We launch our new website

Well, it's been a long time coming, but we're pleased to announce the launch of our new website.  As you know, we were acquired by Baker & Taylor in December 2009 and re-branded when we moved to our Brookvale premises in May 2010.  But alas the website was not able to be refreshed at the time.  It had become old, tired, and hard to update.  So we decided to look at other options.....

One of them was Silverstripe, which was eventually chosen as the content management system for the site.  We worked with b-side design on the look and feel, and a few months later - TA-DA! - we have our new website.

www.bennett.com.au

IT Staff working on JBO took the opportunity to give it a facelift at the same time.  Gone are the old Bennett greens:

Replaced with the new palette

The website itself has progressed.  Here's a "shocker" from 2006. We were obviously trying to put a lot of information on the site, including bestsellers from one of the major book chains.  And there was even an online version of Suduku posted there! 

Over the years we've modified and updated, but nothing this major.  We're proud of the new site which is much cleaner, fresher, and professional:

For our marketing staff, the new website means they can add files and content quickly for our customers - whether it's a special promotion or a selection list.  Look closely - there's even the odd Look Inside the Book there and we'll be working with our publishing partners on more features as we go along.

You can read the official welcome from Mr Chris von Hinckeldey, our Managing Director here.  And if you would like to provide some feedback on the new website, we encourage you to fill in our online form here.

The blog itself will be moving to the new website - you'll find the new Bennett Blog at:

http://www.bennett.com.au/the-bennett-blog/

but we'll work out a way to keep you informed on blog posts on this existing site.  We thank you all for following us here on Blogger.  In a relatively short time we had over 14,000 views so we were obviously doing something right!  Let's hope we can continue doing that over at the new website.  Come and play with us there.

We launch a new partnership with ebrary

MEDIA RELEASE

September 7, 2011 – Palo Alto, CA, USA – ebrary ®, a leading provider of e-books and research technology, today announced it has partnered with James Bennett, a leading library acquisitions services supplier, to make e-books more readily and efficiently available to libraries throughout Australasia.  Libraries may now seamlessly integrate ebrary’s e-books into their acquisition workflow by ordering titles directly through James Bennett Online (JBO).

Additionally, ebrary has signed new publishing partner Australian Academic Press, a highly respected publisher in the Australian academic market.  ebrary also offers e-books from James Bennett’s top publisher list including Aboriginal Studies Press, University of New South Wales Press, University of Queensland Press, Wiley, Oxford University Press, Allen & Unwin, and many others. 

“As e-books are critical to scholarly research, we are pleased to offer our customers titles from ebrary, which include the vast majority of university presses and other esteemed academic publishers throughout the world,” said Nada Stanojlovic, James Bennett’s General Manager, Library Services & Business Development.”  We believe researchers will find great value in ebrary’s content as well as their technology that makes it easy to discover, use and share valuable information.”

“ebrary is a trusted and well-known brand in the academic and other library markets,” said Stephen May, Managing Director of Australian Academic Press.  “We are excited to make our e-books available on the ebrary platform through James Bennett and other global distribution channels, and we expect to see an increase in revenue as a result.”   

“The e-book market is growing rapidly in many regions throughout the world, so it is critical that we partner with leading distributors such as James Bennett as well as expand our publisher partnerships outside of North America to enhance our products and extend our reach,” said Matt Barnes, Vice President of Marketing at ebrary.  “We look forward to working with James Bennett to meet the specific needs of libraries in Australia.”


About Australian Academic Press (www.australianacademicpress.com.au)

Australian Academic Press is a niche academic publisher for the behavioral sciences, specialising in psychology. Established in 1987, the press publishes a range of books, evidence-based clinical treatment and prevention resources, scholarly monographs, and journals, for both the academic and trade markets.

About James Bennett (www.bennett.com.au)

James Bennett Pty Limited is a major Australian based library supplier and has been servicing libraries since 1964. Based in Brookvale, NSW., James Bennett offers a total package of products and services designed to complement all supply arrangements.  As a part of the Baker and Taylor group, James Bennett offers competitive pricing and supply time, with unmatched global resources and cutting-edge technologies.

About ebrary (www.ebrary.com)

ebrary is a leading provider of e-books and research technology to libraries worldwide. Founded in 1999, the company offers more than 273,000 e-books from over 500 trusted publishers under flexible models including subscription, perpetual archive (purchase), patron driven acquisition, and short-term loans. ebrary is the only e-book provider that enables customers to upload and integrate their own digital materials right from their computers with DASH!™ (Data Sharing, Fast) technology as well as apply cross-referencing with multiple online resources with InfoTools™ technology.  A member of the ProQuest® family of companies, ebrary is headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, USA.

