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Cybertech has revised its web page for the purpose of becoming more topical and informative. Since our inception in 1995, much has happened in our industry and our company. We will attempt to keep you as up-to-date as possible as concerns our journal digitization. REVIEW BY "DREW" TABER SEPTEMBER, 1998 AMERICAN LANGUAGE REVIEW January Interview with Cybertech and TESOL Press Releases
(NEWS)(EDUCATION)(SFO)(0000) Cybertech's Academic Library-On-A-CD 08/21/97 MIAMI, FLORIDA, U.S.A., 1997 AUG 21 (NB) -- By Craig Menefee. A Miami, Florida start-up firm named Cybertech has tied together the Adobe Systems [NYSE:ADBE] Acrobat 3.0 publishing program, CD-ROM storage technology, and the entire historical contents of three educational journals to produce fully text-searchable reproductions that retain all the original format and graphics. The firm claims it is one of the best research tools ever invented. The searchable journal reproductions are the brainchild of Cybertech Enterprises, Inc. They got the idea when perusing about how time-consuming and unnecessary it is in the information age to trek repeatedly to the library and spend hours back in the stacks trying to locate a remembered journal article from years ago.Stated Cybertech’s CEO: "Futile trips to library stacks will be a thing of the past as more and more of these journals become available." He added, "To have a room full of journal issues available on one disc at your fingertips and desktop is a quantum leap for educators and researchers." For its first products, Cybertech has released all issues from 1967 to 1996 of the TESOL Quarterly, journal of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, and Ohio State's respected Theory Into Practice educational journal from 1962 through 1996.M. McGuinn, Cybertech's production manager, told Newsbytes the effort of scanning both journals and converting the images to searchable text consumed a full 2 years. It was the first large-scale project to use Adobe's ™Capture ™OCR (optical character recognition) for text conversion, he said. Capture is most often used for small-scale projects, though sources at Adobe said they know of some other large-scale projects now under way. McGuinn said he used Capture after trying "every other OCR package I could get my hands on" because it was best for retaining the original formatting and was easy to use with Acrobat 3.0 to produce PDF (portable document format) files. The CD-ROM comes with Acrobat Reader, McGuinn told Newsbytes. "Everything is retained - graphs, charts, and all. You can search it just like a text database, but we lock the index file to protect the rights of the researchers and the journals." During the conversion to digital form, McGuinn said he created more than 20,000 hyperlinks to take users directly from tables of contents or indexes to the referenced materials: "It's all right there, right at your fingertips," he said. He added: "The thing to realize is, this is a first of its kind. It's never been available before. Every time we show this to someone their mouth falls open. When you put it in front of them on a laptop, they always wind up saying it's the best thing they've ever seen." McGuinn said the project continues to expand as additional journals are being added. He said he hopes to hire outside editors to assist in correcting the unreliable results of OCR scanning. "I don't care what they say on the package cover," he remarked, "none of them get it completely right, not one of them is fast and they are all hard to learn and use." Cybertech charges $160 for TESOL Quarterly, $69. For TESOL Journal. Network-enabled versions are available for libraries and institutions and annual updates are available at low cost to users who also subscribe to the archived journal.A brochure describing the products is available at 888-506-9916 or by writing to Cybertech at 12334 S W 148 Terrace Miami, FL 33186 USA. (19970821/Press Contact: Mike McGuinn, Cybertech, 305-238-5673, e-mail ctech1@ix.netcom.com Reported by Newsbytes News Network: http://www.newsbytes.com ) REVIEW: September '98 Issue American Language Review Reviewed by Andrew "Drew" TaberSeptember '98 Review of TESOL Quarterly-Digital and TESOL Journal-DigitalIt was 5 AM and I needed to read "The Postmethod Condition: Emerging Strategies for Second/Foreign Language Teaching" for a morning class. I knew it was in the TESOL Quarterly vol. 28, No. 1, Spring 1994, but I also knew that the library was closed and I would not be able to get my hands on it before my 8:30 AM class. Luckily, I had possession of TESOL Quarterly-Digital on CD-ROM because I was planning to review it for "American Language Review." I had not yet used it, but it was straightforward to install and hypertext links quickly brought me to the article I needed. On the monitor of my PC the easily found article was difficult to read, but I soon noticed an icon on the toolbar that looked like a magnifying glass and then with a couple of clicks had easy-to-read large font. That was fine, but I still preferred to read from paper. So I clicked "print" and soon the 21 pages I needed were in front of me. After some yellow highlighting, I was prepared for class and did not have to stress about finding the article in the library. TESOL has released complete editions of "TESOL Quarterly" and "TESOL Journal" on CD-ROM. TESOL claims that these two products contain, "Every issue, article, table, graph, and footnote from 1967 to 2005 (TESOL Quarterly) or every article and classroom tip from 1991-2003 (TESOL Journal) in its original form and pagination." I can verify that the few articles, among thousands, that I examined were fully searchable with the Adobe Acrobat(TM) search engine that came with the CD-ROMs. I was able to Search by author or title and with various words or phrases, using Boolean logic. TESOL Quarterly-Digital costs $160 and TESOL Journal-Digital costs $50. They install on both Macintosh and PCs with at least 8 MB RAM, 20 MB of free hard drive space, and a CD-ROM drive. If you frequently use these two excellent resources they may be valuable editions to your CD-ROM library. "Drew" Taber University of Washington September Issue American Language Review Reprinted with permission
Key Points Adobe Acrobat’s built-in search and hyperlink features help ESL educators instantly find information in thousands of TESOL Quarterly articles. All issues of TESOL Quarterly—containing thousands of articles and graphs—are delivered as PDF files that retain the exact look and feel of the original paper copies. Acrobat Capture converted over 20,000 pages of TESOL Quarterly articles to platform and application-independent Adobe PDF files. ESL educators and researchers have a portable, fully searchable library with over 30 years of expert articles that can be viewed easily at home, work, or on the road. Publishers of academic journals can generate additional revenue by moving paper-based archives to Adobe PDF for distribution on CD-ROM or over the Internet. University libraries can replace aging paper-copy journals with online versions of the TESOL Quarterly that can’t be altered and won’t degrade over time.
