NOVEMBER 04, 2011 (ALEXANDRIA, VA) — Electronic publisher Alexander Street Press introduces VAST, its new streaming video package for academic and public libraries.

VAST contains all the videos from 21 of Alexander Street’s individual collections, all cross-searchable, making it a one-stop, multidisciplinary solution for libraries. With more than 10,000 titles now and growing to 22,000 titles by 2013, the package has something for everyone, covering areas as diverse as science, architecture and performing arts.

Every video included in VAST is indexed to reflect important search elements of its unique discipline collection, allowing for both general searching of all videos and advanced, in-depth searching of specific disciplines.

“VAST lets the library serve every faculty member and patron because of the broad coverage,” said Eileen Lawrence, Vice President, Sales and Marketing. “With content from top producers like BBC, PBS, A&E, and Filmakers Library, and videos that have won Emmys and other major awards, VAST offers the best video. And it’s delivered the best way, with Alexander Street’s famous functionality, including custom clip-making and playlist tools, coursepack compatibility, and much more.”

Discipline collections included in VAST are: American History in Video, Area Studies Video Online, Art and Architecture Video Online, Business and Economics in Video, Counseling and Therapy in Video, Criminal Justice and Law in Video, Dance in Video, Education in Video, Ethnic Studies Video Online, Ethnographic Video Online, Health and Healthcare in Video, Humanities Video Online, Opera in Video, Philosophy and Religious Studies in Video, Politics and Current Affairs Video Online, Psychology Video Online, Science Video Online, Theatre in Video, Women’s and Gender Studies Video Online, World History in Video, and World Languages and Literature in Video.

Learn more about the VAST collection. Qualified faculty and library staff may request a trial and pricing information by emailing sales [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com.

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About Alexander Street Press
Alexander Street Press is an electronic publisher of award-winning online collections for scholarly research, teaching, and learning. Our products are available to libraries and educational institutions worldwide via annual subscription or one-time purchase. Learn more at http://www.alexanderstreet.com.

Contact for Media Inquiries / Reviewer Access:
Audrey DeGregorio, Marketing Communications Associate
Alexander Street Press
3212 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-212-8520 X116
adegregorio [at] astreetpress [dot] com (adegregorio [at] astreetpress [dot] com)

September 16, 2010 – NISO and UKSG are pleased to announce the addition of five new organizations as official endorsers of the joint recommended practice, KBART: Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (NISO RP-9-2010). This Phase I publication, published in January 2010, contains practical recommendations for the timely exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers.

The most recent organizations to endorse KBART are: Alexander Street Press; Annual Reviews; EBSCO Information Services; Innovative Interfaces, Inc.; and Royal Society Publishing. These companies join the American Institute of Physics, Ex Libris, OCLC, and Serials Solutions on the list of formal endorsers. All content providers, from major databases to small publishers, are encouraged to publicly endorse the KBART Recommended Practice by submitting a sample file to the KBART working group, at kbart [at] niso [dot] org (kbart [at] niso [dot] org). Endorsement is finalized once the file's format and content has been reviewed and approved, and the provider has made it publicly available (in line with the recommendations).

Sarah Pearson, E-Resources & Serials Coordinator at the University of Birmingham and UKSG co-chair of the KBART Phase II Working Group, stated, “The joint NISO/UKSG working group is very pleased that the uptake of the recommendations is gathering momentum, as evidenced by the growth of formal KBART endorsements. We have been actively working to promote the benefits of implementing the recommendations, and are thrilled to see that our message is getting through. We look forward to seeing more progress in the future.”

KBART has also made a contacts registry available for content providers and knowledge base developers to register their organization's information for downloading holdings metadata. The registry provides a list of contacts, URLs, and instructions relating to the transfer of e-resource metadata between content providers and link resolvers. Companies that have formally endorsed KBART are marked with a KBART logo on the registry.

KBART’s Phase II work is underway to develop a second recommended practice that will build on the Phase I recommendations. Knowledge base providers and their customers (primarily academic libraries) will benefit from provision of higher quality data by content providers. Publishers will benefit from accurate linking to their content and subsequently the possibility of increased usage.

For more information on KBART and the current Phase II work, visit www.uksg.org/kbart or www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart.

About KBART
KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) was set up following the 2007 publication of the UKSG research report "Link Resolvers and the Serials Supply Chain." Central to the efficient operation of the OpenURL is the knowledge base, which consists of data supplied by content providers including publishers. The report found that a lack of awareness of the OpenURLs capabilities and requirements is impacting the quality and timeliness of data provided to populate knowledge bases, and thus undermining the potential of the sophisticated OpenURL technology. UKSG partnered with NISO to commission the KBART Working Group to develop guidelines for best practice and provide educational materials. The core NISO/UKSG Working Group consists of representatives from libraries, knowledge base developers, publishers, intermediaries and other content providers, and is supported by a monitoring group of interested parties. Its Phase I report, KBART: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (NISO RP-9-2010), and guidelines have been widely reviewed and tested by a wider group of information supply chain stakeholders. For more information, visit www.uksg.org/kbart or www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart.

About NISO
NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO, please contact NISO at (301) 654-2512 or via e-mail at nisohq [at] niso [dot] org (nisohq [at] niso [dot] org).

About UKSG
UKSG exists to connect the information community and encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication. It spans the wide range of interests and activities of the extended scholarly information community of librarians, publishers, intermediaries and technology vendors. In a dynamic environment, UKSG works to:

• facilitate community integration, networking, discussion and exchange of ideas,
• improve members' knowledge of the scholarly information sector and support skills development,
• stimulate research and collaborative initiatives, encourage innovation and promote standards for good practice, and
• disseminate news, information and publications, and raise awareness of services that support the scholarly information sector.

