Reconnecting with Your LinkedIn Connections
11th January 2013

The New Year means different things to different people, but if you're serious about professional networking then it should be a time when you reach out to your connections on LinkedIn to ensure they're not "gathering dust" and that you and your connections are continuing to provide value to each other. But how should you go about this? James Mullan provides some useful tips for LinkedIn novices as well as those more au fait with the tool.

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Easier Broadcast News Searches - Both Sides of the Pond
10th January 2013

The latest smart devices combine with increasingly sophisticated streaming technology to make it easier for us to consume broadcast news wherever we are. Our appetite for TV news online is increasing and watching news on televisions is declining in favour of a mix of computer-based devices. Creating easy access to archived broadcast news is now a vital part of information professionals' roles as searching video news becomes an important part of the search strategy.

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Yippy Acquires Highbeam to Boost Online Offering
9th January 2013

Yippy, the family and student-friendly search engine has acquired Highbeam, the academic and business information database. Highbeam had been part of Gale, and ultimately Cengage Learning, since 2008 and has become known as an affordable and reliable business information and research tool. Yippy acquired the Clusty search engine in 2010 and markets itself as a safe metasearch engine that filters what it deems to be unsuitable results.

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Upgrading to a Resource Discovery Interface
8th January 2013

Jonathan Jacobsen outlines just what constitutes a resource discovery interface and explains why many public and academic libraries have been adopting these interfaces over the past three to four years. He highlights some of the most popular commercial and open source systems and explains why smaller libraries and cultural organisations should also consider introducing them. The article includes useful pointers for selecting and implementing a discovery interface - there are many factors to consider.

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And Then There Were Two - Thomson Reuters' Acquisition of PLC
8th January 2013

What will Thomson Reuters' acquisition of the Practical Law Company mean for customers in law firms? Can they expect cost savings, or - bearing in mind that the company has fallen foul of European Commission antitrust rules recently - might TR become too dominant among legal information providers? Survey data from FreePint suggests that, after expenditure on the Big Three - TR, LexisNexis and PLC - there's currently little left over for content from other players such as Bloomberg or Wolters Kluwer.

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FreePint Report: Intranet Management
8th January 2013

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Source Update January 2013: What's Happening with Nexis?
7th January 2013

This month's additions and takedowns in Nexis, researched and compiled by Anne Jordan.

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Source Update January 2013: What's Happening with Factiva?
7th January 2013

This month's additions and takedowns in Factiva, researched and compiled by Anne Jordan.

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Wikipedia Beats Traditional Media at Breaking News?
4th January 2013

We seem to trust breaking news provided by the 140 characters allowed on Twitter more than the in-depth articles to be found on Wikipedia but should we revise our viewpoint? And should traditional media outlets include more input from amateurs in their reports? Penny Crossland considers crowdsourced news from Twitter and Wikipedia along with research from Brian Keegan, a post-doctoral research fellow in computational science who specialises in information flows of news output on Wikipedia and recently analysed the way that reports on the Connecticut school shooting developed on the site.

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News Needs and Preferences: Free and Fee
27th December 2012

The tension information managers feel when managing non-cost and fee-based resources for news content is again reflected in the results of the Survey of News Needs and Preferences 2012. Premium products continue to maintain an advantage with regard to search, targeting an analytics, but information managers are no longer in as strong agreement about the additional value they bring. Comparing results since 2009 shows important shifts in perceptions and expectations for information managers with regard to free and fee sources now and in the future.

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