New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2007), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 24 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2007.23924cab.001

New & Noteworthy

ProQuest and CSA Officially Join Forces

Cambridge Information Group (CIG) will combine its Bethesda, Maryland-based CSA subsidiary with Ann Arbor, Michigan-based ProQuest Information and Learning to create a new, privately held independent company, ProQuest-CSA. ProQuest-CSA will serve a combined customer base of more than 30,000 institutional customers and their users, providing them with access to high-quality information resources. The company will continue operations in both Ann Arbor and Bethesda.

CSA has been an innovator and leader in publishing and distributing quality abstracts and indexes for more than 30 years. A worldwide information company, CSA's products serve as a guide to researchers, faculty, librarians and students enabling discovery and aiding the identification, management and organization of quality information. CSA specializes in publishing and distributing, in print and electronically, more than 100 bibliographic and full-text databases and journals in four primary editorial areas: natural sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities and technology.

ProQuest Information and Learning is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and publishing information for researchers, faculty and students in libraries and schools. It is widely known for its strength in business and economics, general reference, genealogy, humanities, social sciences and STM content. The company develops premium databases comprising periodicals, newspapers, dissertations, out-of-print books and other scholarly information from more than 9,000 publishers worldwide. Users access the information through the ProQuest Web-based online information system, Chadwyck-Healey electronic and microform resources, UMI microform and print reference products, eLibrary and SIRS educational resources, and Serials Solutions e-resource access and management solutions.

CIG is a privately owned group of information services companies and educational institutions located around the world. CIG's operating companies include: ProQuest-CSA, R.R. Bowker, RefWorks and the Sotheby's Institute of Art. CIG President Andrew M. Snyder said, "We are excited to welcome the employees and customers of ProQuest Information and Learning. ProQuest-CSA will continue to serve its existing customers and users, and will begin pursuing a combined vision of offering an unparalleled information resource to the community of libraries, researchers, faculty and students."

www.csa.com

www.proquest.com

Library of Congress Receives Grant for Digitization Project

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington recently announced that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded the Library of Congress a $2 million grant for a program to digitize thousands of public-domain works, with a major focus on at-risk "brittle books" and US history volumes.

The project, "Digitizing American Imprints at the Library of Congress", will include not only the scanning of volumes, but also the development of suitable page-turner display technology, capability to scan and display foldouts, and a pilot program to capture high-level metadata, such as table of contents, chapters/sections and index. Past digitization projects have shied away from brittle books because of the condition of the materials, but "Digitizing American Imprints" intends to serve as a demonstration project of best practices for the handling and scanning of such vulnerable works.

"We are delighted to partner with the Library of Congress, the world's largest library, in this historic digitization effort", said Doron Weber, program director at the Sloan Foundation. "A significant number of books from the Library's great collection will now be available to anyone in the world in an open, non-exclusive and non-profit setting, thus bringing the ideal of a universal digital library closer to reality."

The Library of Congress' proposal includes digitization of works in the following categories:

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  "Brittle books" from across the Library's General Collection.

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  American history.

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  US genealogy and regimental histories. The former includes many useful county, state and regional histories, while the latter includes histories, memoirs, diaries and other collections from the Civil War period.

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  Six collections of Rare Books including the Benjamin Franklin Collection, selections from the Katherine Golden Bitting and the Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collections of Gastronomy, a selection of first editions from the Library's Rare Book and Special Collections Division, selections from the Confederate States of America Collection, the Henry Harrisse Collection of Columbiana, and selections from the Jean Hersholt Collection of Hans Christian Andersen.

• •

  Works of photography focusing on the technical aspects of photography and the artistic publications and biographies of photographers.

Digitizing American Imprints will utilize the "Scribe" scanning technology of the Open Content Alliance. Scanning is expected to begin within a few months after an initial startup period to establish logistics, staffing and resources.

LC Press Release: www.loc.gov/today/pr/2007/07-020.html

Oregon State University Releases LibraryFind Software

Oregon State University (OSU) has announced the first public release of the LibraryFind metasearch software, developed by OSU Libraries. LibraryFind is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License. This first public release, version 0.7, has a number of advanced features, such as (but not limited to):

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  two-click user workflow (one click to find, one click to get)

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  Integrated OpenURL resolver

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  two-tier caching system to improve search response time

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  Customizable interface

As this is a pre-1.0 release, there are still a number of features, functions and efficiencies that OSU plans to add to the software. They encourage involvement from others in the library community who are interested in working on an open source metasearch product. More information on LibraryFind, including information on how to download and run the software, is available from the LibraryFind website.