For more information, please visit the UKSG website, www.uksg.org.

For More Information, Contact:

• Karen A. Wetzel
  NISO Standards Program Manager
  Phone: 301-654-2512
  Email Karen A. Wetzel

• Tracy Gardner
  UKSG Marketing Associate
  Email Tracy Gardner 

(SEATTLE, WA) – Alexander Street Press (ASP) has selected the winners of its 52-collection giveaway. One qualified library was selected from the applicants of each state—plus the District of Columbia and Canada—to win a year of free streaming access to Filmakers Library Online.

Filmakers Library Online contains more than 1,000 high-quality, issue-based documentaries and independent films from around the world—over 800 hours of content in all. Library Journal named the collection a 2011 Editor’s Choice Award winner, and Booklist declared it “highly recommended.”

The diversity of content in the database makes it ideal for libraries that are new to streaming video and looking to jumpstart their collections. Content is hand-selected to meet the needs of researchers and teaching faculty in a wide variety of disciplines: from race and gender studies, international relations, and criminal justice to the environment, bioethics, psychology, and the arts.

Alexander Street’s streaming video collections deliver many benefits for libraries: unlimited simultaneous users, nothing to circulate or shelve, and comprehensive indexing and transcription that allow users to easily locate content of interest, create clips and playlist to show later, and more.

Winning libraries were chosen from qualified entrants who applied through the ASP Web site. Winners will join an advisory panel, providing key thoughts and feedback throughout the year on how video resources are being used in their libraries.

A complete list of winning libraries can be found below.

For more information on Filmakers Library Online, or to request a free trial or price quote, please contact sales [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com.

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About Alexander Street Press
Alexander Street Press is an electronic publisher of award-winning online collections and video for scholarly research, teaching, and learning. Our products are available to libraries and educational institutions worldwide via annual subscription or one-time purchase. Learn more at http://www.alexanderstreet.com.

Contact for Media Inquiries/Reviewer Access:

Abby Horowitz, Marketing Writer
Alexander Street Press

3212 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-212-8520 x 313
ahorowitz [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com

The following libraries have been awarded one-year, no-cost subscriptions to Filmakers Library Online and have agreed to participate in Alexander Street Press’s advisory group.
 

January 7, 2011 (SAN DIEGO, CA) -- Electronic publisher Alexander Street Press announced today that its streaming music service for libraries and the education market has nearly tripled in size following the addition of close to 400,000 new jazz, world, and American music recordings.

“This is the largest single content release we’ve done to-date,” said Alexander Street’s senior music editor Liz Dutton, who explained that system-wide enhancements, process improvements, and search functionality upgrades have made the site’s rapid—and ongoing—growth possible. Said Dutton, “We expect to offer access to more than 750,000 recordings by mid-2011.” Other site enhancements include ten times faster search speeds; sound quality, which has increased from 64 kbps to 320 kbps for most recordings; and simplified search results display. Since mid-2010, the site has also supported on-the-go access for most mobile devices.

The range of new recordings across Music Online reflects the publisher’s commitment to providing affordable educational access to the highest quality recordings and record labels. Said Dutton, “Music education programs—and audiophiles served by public libraries—want and need not just a vast repertoire, but access to the very best performances, performers, and the highest quality recordings.“

New recordings were released across many of the Music Online databases, including 46,000 tracks into American Song, 61,000 tracks into Jazz Music Library, and 132,000 tracks into Contemporary World Music. Prominent highlights of the latest release include seminal live performances by Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Muggsy Spanier, and the Mills Brothers as well as albums from Sarah Vaughan, Otis Grand, Ike & Tina Turner, Eddie Dean, Bill Haley, Gene Autry, Rudy Vallee, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, Willie Nelson, the Highwaymen, and James Brown. Record labels include Storyville Records, JSP Records, The Montreux Jazz Label, Jazz Unlimited, Daptone Records, JSP Records, Acrobat, and GNP Crescendo. The publisher plans another major release of 57,000 new classical recordings from EMI in late January.

Also new to Music Online are close to 140,000 popular music recordings—available only to subscribers of the entire Music Online: Listening suite—featuring pop, punk, musical theatre, hip-hop, and country recordings from twentieth-century artists such as the Sex Pistols, Chicago, a Flock of Seagulls, Tanya Tucker, Liberace, and Rod Stewart. For a complete listing of all new content added to Music Online, visit http://muco.alexanderstreet.com and select “What’s New.”

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About Music Online*
A cross-searchable, online suite of music listening, score, and reference resources and the most comprehensive online resource available for the study of classical, jazz, world, and American music, Music Online includes five individual “Listening” collections: Classical Music Library; Jazz Music Library; American Song; Smithsonian Global Sound® for Libraries; and Contemporary World Music. With this update, Music Online now includes more than 690,000 recordings; more than 24,000 musical scores; 400-plus opera and dance videos; and more than 66,000 pages of music reference content.*

About Alexander Street Press
Alexander Street Press is an electronic publisher of award-winning online collections in the humanities, social sciences, performing arts, and music. Alexander Street online collections are available to libraries and educational institutions world-wide. For more information or for media access to any of the Alexander Street streaming video collections, visit http://www.alexanderstreet.com or contact Meg Keller at mkeller [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com ( mkeller [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com).

Reviewers, media contacts, libraries, and university faculty may request extended access to Alexander Street online collections by emailing marketing [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com ( marketing [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com).

*recording counts represent data available for the North American market. For worldwide data, email sales [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com (sales [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com)
 
Contact Details
Meg Keller, Director of Marketing
Alexander Street Press
3212 Duke Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
703-212-8520 x 116
mkeller [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com (mkeller [at] alexanderstreet [dot] com)
http://www.alexanderstreet.com