February 2001--The history and rapid pace of e-book publishing standards development was on the NISO agenda last month in Washington, DC. Sandy Paul, SKP Associates, discussed the Book Industry Study Group, http://www.bisg.org and their role in the standards process. Lisa McCloy-Kelly, from Random House followed representing publishers. Richard Stark of barnesandnoble.com described how data needs for booksellers changed dramatically once they began selling books online (both physical and e-books). They believe that what sells books online are good synopses and reviews. They subscribe to many review services. Other key 'sales' pieces are tables of contents, both as sources of searchable terms, and as good indicators for potential buyers of book content. Stark described their prior data environment as one where they were forced to handle over a hundred data formats, and their current one, where they are moving rapidly to ONIX as their primary metadata format. Barnes and Noble does not see ONIX as a replacement for EDI or MARC, but rather as a way to handle merchandising more effectively. AAP commissioned a consultant study of the expansion of ONIX to e-books, which is now being reviewed. They plan to have a published schema for ONIX soon. More information on ONIX available http://www.editeur.org/onix.html. The new AAP Metadata Standards for e-books can be found at http://www.publishers.org/home/metadata.pdf
Related Link: http://www.niso.org

February 2001--The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) and the Internet Scout Report for Science and Engineering are collaborating with Cornell University on their core integration system project 'SITE for Science' for the National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library Program funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). OSTI's PubSCIENCE, will provide future NSDL users with a major source of electronic access to scientific and technical information.The Internet Scout Report for Science & Engineering features in-depth collections of reviewed Internet resources that focus on science and engineering. PubSCIENCE is a compendium of electronic journal bibliographic citations and abstracts contributed by prestigious scientific journal publishers. A World Wide Web service developed by OSTI, PubSCIENCE facilitates searching and accessing a wide range of peer-reviewed journal literature in the physical sciences and other energy-related disciplines. The target audience for the Internet Scout Report for Science & Engineering is faculty, students, staff, and librarians in the life sciences, physical sciences, and engineering. Each biweekly issue offers a selective collection of Internet resources covering topics in the sciences, and related fields such as math and engineering, that have been chosen by librarians and content specialists in the given field of study.

February 2001--Using the Open Archives Initiative protocol in the 'SITE for Science' system architecture, Carl Lagoze demonstrated a 'scraper' tool that gathers metadata from uncooperating sites creating basic Dublin Core records for further normalizing in a digital library production system. This tool will allow NSDL users and user communities to be involved in building digital library collections in the future.

February 2001--'Researchers to Develop System for an Online Library for Science Education' Cornell Chronicle, Jan. 18, 2001. 'Online Library Delivers' http://www.cornellsun.com/ Cornell Daily Sun, Jan. 25, 2001

February 2001--PRISM at Cornell University is a four-year effort to investigate and develop the policies and mechanisms needed for information integrity in digital libraries.

February 2001--The latest on digital library research, resources, and global initiatives.

February 2001--The NSF is seeking proposals for digital libary collections, services, and/or targeted research for the National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Education Digital Library Program. $25M will be available.

February 2001--'Scirus is a powerful Internet search tool developed especially for finding scientific information. Elsevier Science has developed Scirus, a scientific search engine having both web and proprietary content sources, which distinguishes Scirus from existing search engines.'

February 2001--The invisible web

February 2001--Web sites that are making the 'bad stuff' disappear.