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ITI Bloggers December 6th, 2007

Free access to online journals and bibliographic databases for developing nations is surely a good thing, right? Philanthropic individuals and generous publishers are naturally praised for making such donations.

But, for struggling, local journal publishers and database producers, free access to western information can destroy the market value of publications created in, and for, developing nations.

NISC (National Inquiry Services Centre) in South Africa supports African online journals with an online platform (African Journals Online) as well as 40 bibliographic databases of Africa-related information. Margaret Crampton, NISC managing director, told me that African users ask her why on earth they should pay to access this material when donated material can be totally free. These services were created specifically with local needs in mind, but the ludicrous situation is that the majority of usage is outside of Africa for NISC data while Africans may have free access to foreign material of little local relevance.

Certainly, all nations deserve equal opportunity access to the world’s literature, but not at the price of stifling the development of emerging research and publishing activity. Funding to support such publication is desperately needed, but if it doesn’t come from traditional subscriptions it is hardly any more likely to come from author or institution fees. Are there any better models out there?

Jim Ashling

Information Today, international correspondent

• Online Information 2007

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ITI Bloggers December 6th, 2007

Earlier this week FIZ Karlsruhe’s CEO & Presdient Sabine Brünger-Weilandt reflected on the 30-year history of the German Technical Information Center (Fachinformationszentrum) she now directs. 

She and Dr. Leni Helmes, Vice President for Development & Applied Research at FIZ-K, also described for me their strategic relationships with CAS/STN, ACS, and the Max Planck Institute.   It should come as no surprise at this conference, but even organizations like FIZ-K, who focus on the scientific and technical research community, are evaluating Web 2.0 applications for incorporation into their classic services.

In the future, said Ms. Brünger-Weilandt, "we will be a service provider not just of scientific information but will support scientists in their research."

To listen to the short interview, recorded on the convention show floor, click on the icon below (and forgive the background noise). 

Dick Kaser
ITI, V.P., Content

• Online Information 2007

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ITI Bloggers December 6th, 2007

In his keynote presentation Wednesday morning, David Gurteen, Gurteen Knowledge Community, discussed the evolution of Knowledge Management and considered whether the natural evolution of the practice would be enhanced by Web 2.0 technologies.

After listening in on his remarks, I invited him to sit for an interview to discuss the trends.  As he notes in the context of the interview, he had no choice but to say yes to this invitation, since he had interviewed me earlier this year for a video podcast on another subject and therefore owed me.

Though, as he observes here, "KM 2.0" is not an expression commonly heard, the 2.0 community tools and other technologies can be a great complement to KM initiatives.  His own Web site employs many of them.

The interview also includes a forecast of what’s ahead for the deployment of 2.0 collaborative tools. 
(Audio File)

Dick Kaser
ITI V.P., Content

• Online Information 2007

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ITI Bloggers December 6th, 2007

Mohamed M. Elewa, CEO, Arabia Inform, is a man on a mission.

At Online Information, his company — which for 15 years has been monitoring, abstracting and indexing news and other sources in the Middle East — announced in London the release of a new English-language interface, AskZad.

When I sat down to talk to him about it, however, he denied that AskZad is just an interface.   It’s also a goodwill gesture to the West.

"One of my main objectives as a businessman is to connect East and West," he said, during an interview earlier this week.

The AskZad service–and other services offered by Arabia Inform–help companies, countries, think tanks, researchers and anyone with an interest in the Middles East monitor information sources, ranging from media to journals. 

AskZad is available on a pay-as-you-go remote access or pre-paid, site-license basis.  The new English-language service may also be licensed to popular aggregators in the West.  And other European-language interfaces are planned.

Jan Diggs, GM, Business Development, and Mr. Elewa shared with me additional plans going forward, which include the launch next year of a business intelligence service focused on various vertical market sectors in the Middle East.  They told me they plan to offer risk assessment, terrorist reports, company/country image analytics, and so forth, as part of the service.

"We’ve started to make a good approach to the West," said Mr. Elewa, "We’ve only started . . . "

Dick Kaser
ITI V.P., Content

• Online Information 2007

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ITI Bloggers December 6th, 2007

Robin Neidorf, GM at FreePint (above) was in a celebratory mood on Tuesday evening.  "Two important things happend in 1997," she told attendees at the FreePint reception:  the Google domain name was registered and FreePint published its first issue online.

In her short remarks, Robin credited FreePint founder Will Hahn with the "vision, in 1997, to combine digital publishing with online community building . . . at a time when most people couldn’t do e-mail."

Dick Kaser
ITI V.P. Content

• Online Information 2007

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ITI Bloggers December 6th, 2007

Caught together on a single sofa at last night’s SLA reception were (l-r), Neil Infield, of the British Library; John Coll, of the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh); and Hazel Hall, of Napier University School of Computing

Dick Kaser
ITI, V.P., Content

• Online Information 2007

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ITI Bloggers December 6th, 2007

Darrell Gunter, of Collexis, demonstrates the "fingerprint" of one researcher’s network

It’s rather like citation indexing on steroids, at least that was my immediate impression of Collexis, a relatively new-to-market search system, which uses biomedical research data to establish "fingerprints" of researchers’ publising activities, along their relationships to other researchers in the field.  But, as Darrell Gunter explained, the real power of the system appears to be its ability to map trends and help researchers generate hypotheses.  It’s search beyond discovery.

Hear about it, live from the show floor at Online Information 2007, from Darrell Gunter, Collexis’ Chief Marketing Officer.  Just click on the audio icon, below.

 

Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content

• Online Information 2007

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