From blawlor at nfais.org Fri Dec 3 09:49:51 2010 From: blawlor at nfais.org (Bonnie Lawlor) Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2010 09:49:51 -0500 Subject: [nfais-l] NFAIS Webinar - Portabvle Devices and Mobile Users Message-ID: <00f901cb92f9$57922a60$06b67f20$@org> NFAIS Webinar: Portable Devices and Mobile Users: A New Era for Information Delivery and Access One of the hottest areas in R&D today is the development of personal reading devices that serve an increasingly mobile population. This highly competitive arena is driving innovation in both the format and delivery of information resources, offering publishers an opportunity to be creative and breathe new life into even the most traditional information tools for a new generation of users. NFAIS will hold a 90-minute informational Webinar, Portable Devices and Mobile Users, on December 16, 2010 at 1:00pm EST. Maureen Kelly, Principal, Content Kinetics, will open the meeting with a brief history of book technology. Jill O' Neill, NFAIS Director of Communication and Planning, will then discuss the reading experience, including an overview of today's established user interfaces and navigational approaches and how users can customize their own experience. The meeting will then take a look at the development of e-reader technology, from first to third generation and beyond, current content delivery channels, and the markets for e-readers and e-publications. And in closing, the meeting will focus on why all information providers need to pay attention to the development of portable reading devices so that they can re-shape their content to offer an enjoyable and satisfying user experience - on any platform, anywhere! If you want to learn more about today's portable reading devices register for the NFAIS webinar today. NFAIS members pay $75 and non-members pay $95. An unlimited number of staff from an NFAIS member organization can participate for a group fee of $225. The group fee for an unlimited number of staff from any non-member organization is $285. The registration form can be accessed at: http://info.nfais.org/info/PortableDev2010_RegForm.pdf. For more information contact: Jill O'Neill, NFAIS Director, Communication and Planning, 215-893-1561 (phone); 215-893-1564 (fax); mailto:jilloneill at nfais.org or go to http://www.nfais.org/. NFAIS: Serving the Global Information Community -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From blawlor at nfais.org Wed Dec 8 09:00:36 2010 From: blawlor at nfais.org (Bonnie Lawlor) Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:00:36 -0500 Subject: [nfais-l] Position available at NFAIS member organization Message-ID: <007901cb96e0$49f8e480$ddeaad80$@org> POSITION AVAILABLE AT NFAIS MEMBER ORGANIZATION: DATA CONVERSION LABORATORY SEARCHING FOR VICE PRESIDENT, SALES AND MARKETING Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL) is searching for a Vice President, Sales and Marketing who can lead the charge in growing the company, both in industries that it already has a significant presence, and into new evolving opportunities. Candidates need strong skills and experience in sales and sales management, as well as in marketing management, and should have a records of success with document conversion and management, or an allied industry. A job description follows below. ( Data Conversion Laboratory - Greater New York City Area) Job Description Build market position and revenue by developing and defining marketing and sales strategy. Responsibilities include monitoring sales activity and leading the sales process between direct sales team and operations personnel, coaching and mentoring of other sales personnel and team members, developing metrics and measurements of sales activities, identifying and developing potential clients/markets/segments by analyzing opportunities and the marketplace, and leading marketing activities that relate to strategic sales objectives. The Vice President, Sales and Marketing, reports directly to the CEO. Skills Experience in Technology Services sales required Knowledge of Document Management and XML Publishing Documented experience in Sales Management and Coaching Excellent communication skills Company Description Founded in 1981, Data Conversion Laboratory, Inc. prepares content for electronic distribution and the Web by converting it to structured formats like XML, SGML, ePub and HTML. DCL specializes in the implementation and management of large, complex conversion projects, and converts to and from virtually all word processing and typesetting formats. DCL operates with facilities on four continents, providing support services for high-volume data-entry and data-processing using its real-time web-accessible process control software. DCL's services help refine conversion strategy, identify document redundancy, extract metadata and transform legacy and future documents to meet our clients' real needs - today and in the future. Mark Gross President & CEO Data Conversion Laboratory, Inc. MarkGross at dclab.com (p) 718-307-5711 (Direct)  (p) 718-357-8700 (Main)  (f) 718-357-8776 61-18 190th Street ? Suite 205  Fresh Meadows  New York  11365 Sign up for DCL's monthly newsletter This email, its electronic document attachments, and the contents of its website linkages may contain confidential and proprietary information. This information is intended solely for use by the individual or entity to whom it is addressed. If you have received this information in error, please notify the sender immediately and arrange for the prompt destruction of the material and any accompanying attachments. