ACRL College & Research Libraries News

Association of College & Research Libraries

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Elsevier and Endeavor join forces

Endeavor Information Systems Inc. and Elsevier Science Inc. surprised the library market by announcing that Endeavor will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Elsevier. The union of the two companies will integrate bibliographic and full-text material including library holdings, library journal collections, reference books, and other full-text content. Endeavor’s Voyager library management system will serve as a platform for uniting library collections with scientific content in Elsevier Science’s primary and secondary publications and databases.

When asked why a successful company would choose to be sold to Elsevier, Endeavor CEO Jane Burke replied, “When I look at what’s happening overall in information and look at what end users are thinking and seeing, they have this expectation that they can find anything with one search. What I’ve been feeling for the past year or so as I’ve talked to our customers is that I’ve seen them increasingly spending their effort and money on licensing content. It seems as if we are on the point of real shift. Electronic content is changing the nature of libraries’ collections.”

Burke added that the library’s collection is no longer what you have in a print package; it is a combination of print and licensed material. She continued, “I think that it will give Endeavor the opportunity to build a unified delivery system faster and more efficiently.”

Burke was asked by C&RL News why Endeavor would sell itself rather than just align itself with Elsevier. She replied that there are two answers. “The first is that ‘These transactions benefit our customers and our shareholders.’ The other answer is that we’ve all seen ‘partnerships’ and our experience here is that partnerships take a while to get going and we wanted to be in a situation where we could get accurate information very quickly.”

Burke asserted that Endeavor’s new status as a wholly owned subsidiary would not change Endeavor’s operations. She said the pricing, the operation, the offices, and the staff would stay the same. When asked if Endeavor’s communication patterns might be influenced by its new parent company, she said, “Endeavor has a reputation for being very open with people and I don’t see that changing.”

Burke said that Endeavor will still be able to partner with other content providers and explained that Endeavor has been partnering with Cornell University to build a digital library architecture that is supposed to search four types of metadata formats simultanenously. Burke said that Cornell will have the product ready by the end of the summer and that it will be available for purchase by end of the year.

netLibrary partners with EBSCO Publishing

A distribution alliance between netLibrary and EBSCO Publishing will enable the partners to sell e-books to public libraries, junior colleges, and community college libraries. As part of the agreement, EBSCO’s database search tool, ELSSCOhost, will be linked to the netLibrary Web site. This will enable individuals to obtain search results from both sites with a single search query.

“EBSCO Publishing has developed highly effective info-commerce channels; netLibrary offers a product that can flow efficiently through those channels,” said netLibrary Executive Vice President of Sales Rich Rosy. “We are excited to be working with EBSCO to introduce tailored collections of e-books to a wide variety of library customers.”

New Web site helps find used/rare/ out-of-print books

A new company focused on meeting the needs of academic librarians for used, rare, out-of-print, and antiquarian books has opened at 21northmain.com. The site includes inventories of more than 2,500 usedbook dealers nationwide for a total online inventory of more than 10 million items. The site has been tested at the University of Minnesota, University of Illinois, Cornell University, Yale University, Emory University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Dartmouth College.

According to Karen Schmidt, associate university librarian for collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “The 21 North Main's system brings together bookstores and librarians in a way that hasn't happened in the past. It's like a used-book marketplace, getting everybody’s wares out there in a much more visible and efficient way. We can get our ‘want’ list out there and continue to develop relationships with book dealers who have specializations.”

Comments sought on draft "Objectives for Information Literacy"

Hearings are being held to review a new document, tentatively entitled “Objectives for Information Literacy Instruction by Librarians in Academic Institutions,” developed to replace the 1989 “Model Statement of Objectives for Academic Bibliographic Instruction.” The first draft of the new document will be available no later than May 15 at the IS Web site. Go to http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/ is/ and follow the “Instruction Objectives” link. Paper copies of the document are available by contacting Carla List (address below).

The hearing will be held at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago and is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, July 9, 8:30-9:30 a.m.

The ACRL Instruction Section Model Statement of Objectives Task Force that created the document worked with the ACRL’s “Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education” (http://www.ala.org/acrl/ ilcomstan.html). The “Standards” provide performance indicators and outcomes; the new “Objectives” aim to help librarians achieve the outcomes.

Please review the “Objectives” and bring your comments and questions to the hearing in Chicago or send them to the Task Force Chair, Carla List: e-mail carla.list@ plattsburgh.edu or snail-mail Feinberg Library, 2 Draper Ave., Plattsburgh SUNY, Plattsburgh, NY 12901-2697.

Sites sought for immersion programs

ACRL’s Institute for Information Literacy (IIL) is seeking sites for its immersion programs. Two immersion programs are offered each year; institutions are invited to submit a proposal to host one. Criteria for selecting the site and information about preparing your proposal may be found on ACRL’s Web site at http:// www. ala. org/ acrl/ nili/siteproposal. html.

The four and-a-half-day programs provide intensive information literacy training and education for instruction librarians. Two tracks allow individuals to choose between developing their own individual instruction skills or developing an information literacy program for their institution.

The immersion program has been held at the State University of New York and will be held this summer at the University of Washington and Kent State University.

Proposals/applications to hold a program in 2001 should be submitted by June 1, 2000. Proposals to hold a program in 2002 should be submitted by October 1, 2000.

Indiana University leads project to digitize American fiction

Indiana University (IU) Libraries will lead a three-year cooperative project among Big Ten universities to digitize nearly 3,000 works of 19th-century America fiction. The resulting collection of electronic texts will be freely available on the Web. Compiled by Lyle Wright in his 1957 bibliography, American Fiction 1851-1875, the works include novels, romances, short stories, tall tales, and allegories, by authors such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, and Herman Melville.

IU staff will convert 800,000 microfilm page images to text files using optical character recognition software and create a searchable database of the texts. Participating libraries will edit, encode, and proofread the text files.

The nine libraries working on this project are members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), an academic consortium of the Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago. Participating libraries are: Indiana, Michigan State, and Ohio State Universities, and the Universities of Illinois at Chicago, of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, of Iowa, of Michigan, of Minnesota, and of Wisconsin-Madison. ■