Special Libraries Association Annual Conference Summary

I was at SLA's annual conference in Baltimore last week, June 11-15. A few things, not necessarily new, that I picked up:

- Journal of Biological Chemistry, Molecular & Cellular Proteomics, Journal of Lipid Research are available free from vol. 1 onwards
- Knovel, a collection of science handbooks, will be coming out with a structure search in the fall.
- ASTM is offering students free memberships. This allows them to download standards from ASTM for a dollar (probably USD) a standard (starting in the fall).
- The American Museum of Natural History has digitized their current and back issues of AMNH scientific series: http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/. This includes: American Museum Novitates, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History


- Ovid will eventually come out with their new merged Ovid/SilverPlatter interface some time in 2007. Compared to the Ovid interface, it looks like they are moving away from the "Map term to subject heading" strategy on their default search page.
- Springer is coming out with their eBook collection. All of their newly published print books, about 3,000 yearly will now be published concurrently as ebooks. The model is based on unlimited simultaneous use and is an "ownership business model", so each publishing year is a one-time purchase. Books will be available on the SpringerLink platform