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From blawlor at nfais.org Thu Dec 16 17:48:23 2010 From: blawlor at nfais.org (Bonnie Lawlor) Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 17:48:23 -0500 Subject: [nfais-l] NFAIS Conference early bird registration Message-ID: <031a01cb9d73$5896f880$09c4e980$@org> EARLY BIRD DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE FOR THE 2011 NFAIS ANNUAL CONFERENCE UNTIL JANUARY 7TH The 2011 NFAIS Annual Conference, Taming the Information Tsunami: The New World of Discovery, will take place February 27 - March 1, 2011 at the historic Hyatt at the Bellevue in Philadelphia, PA. Early bird registrations are available until January 7, 2011. Until then savings of up to $200 off the full registration fee are available and NFAIS members registering three or more staff at the same time receive even greater savings (for details see the registration form at http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/295-register-for-2011-annual-conference). This three-day meeting will take a look at today's world of information overload and how publishers and librarians are navigating today's exponential growth of digital information to provide scholars and researchers with the reliable, relevant information that deserves their time and attention - no matter what the source, language or medium! Highlights Include: . A thought-provoking look at the complex problems and entrepreneurial opportunities offered by today's information explosion from Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media . Survey results from IDC on the sources of today's digital information explosion and the expected information growth rates in the coming years . A panel of librarians and researchers addressing how they are adapting to information overload - the tools they use, what works, what doesn't, and how their jobs have changed as a result . A look at the impact of digital technology on how we think and how we process and use information from Stephen Berlin Johnson, Contributing Editor, Wired magazine. . Case studies from the Library of Congress, Nature Publishing, and the Journal of Visual Experiments on coverage of content across all media and diverse languages to ensure the relevance and comprehensiveness of their products and services . The Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture given by award recipient Dr. Ben Shneiderman, Professor and Founding Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland . Examples of the current and emerging technologies - cloud computing, augmented reality, semantic searching, machine thinking, automatic translation - that are shaping the future of information discovery * A look at the challenges to acquiring, preserving, and delivering the huge volume of information that comprises the U.S. national record from David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States * A discussion of the future of information discovery - how content providers, librarians, faculty, and users will efficiently and effectively navigate the tidal waves of content that are forthcoming. Attend the 53rd NFAIS Annual Conference and learn how learn how you can ensure that your products and services allow information seekers to successfully navigate the information tsunami. To register or obtain more information contact: Jill O'Neill, NFAIS Director of Communication and Planning (jilloneill at nfais.org or 215-893-1561) or visit the NFAIS Web site at http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/291-2011-nfais-annual-conference The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS), 1518 Walnut Street, Suite 1004, Philadelphia, PA 19102-3403. NFAIS: Serving the Global Information Community -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jilloneill at nfais.org Wed Dec 22 11:05:53 2010 From: jilloneill at nfais.org (Jill O'Neill) Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 11:05:53 -0500 Subject: [nfais-l] NFAIS Enotes, December 2010 Message-ID: NFAIS Enotes, December 2010 Written and Compiled by Jill O'Neill Back in October, I tweeted the Really Strategies User Conference. The closing speaker of the day was a gentleman from Google who discussed the much anticipated launch of Google Editions. As is the case with most Google presentations in such group environments, the speaker delivered a well-crafted presentation with many bright graphics aimed at distracting the audience from recognizing that little hard information is actually being shared. The presentation reiterated what was already known - that Google's foray into electronic books would at least match the baseline experience of Amazon's Kindle reading environment. Readers could read the title of their choice on the device of their choice and by extension at the appropriate time, and allowing for the appropriate context. On December 6, 2010, Google's eBookstore launched with an announcement on the Official Google Blog that also gave away little hard information. The rebranded Google eBooks launched with 3 million titles (with a percentage of those being public domain titles that were part of the Google book scanning project). The piece referenced statistics from the extended Google Books project -- 15 million scanned titles from more than 40 libraries in 100 countries and in more than 400 languages. (Google eBooks is essentially a sub-set of that project). It's worth noting that the bookstore's URL is tied to the books.google.com site itself as a sub-directory of that site (see http://books.google.com/ebooks). The user can reach his or her own library, as built up since the launch of Google Books in 2004, by clicking either on a small link in the upper right hand corner of his or her screen monitor or on the slightly larger link that appears at the bottom of the bookstore's home page. The same sales pitch indicates that the upgraded Google reader offers a two-page reading mode, the option to search inside the book, user customization, free sample chapters, and an "About This Book" page. The entry included a link to a sample title displayed in the new HTML5 reader so that new users could see the "full-featured" interface and better understand the nature of the reading experience. As with so many product launches at Google, a 2-minute introductory video was provided (see: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/discover-more-than-3-million-google.h tml). There are two ways of entering the new Google Books environment - one is a search box on the left that is described as allowing you to search "the latest index of the world's books" and the other (on the right of the screen) is a invitation to "Shop in the Bookstore Now" by clicking on Google's branded bright blue button. The former has links to the user's library as well as to a browsable interface (essentially the familiar interface to Google Books), while the latter urges the user to shop for titles that can be read on the Web, Android, iPhone, iPad, Sony and Nook. Clicking on that button takes the user into a shopping interface which is arguably more attractive (and less cluttered) than Amazon's. How does the user know what is available? Cover art displays over two-thirds of the screen, but in a lower-left hand navigational space (you may have to scroll), there is a traditional set of subject classifications. Kindle users might naturally expect that where a Kindle edition is available, there will also be a Google edition available. This is not necessarily the case. Checking against my personal Kindle book collection, I noted that Chris Anderson's Free as well as Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Mad Man were two highly visible titles unavailable in electronic form on Google. Where both Kindle edition (KE) and Google eBook edition (GE) do exist, the pricing is comparable: Groundswell GE $9.88 KE $9.99 The Bible: A Biography GE $8.00 KE $7.79 Dreaming in Code GE $9.99 KE $8.43 Wikinomics GE $9.99 KE $9.99 Jane Austen in Hollywood GE 13.20 KE $13.20 Those titles are randomly chosen from my own collection at Google Books, but they are also titles that have been included as required texts on various college syllabi in recent years. The user gains access to a title by pressing the "Get It Now" button. If the title is a current one for which payment must be made, that process is handled through the Google Check-out service. The reader is then taken to the book's page where he or she must click through a second time using a button, "Read the Book." (Note: There will be three clicks before the user's reading experience actually can begin). Once the user has gained the right to access a title, the title is then transferred to the user's "Google ebooks shelf," regardless of whether it is in or out of copyright. Clicking on the book's cover vaults the reader into one of two reading interfaces. The alternative options to the "Get It Now" button are (a) View Sample and (b) Read on Your Device. If the user opts to view a sample in this context, he or she is vaulted into the older Google interface to view the scanned pages as a default. The option of reading on one's own device takes the user to a page of apps for reading on alternate devices, just as Amazon offers various options for reading Kindle editions. Android and web access is immediate and Apple devices (iPad, iPod Touch and the iPhone) have approved apps available to the reader. (Note: These are not apps necessarily offering a seamless experience. If one needs help with the app while using it, the help page the user sees refers the individual to a URL. Not a live link, just a URL delivered as part of the text). At the time of this writing, users with either Sony or Barnes & Noble devices were guided to Google Help pages with instructions for the appropriate handling of a digital file. As previously mentioned, if the user selects the "Get it Free" button for a public domain title in the bookstore, there's still an additional step to go through. That button takes the user to an extended "About This Book" page and only by clicking on a "Read it Now" button is the user finally taken to the text of his or her selection. As an aside, the older "About this Book" page prominently showed which Google-partnered library had supplied the physical volume for scanning; in this new environment, that tidbit of information which would have continued to give the Harvard or Oxford University collections legitimate visibility is now buried at the foot of the page with other mundane bibliographic data. If the user chooses to read the text in flowable text, that option may be selected though a settings button governing the size of type, the preferred font, the text size, line spacing and ragged or right justified margins. Those options naturally disappear from view if the user sticks to the default of scanned pages. While it appears that the older Google reader interface is primarily being used for any scanned title previews and initial access to Full View titles, the new reader interface is intended to operate in any Java-enabled web browser. The deciding factor of which interface the user will see for reading a sample in the new viewer (insofar as I can tell through use) is whether the publisher has allowed Google to display a preview solely in PDF file format (in which case the user sees the older interface) or whether the publisher is permitting Google to display the preview in flowable text. The problem with this is that an ordinary user has no idea about such a nuance and therefore is likely to be thrown into confusion when different interfaces display for different titles while the user is shopping during a single session in the eBookstore. Additional confusion may derive from the fact that within the newer interface, the tool bar sometimes appears on the left of the screen and at other times in the upper right of the screen. To further complicate matters, Google will sometimes put a message next to a title's Buy button that says "Better for Larger Screen." That message is supposed to convey