressures this year have caused many in the industry to reconsider what they are doing, go back to first principles, and ask such fundamental questions as who are we? and what is it that we actually do for our customers to help them be more productive and make better business decisions themselves.

Watch the video.

[kaltura-widget wid="68r3gqmwfc" width="400" height="290" addpermission="" editpermission="" align="center" /]

Although Knovel didn’t have a booth on the exhibition floor this year, Diana Bittern, director of product management, still had plenty of meetings lined up about the company’s online technical resources for engineers.

For the past two years, Knovel has been refocusing on what customers truly want, says Bittern. “We found that librarians screamed the loudest” about some disruptive issues with the Knovel site in the recent past, so Bittern and her team went back to the drawing board after conducting observation sessions with users. The results, she says, helped fine-tune the site’s contextual design and became the drivers for further innovation.

Knovel Labs, one of the spinoffs, gives users a chance to try out product enhancements in beta before their release. “Knovel Labs has been a great success,” she says. “Librarians like to see and touch the products in the development phase, and we welcome their feedback.”

Knovel’s interactive search capabilities within the site’s graphs and tables are a key differentiator between them and the competitors, and it was important to make the entire search experience easier for the users.

“This year has been the year for personalization with our launch of the new My Knovel that lets engineers and engineering students collect and save their knowledge over time,” says Bittern. It gives users the chance to save searches, links, and graphs involved in their work for future reference, along with frequently used titles, content, and queries that can be organized into specific folders.

Next year, she says, Knovel is gearing up for a year of collaboration and community so users can share and exchange information. In the meantime, the Knovel team is rebuilding its infrastructure with a revamped interface and an improved user registration system with a single sign-on option for societies and academic institutions.

“We went back to the drawing board to help engineers get their answers faster,” says Bittern. “Our long-term goal is still to make engineers more productive.”

Filmmaker Joe Loncraine confers with Dick Kaser, ITI's VP of content, on the next video shoot at London Online.

For the past three days, Dick Kaser, ITI’s VP of content, has been busy tracking down industry players at London Online to discuss their take on the state of the information industry.

Joe Loncraine, a locally based TV producer and director whose long list of credits include making documentaries for the BBC, recently returned from filming in Mozambique just in time to help catch all the action on the exhibition floor at London Online for the ITI blog.

You’ll find the video portion of the interviews on the blog (be sure to check out the insights from the industry experts), and the print version will be available in the upcoming January 2010 issue of Information Today.

Outsell projects that, overall, the information industry will grow by 3 to 4 per cent in 2010, though some sectors will continue to perform at 2009 levels or see up to 2 per cent growth over 2009.  It will be another challenging year, but better in comparison to 2009.

The news must come with a sigh of relief to many companies operating in this space, for it is an understatement to say it was not the best year for many.  Companies in the business of providing news, for example,  took a 20% beating this year, while only a couple sectors remained strong, namely healthcare information and government data.

Digital advertising grew by 8 to 10 per cent, down significantly from the classic 20% growth rate it was experiencing prior to the economy’s downfall.

Some companies see promise from emerging markets (i.e., developing countries not already to the point of being considered “advanced economies.”)  But the early results may not be indicative.   It may, in fact,  be a while yet, before the potential is realized.

In the following video interview conducted yesterday at Online Information in London, Anthea Stratigos, co-founder and CEO, Outsell, discusses these and other market conditions, predicts growth areas, and suggests strategies for companies to adopt for 2010.

Her best advice for companies?  If you’re not already in the business of providing medical information or government data, consider how you can offer something to enterprises that either helps them save money or make money, focus on creating an excellent customer experience and provide exceptional customer service.

Please watch the video.

[kaltura-widget wid="chhynhf3ks" width="400" height="290" addpermission="" editpermission="" /]

Rossella Proscia, Marketing Director, Gale Cengage, notes that in their partnership with Financial Times, The Economist, and The Times (of London), the company has discovered a “fortunate niche.”  By providing primary source materials to financial researchers–including digitizing and offering backfiles of key publications–they have hit the nail on the head and answered a current market need.

Watch the video to learn more about the Gale Cengage strategy.

[kaltura-widget wid="ht8a3a0ftc" width="400" height="365" addpermission="" editpermission="" align="center" /]

Gale Cengage is showing The Financial Times historical archive at its stand (#526) in London

See also:  Barb Brynko’s post, below, on the archives

The market for medical information is a bright spot in STM markets, according to Karen Abramson, President and CEO, Medical Research, Wolters Kluwer,  Though other parts of the industry may have seen a decline last year, Wolters Kluwer actually experienced growth in the health sector and projects growth going forward in 2010.

At the Online Information show, the Wolters Kluwer team hopes to meet with customers and partners and carry on discussions started a few weeks ago at the Frankfurt Book Fair, close deals and look for new business, says Andrew Richardson, Managing Director, Europe and V.P. of Business Development for Wolters Kluwer Health.

Watch the video to hear more about how vendors view conditions in libraries and why Wolters Kluwer had success in a down market.

[kaltura-widget wid="7wje15wxqe" width="400" height="365" addpermission="" editpermission="" align="center" /]

You might also be interested in seeing a video on the Wolters Kluwer site where Karen discusses the vertical search solutions the company is demonstrating from its stand (#512) in London.

The SpringerMaterials innovation team (Dr. Thomas Mager, left)

While the buzz about Informa’s bid to buy Springer Science + Business Media was making headline news, Springer’s crew at Stand 410 was busy with the debut of its latest product, SpringerMaterials.

Scientists, researchers, and engineers can now access the 400-volume Landolt-Börnstein series with a single keystroke. Billed as “the world’s largest resource for physical and chemical data,” SpringerMaterials—The Landolt-Börnstein Database brings the print collection’s rich content into one easy-to-access online platform (91,000 online documents, more than 1 million literature citations, 165,000 substances, and 3,000 properties).

The core of the SpringerMaterials database is two-fold, according to Thomas Mager, vice president of reference and database publishing at Springer. “First, we wanted to build a user interface with a search engine, and second, we wanted to make the content findable,” he says. The content is actually annotated, he says, with a content layer on the screen that has an added “ghost or shadow world” overtop that includes a thesaurus, metadata, and deep indexing to offer quick, easy search capabilities. “The feedback from our customers who were involved in the trial has been overwhelming in a positive sense,” says Mager.

Users can search in several ways: via a Google-like search box, an advanced search tab that creates a Boolean search term automatically as the user sets up the parameters, or a color-coded periodic table. User-friendly speed typing also suggests terms and available content during a search; results also include text surrounding the search string to provide context, and faceted results display offerings in key subject areas (molecules and radicals, crystallography, etc.). There’s also a REACH tab to provide instant info for EU regulatory documentation.

And as for the buzz about negotiations between Informa and Springer? Yep, they’re true. Eric Merkel-Sobotta, executive vice president for corporate communications, confirmed that negotiations were ongoing, “but not exclusive … we’re currently in talks with several parties.” Stay tuned for more developments.