LibraryFind website: http://libraryfind.org

The Table of Contents by Really Simple Syndication: Automated Cataloguing of Journal Articles

Through an innovative JISC Funded project, Emerald Group Publishing Limited (Emerald), Talis, and the University of Derby have transformed the cataloguing of journal articles.

The Table of Contents by Really Simple Syndication (TOCRoSS) project was established to address an important requirement. Within the UK's academic institution libraries, cataloguing of journals and journal articles has, until this day, been unachievable. Working in partnership, Emerald, Talis and the University of Derby have successfully engaged with students and academics throughout the project. With TOCRoSS in place, e-journal table of content data can now be fed automatically into library catalogues without the need for cataloguing, classification or data entry. This improves the accuracy of records, saves time for library staff and delivers a more integrated OPAC experience to users.

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  The aims and objectives of the TOCRoSS project were to:

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  Extend the RSS 2.0 standard to encompass relevant components of standards such as

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  ONIX, Prism, etc. and publish the resultant document in the public domain.

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  Use the extended RSS standard to provide a greater level of automation of interoperability between the publisher and a library through the Integrated Library System (ILS).

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  Deliver open source software components and XML schemas, which will be freely available for the whole of the FE/HE library, publisher and ILS supplier communities.

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  Produce a demonstration implementation of a service utilizing the standards and software as part of the project.

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  Report on the impact of this project for an academic institution.

The project team decided to use RSS 2.0 as the standard on which to base the TOCRoSS feeds, as it is the simplest of the various RSS standards and it is easy to extend using XML namespaces. They worked with the NISO/EDItEUR joint working party for ONIX for Serials SRN (Serials Release Notification) to extend this standard to the article level (SRD or Serials Release Description). They then used this work to extend RSS 2.0 to deliver highly flexible and detailed information about journal tables of contents (TOCs).

An audit was carried out at the start of the project to gather user requirements. This included interviews with vendors (both content publishers and ILS suppliers) to discover their willingness/ability to deliver to this standard. It also included interviews with libraries to discuss their requirements from publishers, their current situation, and their perceptions of any barriers to prevent them moving forward.

Talis then developed a RSS feed listener server which passed the information to a processor for the ILS that then produced MARC records for each article. These MARC records were imported into a library OPAC (University of Derby). TOC data for 160 journals (3,000 articles) was imported into the OPAC, and user testing was conducted to assess the impact. Users could search the OPAC and discover records for journal articles (as well as the usual records for books and other materials) and link to the full text. Details of all the project work are included in the final report.

The project deliverables have been released under a GPL license and are available on SourceForge in the TOCRoSS project area. These include:

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  TOCRoSS Publisher Starter Kit – to assist other content publishers create TOCRoSS standard RSS feeds

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  TOCRoSS listener server source code and tools – to assist in developing content services based on the TOCRoSS feeds, whether for a library OPAC or any other application

TOCRoSS Final Report: www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/pals2/TOCRoSS_Final_Report22.pdf TOCRoSS Project at SourceForge: www.sourceforge.net/projects/tocross3

NetLibrary Announces New Purchasing Model for Audio Books

NetLibrary, a division of Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), Inc., has launched a new purchase model for its growing collection of eAudiobooks. Librarians now have the option to add individual titles to their collections from leading publishers including Random House, Blackstone Audio, and more to come. In addition, librarians will still have the option to purchase a complete collection of eAudiobooks from Recorded Books through an annual subscription.

Library users can search for, preview, download and listen to eAudiobooks through the NetLibrary platform via the internet. Users can download up to ten high-quality, portable eAudiobooks, 24h a day, seven days a week. eAudiobooks will download or play on any desktop or laptop running supported media software programs and operating systems. Users can also transfer favorite titles to a wide range of supported portable devices, including portable music players and portable media centers.

Users can gain access to the platform in a variety of ways, including through OCLC WorldCat, OCLC Open WorldCat, WorldCat.org, and directly from the NetLibrary platform.