Adobe Acrobat Gives English as a Second Language Educators Worldwide Quick, Easy Access To Over 30 Years of Articles from the Field’s Leading Journal The TESOL Quarterly, published by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), is the field’s most comprehensive source for scholarly articles and hands-on teaching techniques. Like most academic journals, TESOL Quarterly serves two major purposes: educating faculty and strengthening communication between the tens of thousands of professionals working in the field worldwide. "The journal is a lifeline for many people, especially those in outlying areas who work alone or in small groups," said Helen Kornblum, director of marketing and communications for TESOL, a non-profit advocacy and outreach organization.
Too much information, too many places Over the years, TESOL has amassed the most comprehensive information resource for ESL instruction, having written thousands of in-depth studies and articles since 1967. And while TESOL’s wealth of knowledge is its greatest asset, it can also be one of its largest burdens.
"We have over 20,000 pages of articles written by experts in the field," explained Kornblum, "but lacked a centralized, electronic system to manage information. If we had to reference a certain article and an editor remembered when it appeared, we were in luck. Otherwise, we spent hours paging through back issues. Our readers had the same problem, often wanting to reread an article but not knowing where it ran. And for them, finding information was even more difficult because they travel constantly and can’t keep older journals on hand."
20,000 pages in your pocket To solve those problems, TESOL teamed up with Cybertech Enterprises, Inc., a Miami, Florida document conversion firm specializing in the digitization of academic journals from paper to fully searchable, electronic Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. According to Cybertech, paper-based archival systems are inherently limited. "Journals deteriorate over time and searching through stacks of periodicals is both frustrating and extremely inefficient," they said. "Converting materials to Adobe PDF, in contrast, guarantees document integrity and gives researchers an accessible library right at their fingertips." Using Adobe Acrobat and Acrobat Capture, Cybertech converted every issue of TESOL Quarterly to platform and application-independent Adobe PDF files that were placed on a CD-ROM. Now teachers and students have a manageable resource—literally thousands of pages of articles from the past 30 years—to slip into their pockets and take on the road. In addition, university libraries can replace aging paper-copy issues with online versions of TESOL Quarterly that can’t be altered and won’t degrade over time. With the TESOL Quarterly CD-ROM, readers can locate exactly what they want in seconds by using Acrobat’s built-in search and hyperlink features. Adobe PDF also satisfies the strict demands of librarians, who require that electronic reference materials look exactly like the originals, with page numbers, fonts, photos, and graphics intact.
Educator’s dream come true ESL educators now have quick access to the field’s most comprehensive body of information.
Simply by entering key words or an author’s last name into the Adobe Acrobat Reader interface on the CD-ROM, users search thousands of pages of TESOL Quarterly articles in 140 Adobe PDF files. For example, faculty putting together presentations on cooperative learning can instantly find current research, as well as historical information on how teaching styles developed over time. According to Kornblum, the Adobe Acrobat-based CD-ROM takes the drudgery out of research, allowing people to focus on analyzing articles rather than the time-consuming process of finding information. "It’s not a dead archive," she noted. "It’s a complete, portable library. Every back issue is presented as a fully linked and searchable Adobe PDF file. Our members see the exact same journal they’re used to, except now it’s electronic—they can search a single document or across many to find what they need. It’s a dream come true."
New Opportunities for Publishers Digitizing periodicals also opens up new revenue opportunities for publishers. Most older journals simply sit in storage, very much like the ‘dead archive’ Kornblum described above. Subscribers sometimes call in to request a specific issue, but for the most part, periodicals remain untouched for years. "Suddenly, publishers have a new way to market information," Cybertech said. "A single issue of an academic journal from 1972 isn’t useful to most people, but a compact, searchable electronic library is a different story. By converting back issues to Adobe PDF files and placing them on a CD-ROM or making them available over the Internet, the value of older periodicals increases considerably." In addition to the TESOL Quarterly, Cybertech created a CD-ROM for Ohio State University’s Theory Into Practice academic journal, which has over 200 Adobe PDF files containing more than 163 journals written between 1962 to 1997. "Every article, table, graph, and footnote from the past 31 years is available—to read on-screen or print—in its original form and pagination," TESOL’s Kornblum concluded. " Cybertech, Adobe Acrobat, and Acrobat Capture allow us to offer an unbeatable service that benefits our members and us equally."
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