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For more information please contact:

Rachael McDiarmid
Publisher Relations & Marketing Communications Manager
Tel: (02) 8988 5000
Email: jbmarketing@bennett.com.au

Ebrary, ebooks and libraries

James Bennett will shortly be representing ebrary in the Australasian marketplace.  As many of our libraries would know, ebrary has had a close working relationship with our parent company - Baker & Taylor - for years.  James Bennett has been working with ebrary on integration for the ANZ region for several months now and we're pleased to be adding another market-leading ebook platform to our stable.  Contact us today to discuss James Bennett selecting, profiling and purchasing ebrary titles on your library's behalf.  You can call your nominated Customer Co-ordinator or email our dedicated eResources team.

For those of you wanting to know what took us so long - well, it's been a challenge integrating ebrary into the James Bennett system.  This is not due to our close and long-standing relationship with our other ebook vendor, EBL, but due to the use of the ISBN as the primary identifier in the James Bennett database. Publishers generally use one e-ISBN across multiple ebook systems and platforms.  Our database links one ISBN to a vendor and our IT team has spent years working their way through all the e-ISBN issues including pricing, markets, special prices, loans/rentals, and more.  We won't go into details today but you can probably imagine our relief this project is nearly finished and we can represent many more digital products in future.

That said, we have represented ebrary's subscription product for public libraries for over 12 months.  That was easy to manage in the database and through our Standing Orders area. Contact your account representative for a demo or contact the eResources team to set up a trial for you.

So, want to know more about ebrary?  Here's just a snapshot!

Key features and benefits

• Works on multiple devices
• Contextual linking across multiple online resources with InfoTools™
• Unique ability to upload and integrate a library’s own digital content with DASH! and Software as a Service (SaaS) Shareable bookshelves that automatically store links
• Notes and highlights
• Multiple options for searching and navigating
• Automatic citations when text is printed or copied and pasted into Word or any text applications. Citations include an automatic URL hyperlink back to the source
• Ability to transform text into a hyperlink to a URL of the end-user’s choice
• Text-to-speech and other keyboard shortcuts to assist end-users with special accessibility needs

Platform Overview

• Available in multiple languages including English, Arabic, Chinese (simplified), French, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Swedish, and Turkish, with additional languages in the works
• Compatibility with a range of discoverability and technology services including the ProQuest platform, SerialsSolutions Summon™, Ex Libris SFX, Doody’s Core Titles, Eduserv OpenAthens, Shibboleth®, Blackboard, RefWorks, EndNote, Moodle, and moreFree on-demand MARC records
• COUNTER-compliant usage statics

Request a soft copy of the ebrary Pocket Guide for Academic Libraries and the Pocket Guide for Public Libraries, contact Marketing today! 

And of course, order your library's ebrary titles through your trusted library supplier, James Bennett.  We aim to provide you with the best from the digital world with our renowned - and superior - local service.

A formal media release will follow in due course.

Archiving and Recordkeeping

As many of our customers know, we have been representing Library & Information Science presses for many years.  These days they are managed by a separate division, a business unit that specialises in book distribution to the broader trade called Inbooks.  If you are after a library science book, fingers crossed they distribute it and have it in stock at our Brookvale facility.  And of course, James Bennett receives wonderful terms of trade from them which we can pass onto our library customers! 

With Information Awareness Month, the Inbooks team wanted to make sure they were part of the blog particularly when IAM has, according to the website, grown into a collaborative event between various bodies within the records/archiving/information management community including:

•     Records and Information Management Professionals Australasia (RIMPA)
•     Australian Society of Archivists (ASA)
•     National Archives of Australia (NAA)
•     Health Information Management Association of Australia (HIMAA), Institute for Information Management (IIM)
•     Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA)
•     Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV)

When they read about the first few bodies above, the Inbookers begged me to tell our blog readers about books we have just for those that work in archiving.  Seeing we love books from Facet Publishing, we thought why not!?

Here's a few titles you must have on your shelves for Information Awareness Month:

The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping: a reader

Things you need to know.  The book is:

- A clearly structured approach to developments in archives and record keeping  
- A timely reader that asks where the discipline has come from and where it must now go to remain professionally relevant in the 21st century.

The changes of the past few decades have occasioned a review of what it is that archives are doing as a discipline. These changes have come from several quarters: interdisciplinary engagement with the notion of the archive; technological developments, not least the advent of Web 2.0; and the information explosion and the growth of several allied disciplines, including records and information management. This timely reader asks where the discipline has come from and where it must now go to remain professionally relevant in the 21st century, by negotiating the complex boundaries and borders of the ‘state of the archive’, in terms of geographical borders and nationalities and disciplinary borders.

The book is divided into four primary sections covering the following key themes:

•     defining archives
•     shaping a discipline
•     Archives 2.0: archives in society,
•     archives in the information age: is there still a role for the archive professional?

This book offers a clearly structured approach to developments in archives and record keeping and will prove an invaluable resource for students following postgraduate training courses in archive administration as well as for archive professionals wishing to refresh and update their understanding of the profession.


