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At the October 2002 CENDI meeting, Ms. Coe provided an update on the status of product development and new distribution mechanisms for traditional and new NTIS products. NTIS now offers the capability of searching 750,000 bibliographic records from 1990 forward to the public for free. Many documents are available for download without cost from the originating agency's web site. A Homeland Security Information Center (HSIC) has also been developed by NTIS. This Center includes information in three key areas: health and medicine; preparedness and response, safety training, food and agriculture; and biological and chemical warfare. The content for this site was created by searching and selecting sites from the existing NTIS collection of materials. An e-learning site has also been developed by NTIS to support e-government initiatives. NTIS provides the system and staffs the help desk. In addition to these efforts, NTIS hosts and provides operating support for the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) distance learning system. NTIS acts as a service provider for the IRS, Customs, Labor, and the Social Security Administration's "National Save for Your Future" site.
Information Access Alliance is a coalition of six leading library organizations in the US and represents the interests of these institutions as mergers among scholarly and legal publishers occur. The Web site contains information on the impact of publisher mergers on the market for STM journals and provides a link to a recently released white paper "Publisher Mergers: A Consumer-Based Approach to Antitrust Analysis."
This Brief summarizes the legislative proposals and reviews the pros and cons for the protection of noncreative databases. Noncreative databases are those that are based on industrious effort rather than on creativity. The proponents of database protection argue that such protection will enourage the creation and maintenance of databases; remove the gap in protection caused by court decisions and technological development; and facilitate competition with European database producers who are protected by a new database extraction right. U.S. database producers can benefit from the EU Database Directive only if they have a substantial economic presence in an EU member country or if the U.S. enacts reciprocal database legislation. Opponents against database protection argue that such protection will have a negative impact on science and basic research, will increase access costs, and that these proposals are anti-competitive and overbroad.
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