Gale and other content thru Microsoft Office

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

The snippet below may be of interest to readers of liblicense-l.  I was 
intrigued to see that certain content providers may make access easier 
through a direct relationship with Microsoft, via Microsoft Office.  
Presumably one would still need a content license (or a way to pay by the 
drink) from these vendors, but it's yet one more non-library facilitated 
pathway to electronic information.

Reproduced with permission from Outsell, Inc:  <www.outsellinc.com>

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Outsell's e-briefs          March 14, 2003
A Weekly Analysis of Events and Issues
Affecting the Information Content Industry
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IN THE NEWS
-----------

Microsoft Embeds Content Services in Office 2003

Factiva, Gale, and Alacritude (publisher of eLibrary) are among the
content vendors that will take part in a plan to offer content
services through the new version of Microsoft's Office 2003 Suite,
which is currently in beta. Users of Word, Excel, or other
applications in the Suite would be able to access the information
services from a "Research Task Pane" integrated into all of the Office
applications. Users will be able to highlight words or phrases, and
launch into a search and retrieve results without leaving the
application. This is the kind of integration with workflow that
XML-based services make possible. As a practical matter, it speeds up
a search launched from a document or a presentation. The deal also
gets the names of these services in front of millions of Office users;
that marketing and branding angle is likely the most important effect
of this partnership.

[SNIP]

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