to the user that only a PDF file of scanned images is available for purchase. The casual user who purchases an e-book without noting that message for reading on an iPod Touch is doubly out of luck. Not only can s/he not read the title on the device of choice, but neither can that title be deleted from the user's iTouch device. There is no mechanism in Google Books for deleting titles from one's library in either the mobile app or the browser-based environment of the desktop. Google's usage data likely suggests to them that users don't differentiate well between PDF and ePub so they've dropped that terminology. It's that kind of information architecture that makes the Google eBookstore an incredibly irritating environment. It's Google Books.but then again, it's really not. Another disconcerting aspect to the Google ebookstore experience is that once the user is inside it, there's no easy navigational path back to those titles in the user's Google Books library - the interface used in Google Books since its launch. I can actually only navigate within the Bookstore to the shelf designated for Google ebooks. Nor can a user reading a free book in the older interface readily navigate into the Bookstore. The two venues are attached by a minimal number of navigational paths. It seems clear that Google is trying to gently push long-established users of Google Books into the newer environment without alerting them to that fact. One librarian of my acquaintance indicated that one could navigate via parsing of the Bookstore's URL (http://books.google.com/ebooks) -- removing the "e" from ebooks - but such a clumsy option seems sadly out of keeping with Google's famous principle of "Put the user first." The associated mobile application for the iPod Touch is as bare-boned as its Web-based antecedent. Competing as it must against myriad sophisticated reading apps, Google was wise to make this mirror-image interface downloadable at no cost. While it presents no problems to a novice user, neither does it meet the level of complexity that other reader interfaces for that environment have. As just one example, the recently released Bluefire Reader application (http://www.bluefirereader.com/ ) created as a white label e-reader interface allows bookmarking where Google's iPhone/iTouch app does not. User expectations for Google eBooks had been quite high. When 20thingsilearned.com launched with a text about the Internet and browsers, coming as it did from the Google Chrome team (http://www.20thingsilearned.com/), more than one commenter thought the book interface there presaged the finished Google Reader. Other than the initial buzz during the 24 hours following the launch of the Google eBookstore, there has been surprisingly little discussion of the service. Like me, information professional Barbara Fister was less than enamoured of Google Books as she indicated, blogging for Inside Higher Ed (see: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library_babel_fish/the_illusion_of_googl e_s_limitless_library). On December 9th, Elsevier issued a press release indicating that they were participating in the Google eBookstore, although not all book titles from Elsevier will be made available there. According to the press release, which titles will be sold there will ultimately be decided on a case-by-case basis. Individual titles from Elsevier are already available on the Kindle platform and have been since the device's launch in 2007 (see: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authored_newsitem.cws_home/companynews05_01 785). New reading interfaces and related ebook management applications have been proliferating madly. Blio (a dramatic disappointment at http://www.blio.com/) and the far-more promising Monocle (http://monocle.inventivelabs.com.au/) are two that spring to mind. The Internet Archive's Open Library launched a truly impressive reader interface (http://blog.openlibrary.org/2010/12/09/new-bookreader/). Written up in Salon was Eucalyptus as a particularly strong entry in the mobile arena of e-reader software (see: http://mobile.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/12/07/google_ebookstore/inde x.html). I assure you that it's worth the $9.99 charged in iTunes. Mobile applications (and I count 14 reading apps on my personal iTouch) are as sophisticated as the Web-based environments. Options for customization foster a user's sense that the reading experience can be tailored to the most particular tastes. Font and background colors are the least of it. As an example, one system offers the option of opening footnote hyperlinks in a pop-up window, in the same window, or in a split window. The same software allows the user to set his or her preference for swiping pages left to right (scrolling) or up and down (flicking). The Mantis Bible Study Software (currently version 4.9.2) permits a user to assemble a customized study experience, contextualizing a particular biblical text through in-line links to both dictionaries and other reference and scholarly content purchased through their store. Various social reading environments have sprung up. Figment - intended for young adult readers - attracted some 4,000 new members the day it launched (http://figment.com/). Barnes and Noble's NookStudy, a downloadable reader interface for college students in support of rentable textbooks, features a social element for study groups as well as the option of actually printing pages from their scanned texts. It was received with mixed reviews - the negative (see: http://www.publicstatic.net/2010/10/14/nookstudy-not-so-great-for-studying/) and the enthusiastic (see: http://blog.ecollege.com/WordPress/?p=478). Copia, originally focused on low-cost dedicated e-readers, transferred their attention to the creation of an electronic bookstore with an associated social network (see Mashable's write-up at