ISBN 9781856046664 | Hardback | 256 pages | £49.95  
Log into JBO today for your library price

Archives: principles and practices

An authoritative handbook from an experienced archives professional.  Divided into four main parts addressing the contextual, strategic, operational and practical issues associated with creating an archival institution, the text covers everything the archivist needs to know: establishing principles, policies and procedures; managing day-to-day operations; caring for different types of archival materials; enhancing outreach and public access; and ensuring the growth and sustainability of the institution and its services.

Whether an institution has a collections orientation or whether it is primarily responsible for managing institutional archives in conjunction with an organizational records management programme, those responsible for records and archives management in the establishment and operation of an archival facility need specialist practical guidance.

The key chapters are:

• understanding archives
• the social and cultural context of archives
• the legislative and organizational context of archives
• the professional context of archives management
• the theoretical framework for archives management
• establishing a policy-based framework
• managing resources
• ensuring physical protection
• acquiring archives
• appraisal of archives
• arrangement of archives
• processing archives
• describing archives
• providing reference services
• enhancing access
• ensuring sustainability

The accessible language ensures that the fundamental principles and practices are outlined clearly for novice archivists and non-specialists; and experienced professionals, will find the work of immense value in validating or updating their understanding of archival operations. The issues addressed are relevant to archival practice in all developed English-speaking countries, and concepts in place in different parts of the world are examined in order to provide a global context.

ISBN 9781856046732 | Hardback | 256 pages | £44.95
Log into JBO today for your library price

Customers can request LIS catalogues from the Inbooks marketing team via email by clicking here. 

Information Awareness Month - May 2011

It's Information Awareness Month!  

As the website for the event says "the purpose of Information Awareness Month is to increase public awareness of the breadth of the information industry".  From the individual to a small business to global corporations, IAM holds a series of events focusing on maintaining good records and information.  By doing so information and people are connected.

As Australia's leading library supplier, James Bennett takes information seriously.  Afterall, our customers do!  And one of the ways we support the sharing of information in the library community is through our long-standing partnerships with library science publishers - Facet Publishing, Neal-Schuman, ALA, Libraries Unlimited to name but a few.  These LIS publishers produce a wide range of publications for library professionals covering collection building, information studies and reference, management and professional skills, communication, information technology, archives and records management.  They are also leaders in their field.

To help promote Information Awareness Month, we'd like to introduce a number of important publications to you each week.  What's more, for the whole month of May, these titles will be discounted for all James Bennett customers!  Special prices will be displayed on JBO so log-in or contact your Customer Co-ordinator (as these titles will be heavily discounted, no further discounts will apply).*
 


"All Librarians and Libraries have information policies.  The big issues like censorship, intellectual property, freedom of information, privacy and data protection, crowd our minds, but the process of decision making is the same at every level and in every context whether we are concerned with government secrets, advertising standards or our own children's reading and viewing habits." So says Ian Cornelius, author of Information Policies and Strategies from Facet Publishing.

Covering the key areas - contexts for information policy, globalisation and information societies, information rights and information policy, information policy sectors - the book helps the working librarian to justify every stock purchase and information access decision.  Helping to legitimate the library, the discussion of issues in this book will give librarians the context and arguments they need to identify and apply appropriate information policies and strategies.  Essential reading for library students, researchers, policy makers, and all LIS practitioners wishing to widen their awareness of the important issues surrounding information policy.

9781856046770 | 2010 | Paperback | 209 pages | Facet Publishing | OUR RRP $84.95 now on campaign! See JBO for this month's special price



Improving Students' Web Use and Information Literacy is a guide for teachers and teacher librarians but the audience is much wider than that.  A practical guide to using the web effectively in order to enhance learning and teaching, it also focuses on how to use Web 2.0 tools to create learning resources for students to develop them as reflective web learners as well as web users. The book is full of helpful tips and guidance, good practice, examples and more. In the chapter on Finding and Using Information on the Web the author provides information on search engines, features like Google Advanced Search, Google Images, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google News, Google Scholar and Google Books, information on metasearch engines, visual search engines, directories and effective search techniques.

James Herring is one of our bestselling LIS authors.  He is an internationally acclaimed authority on information literacy and ICT in schools.  James is also a lecturer in Teacher Librarianship at the School of Information Studies, Charles Sturt University, and teaches from his home in Scotland for most of the year.  

9781856047432 | 2011 | Paperback | 143 pages | Facet Publishing | OUR RRP $72.95 now on campaign! See JBO for this month's special price

Make sure you bookmark The Bennett Blog for updates throughout May.  And don't forget to follow us on Facebook  (we heard a rumour there will be a giveaway of LIS books on Facebook as part of both Information Awareness Month AND Library & Information Week) so "like" us today!

* Not a James Bennett account customer?  No problem! We will accept credit card orders.  Contact marketing for further information.  Make sure to mention The Bennett Blog and we'll pass on a special IAM discount on your order.  A small freight and handling charge will apply on direct orders.