LISNews: Librarian News

Paula Hane writes...

\"For the past 2 years, searchers have had Web access to about 50 ready-reference sources from xrefer.com. Now, the company has officially announced the launch of xreferplus, its new subscription reference service for libraries www.xreferplus.com. The free site is still available www.xrefer.com. It offers general reference works—encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and books of quotations—and a range of subject-specific titles covering everything from art to accountancy and literature to law. There are over 1 million entries. The cross-referencing technology connects related information across all the works and has generated an additional network of over 5 million xreferences.\" More

For BusinessWeek Online, Stephen Wildstron writes...

\"Libraries are essential because only a tiny fraction of the knowledge contained in books is available on the Web--and what\'s there is hard to find or use. Things should change as more and more books are put into electronic form and as publishers and distributors figure out how to make money in the process. More

From Business First-Columbus...

\"The Online Computer Library Center has created a new division to help its member libraries catalog and preserve their digital resources. The division will be responsible for helping libraries create, access and preserve existing digital collections; collaborate to build new digital collections; and learn about digitization and preservation issues. It will house the OCLC\'s Digital Archive, the Digital and Preservation Co-op and the Digital and Preservation Resources Centers.\" From More

From Excite News:

Pittsburgh-based Preservation Technologies, L.P., signed a new five-year contract with the Library of Congress (LC) to preserve over a million books and 5 to 7.5 million manuscript pages using its Bookkeeper process. This is the first step toward the LC\'s goal of preserving 8.5 million retrospective and new books over the next 30 years.

With strong support from Congress, LC has worked with Preservation Technologies since the mid-1990s to preserve hundreds of thousands of books. As the national library and the official library of the U.S. Congress, LC\'s mass deacidification efforts have focused primarily on its collection of \"Americana.\"

After rigorous research and review, the successful treatment of more than 300,000 books and the successful completion of a four-year contract, the new contract ensures that the Library of Congress and Preservation Technologies will continue to work together to preserve endangered volumes.

More.