To learn more about the new eAudiobook purchase model available through NetLibrary, and to view available titles, visit www.netlibrary.com/Librarian/Products/AbouteAudiobooks.aspx

Talkingtech Enhances Its Automated Messaging for Libraries with i-tiva 1.4

Talkingtech, the name behind interactive voice messaging technology for libraries, has launched i-tiva 1.4, a new way to help libraries communicate faster and more efficiently with their customers.

As the latest upgrade to its proven i-tiva product range, which integrates with all of the leading Library Management Systems, i-tiva 1.4 offers many enhancements to significantly improve the user experience. i-tiva 1.4 uses personalized telephone voice messages and SMS to give fast, friendly reservation and overdue notices to borrowers. i-tiva also gives borrowers 24-h access to library services enabling self-service renewal and empowering users to manage and increase their interaction with the library and its services.

i-tiva 1.4 employs the latest telephony and SMS technologies to channel information quickly and directly to home and mobile telephones, and circumvents the paper, printing, postage and processing costs associated with the traditional letter. The i-tiva Message system uses the latest text to speech technology and high quality audio recordings to send out personalized, timely, audio notifications of overdue and reserved items waiting collection. The greater immediacy and friendlier impression created by audio notifications can significantly enhance customer perceptions of the library service. SMS takes advantage of text messaging to deliver notifications straight to the borrower's mobile phone. SMS is a particularly effective way of improving the library's rapport with students, junior and teen borrowers, for whom the mobile phone is generally a preferred and familiar way of communicating. Research in this area also suggests that customers prefer the clear, friendly and less officious impression created by audio and text notifications, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.

i-tiva Connect uses touch-tone technology to deliver a range of telephone self-service options to borrowers. They are able to contact the library at any time, from any place, using their phone to successfully complete account checks and renewals. This convenience increases the appeal of library services, making it easier for customers to manage their loans. By utilizing Connect, self service is a reality for a greater proportion of the library customer base who not all have regular access to the internet.

Talkingtech's i-tiva technology is used by over 190 institutions globally and at least 80 in the UK including leading public and academic libraries.

www.talkingtech.com/

WorldCat Institution Registry

OCLC's new WorldCat Registry service is getting play in the blogosphere. WorldCat Registry gathers and distributes information about institutional identities and services – metadata about the institution itself: its identity, electronic services, relationships, staff contacts and other pertinent data that inform the processes and systems of an institution. The WorldCat Registry provides a comprehensive, extensible and secure Web platform for managing and disseminating this data. In the same way that WorldCat services use the cumulative power of aggregate information to enhance workflows such as cataloging and resource sharing, WorldCat Registry makes the administration of institutional data more efficient by moving it onto a networked Web application.

With WorldCat Registry enables:

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  Building a free profile that centralizes information sharing with technology vendors, electronic content or service providers, fellow consortium institutions, funding agencies and other bodies

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  Sharing the profile via a special encoded link that gives instant, read-only access to your most current data. RSS capabilities will be added in the near future

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  Automating vendor interactions such as the activation or renewal of a subscription information service, reducing the chance that such services will "go dark" when internal system parameters such as IP addresses change

WorldCat Registry information: www.oclc.org/worldcat/registry/

Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001273.html

Many Eyes: Interactive Visualization as a Collaborative Activity

Interactive visualizations help people see and exchange information in novel ways. Many Eyes, a project of the Collaborative User Experience Research group of the IBM Watson Research Center, exemplifies the design goal of transforming visualization from a solitary activity into a collaborative one. As stated on its web site, Many Eyes is a bet on the power of human visual intelligence to find patterns. The goal of Many Eyes is to "democratize" visualization and to enable a new social kind of data analysis.

The heart of the Many Eyes site is a collection of data visualizations. Anyone on the internet can view and discuss these visualizations, view and discuss the data sets underlying the visualizations, or create and publish powerful interactive visualizations from existing data sets. Registered users can also upload their own data sets, and track the visualizations and data sets they have contributed.