http://mashable.com/2010/11/22/copia-public-beta/]). Even Mendeley for scholars is viewed as a social reading environment as Eric Hellman pointed out, writing on the rise of social reading environments and how this potentially alters business models as much as it shapes reading patterns and expectations (see: http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/12/biblio-social-objects-copia-mendel ey.html). This being the case, is Google simply indifferent to the competition offered by sophisticated reading software available elsewhere? Their Google Books experience lacks engagement. Or is it that Google foresees changes so dramatic ahead of us in terms of content delivery that they feel the effort required to create a more compelling reading experience a poor use of organizational resources? And what does that mean for traditional information providers serving the library community? Want to learn more about portable devices and the e-reading experience? Look for the NFAIS webinar on this topic to be held early next year. Also, early bird registration discounts for the 2011 NFAIS Annual conference end on January 7th. Until then savings of up to $100 off the full registration fee are available and NFAIS members registering three or more staff at the same time receive even greater savings (for details see the registration form at http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/295-register-for-2011-annual-conference). 2010 SPONSORS Accessible Archives, Inc. American Psychological Association/PsycINFO The British Library CAS Copyright Clearance Center CrossRef Data Conversion Laboratory Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) Getty Research Institute H. W. Wilson Information Today, Inc. Office of Scientific & Technical Information, DOE Philosopher's Information Center ProQuest Really Strategies, Inc. Temis, Inc. Thomson Reuters Healthcare & Science Thomson Reuters IP Solutions Unlimited Priorities Corporation ************************************ Jill O'Neill Director, Planning & Communication NFAIS (v) 215-893-1561 (email) jilloneill at nfais.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From blawlor at nfais.org Thu Dec 30 17:09:06 2010 From: blawlor at nfais.org (Bonnie Lawlor) Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2010 17:09:06 -0500 Subject: [nfais-l] NFAIS conference discounts end soon Message-ID: <018501cba86e$2d7dd000$88797000$@org> NFAIS2009Logo EARLY BIRD DISCOUNTS FOR THE 2011 NFAIS ANNUAL CONFERENCE END NEXT WEEK Early bird registrations for the 2011 NFAIS Annual Conference are available for just one more week. Up until January 7, 2011 savings of up to $200 off the full registration fee are available and NFAIS members registering three or more staff at the same time receive even greater savings (for details see the registration form at http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/295-register-for-2011-annual-conference). The theme of the conference is, Taming the Information Tsunami: The New World of Discovery, and it will take place February 27 - March 1, 2011 at the historic Hyatt at the Bellevue in Philadelphia, PA. The three-day meeting will take a look at today's world of information overload and how publishers and librarians are navigating today's exponential growth of digital information to provide scholars and researchers with the reliable, relevant information that deserves their time and attention - no matter what the source, language or medium! Highlights Include: . A thought-provoking look at the complex problems and entrepreneurial opportunities offered by today's information explosion from Dan Gillmor, author of We the Media . Survey results from IDC on the sources of today's digital information explosion and the expected information growth rates in the coming years * A panel of librarians and researchers addressing how they are adapting to information overload - the tools they use, what works, what doesn't, and how their jobs have changed as a result . A look at the impact of digital technology on how we think and how we process and use information from Stephen Berlin Johnson, Contributing Editor, Wired magazine. * Case studies from the Library of Congress, Nature Publishing, and the Journal of Visual Experiments on coverage of content across all media and diverse languages to ensure the relevance and comprehensiveness of their products and services . The Miles Conrad Memorial Lecture given by award recipient Dr. Ben Shneiderman, Professor and Founding Director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, University of Maryland * Examples of the current and emerging technologies - cloud computing, augmented reality, semantic searching, machine thinking, automatic translation - that are shaping the future of information discovery * A look at the challenges to acquiring, preserving, and delivering the huge volume of information that comprises the U.S. national record from David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States * A discussion of the future of information discovery - how content providers, librarians, faculty, and users will efficiently and effectively navigate the tidal waves of content that are forthcoming. Attend the 53rd NFAIS Annual Conference and learn how learn how you can ensure that your products and services allow information seekers to successfully navigate the information tsunami. To register or obtain more information contact: Jill O'Neill, NFAIS Director of Communication and Planning (jilloneill at nfais.org or 215-893-1561) or visit the NFAIS Web site at http://nfais.brightegg.com/page/291-2011-nfais-annual-conference The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS), 1518 Walnut Street, Suite 1004, Philadelphia, PA 19102-3403. NFAIS: Serving the Global Information Community -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 3041 bytes Desc: not available URL: