Christian Science Monitor To Abandon Daily Print; NIH Partners with Bibliotheca; CAB Abstracts Gets Full Text

-- Library Journal, 10/30/2008 1:47:00 PM

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What a week it was for the web. While the big news this week was the agreement between Google, book publishers, and authors to end two lawsuits challenging its library scan plan, not to be overlooked was the Christian Science Monitor’s (CSM) announcement that, beginning in April 2009, it would become the first major U.S. newspaper to shift to an online-only publication. Despite its Tom Cruise as Scientologist-evoking name, make no mistake, the CSM is an outstanding newspaper, and its decision is sure to echo with other major news organizations struggling with similar, declining circulation issues.

In an announcement on the CSM site, Mary Trammell, editor-in-chief, said “the method of delivery and format are secondary, and need to be adjusted” to keep the organization ahead of the times. CSM will celebrate its 100th anniversary on Nov. 25. In the current budget year, ending April 30, CSM is expected to lose $18.9 million. Three goals, the CSM board said, would dominate its next century of operation:

• Producing a website that can be updated 24/7 and delivered instantaneously.
• Focusing resources on the fast-growing web audience for news rather than on the economically troubled daily newspaper industry.
• Achieving “financial sustainability” while supporting its global news resources.

The CSM will also launch a new weekly print edition in April to be priced at $3.50 per copy, or $89 for a year’s subscription. It will also offer a new daily electronic edition “a multipage PDF file sent by e-mail to subscribers Monday through Friday,” suitable for printing at home…

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) this week announced that it has partnered with Bibliotheca Inc., to provide RFID technology provider for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In selecting an RFID partner, NIH Library officials said it had one primary goal: “to simplify the library’s circulation and enable library staff members to spend more time interfacing with more than 18,000 researchers, clinicians, and active NIH staff on the main campus alone.” To that end, NIH has purchased 235,000 Bibliotheca RFID book tags as well as 1000 Bibliotheca CD/DVD RFID tags.

The system will automate sorting, handling, security, and inventory management. The NIH Library will also take advantage of the BiblioChip RFID tags’ “intelligent detection capability,” which can tell when components are missing in a CD/DVD pack. Not only will patrons be automatically alerted at self-check kiosks when returning incomplete CD/DVD packs, but librarians will also be alerted to incomplete returns of media packs during automated sorting. The NIH Library conversion is now underway, and will begin working in January 2009…

Maybe you can just start calling CAB Abstracts CAB Full-Text. This week, CABI officials said its life sciences bibliographic database, CAB Abstracts, will include full text content that was previously available only through a separate subscription. Beginning January 2009, the full text addition means that over 36,000 journal articles, reports, and conference papers will be available to anyone with a CAB Abstracts subscription. “We decided to include full text in response to customer demand,” said Janet Halsall, database manager. CAB Abstracts is a comprehensive bibliographic, abstracting, and indexing database in the applied life sciences…

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