The creators of Many Eyes invite everyone to visit the site, play with the visualizations, upload data, share perspectives, and get conversations started. Already users are discussing a plethora of topics ranging from McDonald's nutrition data, to bioinformatics, to the Top 50 Most Popular Books on LibraryThing.

http://many-eyes.com/

Twenty-eight per cent of Online Americans Have Used the Internet to Tag Content

Just as the internet allows users to create and share their own media, it is also enabling them to organize digital material their own way, rather than relying on pre-existing formats of classifying information. A December 2006 survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project has found that 28 per cent of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7 per cent of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.

These people said "yes" to the following question: "Please tell me if you ever use the internet to categorize or tag online content like a photo, news story, or a blog post." The wording was designed to capture the growing use of tagging on sites such as http://del.icio.us/ (a site for sharing browser bookmarks), www.flickr.com/ (a photo sharing site), http://youtube.com/ (a video sharing site) and http://technorati.com/ (the blog search engine).

Tagging is gaining prominence as an activity some classify as a Web 2.0 hallmark in part because it advances and personalizes online searching. Traditionally, search on the web (or within websites) is done by using keywords. Tagging is a kind of next-stage search phenomenon – a way to mark, store, and then retrieve the web content that users already found valuable and of which they want to keep track. It is, of course, more tailored to individual needs and not designed to be the all-inclusive system that Melvil Dewey tried to create with his decimal-based scheme for cataloguing library materials.

Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, has prepared a report of the project's first survey on tagging, conducted in December 2006. The report includes an interview with David Weinberger, a prominent blogger and fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

PDF of the report: www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Tagging.pdf

Citizendium Opens its Doors to Public Input

The Citizendium, a project aimed at creating a new free encyclopedia online, announced in January 2007 that its pilot project had been a success, and that it was moving rapidly toward a public launch. For the first time, anyone can visit the website, create a user account and get to work within minutes. The project, started by a founder of Wikipedia, aims to improve on the Wikipedia model by adding "gentle expert oversight" and requiring contributors to use their real names.

Since the Citizendium pilot project began in November 2006, over 150 expert editors and 350 authors have joined, creating hundreds of articles, testing the concept and software, and participating in lively discussion on the future shape of the project. "We are demonstrating that experts and non-experts can work shoulder-to-shoulder on a wiki, using their real names, in a collegial atmosphere", said the project's Editor-in-Chief, Wikipedia co-founder Dr. Larry Sanger. "We didn't know whether this would work, but it has so far, quite well. We are learning that accountability has merit in the world of wikis." After the initial phase of carefully screening the project's first applicants, an automatic sign-up process has been implemented and participants will begin reaching out via global Internet mailing lists to professors, students, professionals and other contributors.

The Citizendium also announced its acceptance as a project of the nonprofit Tides Center, through which it may receive tax-free donations. Tides acts as an "incubator" of nonprofit organizations. The Citizendium intends to become independent at the end of 2007. The Citizendium has received a significant "start-up" grant from the Revson Foundation, as well as additional gifts from individuals, including a very generous gift from Craig Caviezel, a Salt Lake City philanthropist. The Citizendium has also launched an online fundraiser to request tax-free donations from the public to help make the project a reality. It plans to use new funding, or in-kind support, to obtain the server space and bandwidth needed to open the project up to the world. It is also in the process of hiring the staff members required to manage the rapid growth.

To participate or for more information, visit www.citizendium.org

LinkedIn Launches Answers Service to Give and Receive Expert Business Advice

LinkedIn is the world's largest and most effective business network. There are currently over nine million professionals on LinkedIn, representing all five hundred of the Fortune 500 companies, as well as a wide range of household names in technology, financial services, media, consumer packaged goods, entertainment, fashion, and numerous other industries. LinkedIn has over four million members in North America, more than three million in Europe, and a million-plus in Asia. On LinkedIn, professionals find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by their existing network of trusted contacts. Through referrals from the people they know, professionals can get in touch with the job candidates, industry experts and business partners they want to reach.

In January, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Answers (www.linkedin.com/answers), a first-of-its-kind answers service that leverages the power of the user's trusted professional network to receive business-related advice. LinkedIn Answers allows members to ask their business-related questions, and receive answers from their personal networks and the hundreds of thousands of experts in the LinkedIn network as a whole. The service gives the site's nine million users a quick and reliable way to get industry specific answers to business questions and to build upon their professional reputation by responding to questions relevant to their expertise.

The professional context of LinkedIn Answers encourages high quality, focused business content. Questions and answers are tied to professional profiles and the relationships between askers and experts, rather than anonymous usernames on other answer networks, enabling more credible responses. Questions can be targeted to specific members of one's network, as well as opening it up to the entire LinkedIn network of professionals from around the world, representing 130 industries. The service is free and currently allows users to ask ten questions a month.

By providing information seekers with valuable content, industry experts benefit from responding to business-related questions with quality answers. Experts receive an expertise credentials for every best answer they provide – this becomes part of their LinkedIn profile, informing other users that they are a proven expert on that topic. For those consistently able to provide expert answers, LinkedIn will promote their expertise to other users, providing an opportunity for consultants, contractors and other service provider to build social capital and market their services to professionals whose questions they answer.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/

Linked Answers: www.linkedin.com/answers

Cataloguing 2007 Conference Materials Available

Conference presentations from the Cataloguing 2007 conference held 1-2 February 2007 in Iceland are now freely available. The theme of the conference was Back to Basics – and Flying into the Future.

Speakers and topics included:

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  Barbara Tillett – Cataloguing Codes and Conceptual Models: RDA and the Influence of FRBR and Other IFLA Initiatives

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  Caroline Brazier: Cataloguing Policy and Practice 2007 and Beyond: a View from the British Library

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  Renate Gömpel: ICABS – A New Approach to Well Known Challenges in the Area of Bibliographic and Resource Control

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  Sigrún Hauksdóttir: A National Library System: the Goal of a Single Union Catalogue – Advantages and Disadvantages

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  Trond Aalberg: FRBR and MARC – Match or Mismatch

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  Erik Thorlund Jepsen: Structuring the Catalogue According to FRBR User Task. Utilizing Bibliographic Relationships through Collocation and Linking

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  John Espley: Differentiating Libraries Through Enriched User Searching; FRBR Implementation in Virtua

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  Judy Levi: Libraries in Transition: Offering New User Experience Built on Solid Ground

Conference website: www.congress.is/cataloguing2007/

Presentation materials: http://ru.is/kennarar/thorag/cataloguing2007/

Access 2006, OLA Super Conference Presentation Materials Available

Access 2006, the Canadian conference for information professionals, was held in Ottawa in October 2006. Podcasts and presentation materials of the speakers are freely available online. Speakers included: Dan Chudnov, Clifford Lynch, Roy Tennant, Paul Miller and Art Rhyno.

Access 2006 presentations and podcasts: www.access2006.uottawa.ca/?page_id=10

The Ontario Library Association's Super Conference was held in Toronto in February 2007. The conference theme was Solutions in a Changing Landscape. Super Conference offers highly specialized sessions for working professionals to come learn about the new, the cutting edge, the bleeding edge and the day-to-day – whatever provides insight. Speakers came from around the world and from within and without the library and information community to share their expertise and experience.

Conference materials: www.accessola.com/superconference2007/sessions.html

2007 Horizon Report Highlights Learning Technologies to Watch

The New Media Consortium (NMC)'s Emerging Technologies Initiative has released the 2007 Horizon Report. The annual Horizon Report describes the continuing work of the NMC's Horizon Project, and highlights six "Learning Technologies to Watch" for Higher Education. The 2007 edition is a collaboration between The NMC and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI), an EDUCAUSE program.

The six technologies projected to have significant impact on college and university campuses within the next five years include: User-Created Content, Social Networking, Mobile Phones, Virtual Worlds, The New Scholarship and Emerging Forms of Publication, and Massively Multiplayer Educational Gaming.

The NMC's Emerging Technologies Initiative focuses on expanding the boundaries of teaching, learning and creative expression by creatively applying new tools in new contexts. The Horizon Project, the centerpiece of this initiative, charts the landscape of emerging technologies and produces the NMC's annual Horizon Report.

2007 Horizon Report: www.nmc.org/pdf/2007_Horizon_Report.pdf

NMC website: www.nmc.org

Developing the UK's e-infrastructure for Science and Innovation

Maintaining the UK's world leadership in research and innovation requires a national e-infrastructure capable of meeting the needs of researchers in the digital age. Furthermore, there is a danger that without such an e-infrastructure, the development of the UK's science and research base and the growth of its knowledge-based economy will be seriously impaired. These are some of the findings of a major report published in February 2007 which sets out the requirements for a national e-infrastructure to help ensure the UK maintains and indeed enhances its global standing in science and innovation in an increasingly competitive world.

