E-Views and Reviews: Hot Off the MideastWire
By Cheryl LaGuardia -- Library Journal, 8/15/2006
The Encyclopedia-Off continues with another head-to-head comparison between Encyclopedia Britannica Online and Wikipedia, based on real reference questions. This time, the topic is Vietnamese water puppetry. A search on wikipedia.com yields a 680-word article on the topic, with sections on History, Performance, Content, and External Links. In contrast, Britannica provides a 110-word article on the arts in the cultural life of Vietnam whose pertinent content consists of the phrase, “distinctly Vietnamese water puppetry—in which performances take place on a pool or pond, and water activates the puppets and hides the manipulating apparatus—and circus performances.” So the bare facts agree, but Wikipedia fleshes the story out substantially. Score so far: Wikipedia 3, Britannica 0.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK “We have active plans to make available a wide range of Cambridge content in electronic form. Cambridge is known for publishing works of scholarly synthesis, and we have been told repeatedly that much of this work would be of great interest to librarians and their users if available electronically. There is, of course, no one model for packaging content in electronic form, but we are encouraged that several stable business models have emerged.”—Frank Smith, Editorial Director, Academic Books, Cambridge University Press
MideastWire.com
MideastWire.com is a web-based news service providing translated summaries of significant stories about the Middle East. Established in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2005, it covers news from 22 Arab countries, Iran, and “the Arab media Diaspora,” including countries hosting pan-Arab media. The basic product offered is a daily (Monday–Friday), emailed newsletter collecting English-language stories from that morning's news reports, along with translated Arabic and Persian-language stories appearing in print and on radio and televised regional media.
HOW DOES IT WORK? The meat of this product is the daily briefings, which necessarily vary as widely (and as wildly) as does daily news. Briefings are arranged in a style that lets readers quickly scan their areas of interest. Each briefing begins with a Content Table, arranged alphabetically by country, and within each country headlines are arranged by the sections Business, Opinion, Politics, and Society. Clicking the headline link takes you further down the page into the full summary for that news item. Each daily briefing also includes a Daily Iraq Monitor, describing locally reported Iraqi events.
CAN YOU AND YOUR PATRONS USE IT? The daily briefing for June 22, 2006 included 34 translated short reports, covering news from Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Syria. Specific reports included, among others, “Participation Front conference discusses Islam and modernity”; an editorial by the former Iranian Minister of Higher Education from the reformist Sharq on “Politics against learning”; and from the independent daily Al Quds Al Arabi, “News about a mini Arab summit in Riyadh....”
This is information you are not going to find elsewhere—at least not in English—and not this fast after events happen. Summaries, like the subject matter, necessarily vary widely in length and scope, but these are not just sound bites of information; several of the summaries ran to more than 2500 words and covered their subjects in depth. For the web-based reports, MideastWire.com includes the link “Click here for source,” which takes you directly to the original report in the vernacular. According to the site, each daily briefing usually runs about 125 KB in length, but that's being modest; the seven briefings considered for this review ranged from 131 KB to 179 KB, averaging 158 KB long.
HOW GOOD IS IT? This is not a slickly designed, high-concept product. Rather, it is a highly practicable means of delivering valuable content in a remarkably timely way. I don't know of any other source that can deliver content from this area of the world this quickly. That it is able to do so at the prices charged is astonishing. It's simply a 10.
WHAT'S THE COST? Standard individual annual subscription is $87; a Premium individual subscription is $149; an Organizational-Limited License for $500 allows up to four premium accounts with no forwarding permitted; the Organizational-Unlimited License is $900 per year with unlimited accounts; the Library Limited License is $1500 per year with open IP access and full premium access with up to 15 direct accounts; and the Library Unlimited License is $3000 for open IP access, with full premium access with unlimited direct accounts for institutional email addresses.
THE BOTTOM LINE An essential resource for libraries serving researchers in global and Middle Eastern politics, government, economics, business, history, and culture. Strongly recommended for all academic and mid-sized to large public libraries.
| Author Information |
| Cheryl LaGuardia is the Head of Instructional Services, Harvard College Library, and author of Becoming a Library Teacher (Neal-Schuman, 2000). Readers and producers can contact her at claguard@fas.harvard.edu |
www.mideastwire.com
