FOBID, the organisation that represents Dutch libraries, archives and museums, recently reached an agreement with VOI©E, which represents right holders, on the digitisation and accessibility of the latter’s heritage collections. The agreement was reached within the Digiti©E Committee (Digitisation of Cultural Heritage) that was set up when a Declaration of Intent was signed at the opening of Amsterdam World Book Capital in April 2008.

  Digital content services provider Ingram Content companies has announced the launch of a new eBooks cooperative service enabling members of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) to offer multi-publisher collections to libraries. The ALPSP eBook Collection (AeBC) consists of over 1,200 titles contributed by specialist society, academic and university press publishers. Many titles have not previously been available in digital format.

  Medical information publisher BMJ Group has signed an agreement with the Saudi Pediatric Association (SPA) to provide a customised on-line medical education service for the Association’s 1500 members. The service is available through a new BMJ Learning Channel for the SPA: http://learning.bmj.com/spa.

  Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press (OUP), and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) have announced a publishing partnership for the journal - European Journal of Heart Failure. The journal is the fifth title from the ESC Journal Family to join Oxford Journals. The journal will be freely available online for the first three months of 2009.

  Knowledge management and discovery software developer Collexis Holdings, Inc. announced that Johns Hopkins University (JHU) has put the institution’s Collexis Expertise Portal online. The portal is a public website where individuals can search, sort, or view compiled views of the research conducted by JHU and its faculty. JHU is the first institution to allow public access to Collexis Expertise Profiles.

  Subscription services provider Swets has announced that it recently signed an exclusive three year contract with the Chinese JALIS consortium for the delivery and support of a full eAccess solution for the universities in the Jiangsu province. Under the deal, Swets will provide a suite of SwetsWise eAccess services to all JALIS member institutions that will give their end-users an efficient and intuitive solution for searching, browsing and accessing their catalogue of titles.

  Library management systems provider Talis has announced a partnership with LibLime, a leading provider of open solutions for libraries. Under the deal, over five million bibliographic records will be made available to the library community on LibLime's biblios.net platform.

  Versita, a leading STM e-publisher and e-publishing technology marketer in Central and Eastern Europe, has announced a partnership with MPS Technologies to implement the MPS ContentStore platform for launching and developing their new digital business. MPS Technologies is the technology arm of Macmillan India.

  Web content management (WCM) platforms provider EPiServer has announced that B2B publisher Reed Business Information (RBI) has selected its content management system (CMS). RBI will use EPiServer CMS to help redevelop and manage content for existing websites and deploy new ones, with an aim to deliver news and content faster and more efficiently to its customers.

  YBP Library Services, a leading provider of materials to academic libraries, has announced the availability of fully customisable MARC records for all titles included in Oxford Scholarship Online eBook Collections. Oxford Scholarship Online is a rapidly expanding cross-searchable library which now offers quick and easy access to the full text of 2,556 Oxford books.

  Future Medicine Ltd., part of Future Science Group, has announced the launch of a new journal – Immunotherapy. The journal is the latest addition to Future Medicine's collection of titles addressing modern medicine and biomedical research.

  Cambridge Information Group (CIG), a privately held investment firm and parent company to Bowker and ProQuest, has made an equity investment in LibraryThing, an emerging provider of online book cataloging services and solutions. Under the deal, CIG has purchased a minority stake in LibraryThing and has designated Bowker as the exclusive worldwide distributor for the library marketplace of LibraryThing for Libraries (LTFL), LibraryThing’s flagship library product. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

  The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) have published a guide to “Developing a Scholarly Communication Program in Your Library.” The guide provides background information and outlines steps for setting up a scholarly communication program at a library and on the campus.

  Journal Metrologia, published by non-profit scientific publisher Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP) on behalf of the BIPM, has announced a special issue on Timescale Algorithms. The issue is freely available until April 8, 2009.

  STM publisher Springer Science+Business Media has launched AuthorMapper.com, a free analytical online tool for discerning trends, patterns and subject experts within scientific research.The portal currently searches over three million journal articles to deliver a variety of useful information. The current searchable content is from all Springer journals. Metadata from other STM publishers will be included in the near future.

  Pricing and market intelligence service provider ICIS Pricing has launched the ICIS pricing daily Ethylene Asia report. The daily ethylene report provides CFR NE and SE Asia assessments, capturing deals and market conditions in both regions. The report includes updates on cracker developments and plant operating rates as well as market-moving events that affect prices.

  Wiley-Blackwell, the STM and scholarly publishing business of John Wiley & Sons, Inc., has announced the online launch of the Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs). The WIREs are unique hybrid publications that combine powerful features of review journals and online reference works, highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in research and education. The individual WIREs titles will cover a broad range of topics across the life, physical, clinical, and social sciences.

  Open access publisher BioMed Central has announced the launch of a new journal - Gut Pathogens. This brings the number of journals published by BioMed Central to a total of 200, covering a broad range of subjects in biology and medicine. Niyaz Ahmed, Francis Megraud and Leonardo Sechi will serve as the Editors-in-Chief of the journal. They will be supported by an internationally renowned Editorial Board.