Produced by the Office of Science and Innovation (OSI) e-Infrastructure Working Group, the report – Developing the UK's e-infrastructure for science and innovation – calls for greater coordination between the key agencies in the field, greater investment in e-infrastructure and a "step-change" in "national provision and concerted action towards e-infrastructure development." Without such a "step-change", the report warns, the UK risks being overtaken by rapidly industrializing countries such as China, India and South Korea.

Made up of senior representatives from JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), the Research Councils, RIN (Research Information Network) and the British Library, the Working Group was formed in response to the Science and Innovation Investment Framework 2004-2014, published by the Treasury, the DTI and the DfES in 2004, to explore the current provision of the UK's e-infrastructure and help define its future development. While the current e-infrastructure has, the report finds, helped secure the current standing of UK research, supporting vital developments in many fields, such a position is not sustainable, it continues, without high-level coordination, political will and significant further investment.

The working group established six sub-groups which have each produced reports, also published in February 2007, in the following areas:

1. 1.

   Data and information creation

2. 2.

   Preservation and curation

3. 3.

   Search and navigation

4. 4.

   Virtual research communities

5. 5.

   Networks, compute and data storage

6. 6.

   AAA (authentication, authorization and accounting), middleware and DRM (digital rights management)

The overarching report presents these six areas as distinct but interconnected stages of a lifecycle, a lifecycle that is crucial, the report argues, to the future of research in the UK and to the research community's activities to engage with industry and apply its world-leading innovations to commercial use.

To access the report, please go to: www.nesc.ac.uk/documents/OSI/index.html

GPO Releases White Paper on Web Publication Harvesting Pilot Project

The goal of Web publication harvesting is to discover and capture newly identified online publications that are within scope of the US Government Printing Office's (GPO's) information dissemination programs. GPO's publication harvesting activities include planning for and discovering, making scope determination assessment, capturing, and archiving online US Government publications determined to be within GPO's scope. GPO is working to accomplish this using increasingly automated technologies being developed in conjunction with the Future Digital System (FDsys).

GPO has announced the release of a white paper on the results of the recently completed Web Harvesting pilot project to capture official Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publications in scope of GPO's information dissemination programs.

The white paper reports on the specific context of the results of the pilot, including a summary of analysis done on the work performed, an assessment of lessons learned, and planned future direction and next steps for further development of the harvesting function to be implemented during Release 2 of GPO's FDsys, currently scheduled for mid-2008.

As a first step in learning about automated Web publication discovery and harvesting technologies and methodologies, GPO contracted with two private companies on this pilot. GPO, Blue Angel Technologies, and Information International Associates (IIA) collaborated to develop rules and instructions that would determine whether EPA content discovered was in scope for GPO's dissemination programs. Three separate crawls were conducted on the sites over a six-month period, and harvester rules and instructions were refined and revised between crawls.

Automated publication harvesting will be a topic of discussion at the spring 2007 Depository Library Council Meeting. This discussion will include plans to assess, catalog, and provide access to in scope content acquired during the pilot.

Web Harvesting White Paper: www.gpo.gov/su_docs/fdlp/harvesting/whitepaper.pdf

Makau Launches New Series of Training Courses Formatted to Play on Your Video iPod

Makau Corporation, next-generation training partner and iPod training expert has announced the launch of its e-commerce training courses compressed and formatted to play on video iPod's.

According to Dan Smith, CEO of Makau Corporation, Makau has been anxious to deliver training courses accessible on the iPod. Makau's library of Desktop Training titles is one of the very best resources available for both new users and those wishing to enhance existing knowledge. With courses available on Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, Access, Project, and Publisher, Makau is changing the pace of the way e-learning is delivered.

Makau has made available Microsoft PowerPoint and Word 2003 level 1 training free for download to your iPod. Makau provides all levels of PowerPoint and Word training that teaches everything needed to master PowerPoint and Word, downloadable to the iPod, or available on DVD's, CD's, and online.

To download iPod training courses, visit: www.makaucorp.com/