  Scientific and medical information resources provider McGraw-Hill Professional and medical journal JAMA have announced the joint development and launch of a new state-of-the-art digital resource, JAMA evidence (http://www.jamaevidence.com). Updated monthly, the learning tool is designed to meet the needs of students, educators, and practitioners alike.

  BioSpace.com, an online source for life sciences, has added scientific research videos to its online community for life science careers and industry resources. Video content is paired with advertising options and made available through a partnership with the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE).

  Media industry forecast and analysis firm Simba Information has released a new strategic market report, according to which, the overall growth in scientific, technical and medical (STM) publishing fell a point and half to 3.8 percent in 2008 to approach $16 billion. The report provides an overview and financial outlook for the global STM publishing market based on specific research and analysis of the leading competitors and market performance in six content delivery categories.

  The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Digital Repository Issues Task Force has released its final report. The task force was charged with evaluating trends, contextualising repository activities among ARL libraries, and recommending leadership roles and activities for ARL. The report, “The Research Library’s Role in Digital Repository Services”, identifies key issues surrounding repository development; explores common strategies that libraries are using; analyses relevant environmental trends; discusses issues where ARL and its member libraries should focus attention; and recommends actions for research libraries to undertake.

  Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG) has announced that the eight Nature Clinical Practice journals will be rebranded Nature Reviews, effective April 2009, increasing the size of the Nature Reviews portfolio from seven to fifteen titles. Launched in 2004 and 2005, the Nature Clinical Practice journals cover the fields of cardiology, clinical oncology, endocrinology, gastroenterology & hepatology, nephrology, neurology, rheumatology and urology.

  Medical journal, the Medscape Journal of Medicine (MJM), owned by WebMD, will not publish new papers hence forth, it has been reported. MJM believes it can provide the most value to its members by focusing on its role as an aggregator and interpreter of medical information and not as the primary source for original scientific articles. The journal’s archives will remain live at Medscape.

  Database and research services provider Scope eKnowledge Center, a Quatrro Group Company, has achieved the milestone of delivering the 1 millionth abstract of patent documents for a major information and business intelligence provider. Further, the company recently met an additional client need by adding the capability to abstract non-English language patent documents, including French, German, Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

  Academic publisher Maney Publishing recently celebrated 25 years of publication of two leading journals - Materials Science and Technology and Surface Engineering. The journals are published by Maney on behalf of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3).

  STM publisher Elsevier has announced the launch of CiteAlert, a new free automated service to notify authors when their articles are cited in an Elsevier journal. It automatically notifies authors by e-mail soon after their work is referenced in a newly published article in an Elsevier journal. Authors are eligible to receive CiteAlert notifications if their article has been indexed by Scopus, the largest citation database of research literature.

  The WorldWideScience Alliance has announced that it will hold its Annual Meeting in Paris, France, on March 1, 2009. The meeting is being held in conjunction with the winter meeting of its primary sponsor, the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information (ICSTI).

  The British Library is hosting a digital conference called the Digital Lives Research Conference at the British Library in London February 9-11, 2009. The event, hosted by the Digital Lives Research Project and funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council, will examine how libraries and archives can support individuals who wish to organise, preserve and transfer their personal digital archives.

  The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced that global library cooperative Online Computer Library Center, Inc. (OCLC) will be the main sponsor of its 6th annual conference. The conference, scheduled for March 23-24, 2009, will feature discussions, debate and most of all, hands-on experience of technology which is bringing to life research, teaching and learning within higher education.

  E-book technology firm ebrary has announced that it has been chosen to conduct the 2009 E-book Think Tank at the ER&L09 Conference, held February 9-12, 2009, in Los Angeles, CA. In addition to covering successful innovations regarding e-books and electronic content, panelists will discuss how libraries can integrate electronic content across multiple vendors and platforms.

  Biomedical IT/text-mining Company Bioalma has reportedly launched a free search tool called novo|seek for the PubMed literature database. The company claims that the new tool provides intelligent search functionalities to help life scientists guide and refine their searches of biomedical literature. novo|seek is projected as ‘a dynamic information extraction system’ for searching biomedical records in repositories, particularly PubMed.

  The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) has announced the August 2009 launch of the new JISC Services Management Company. The move is part of JISC’s ongoing strategy to deliver world-class services to the further and higher education sector. Guy Lambert has been appointed as the new managing director to lead this new company.

  Information services provider McGraw-Hill Companies has announced the appointment of D. Edward (Ted) Smyth as executive vice president, Corporate Affairs and executive assistant to the chairman, president and chief executive officer of The McGraw-Hill Companies, effective February 16, 2009. He succeeds David Stafford who will rejoin the Corporation's Legal Department as vice president and associate general counsel.

  Non-profit scientific publisher Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP) has announced the appointment of Professor Nikolay Zheludev of the University of Southampton, UK, as Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Optics A: Pure and Applied Optics. Professor Zheludev will succeed Professor Colin Sheppard who successfully led the journal from January 2003.