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    August 31st, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    ~ Familiarity with EBSCOhost® Platform, Strong Content Coverage and the Ability to Grow Leads Grant MacEwan University to choose EBSCO Discovery Service™ ~

    IPSWICH, Mass. —August 31, 2010 —Grant MacEwan University (MacEwan) has selected EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) as its library discovery solution. As a long time EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) customer, MacEwan was confident that EBSCO's familiar interface and deep content coverage would provide a strong foundation upon which to launch its new discovery service.

    Two years ago MacEwan was looking for a federated search system that would provide a single search interface for students. However, during the planning process, discovery tools eclipsed federated search as MacEwan's preferred option. Grant MacEwan University's Coordinator of Library Technology, Gordon Bertrand, says the university’s experience with EBSCO was a deciding factor. “We went in with a high-level of confidence in EBSCO’s ability to deliver content and make Grant MacEwan’s existing electronic resources accessible in an easy to use platform with strong support and development. As students, faculty and staff were already familiar with the EBSCO interface, MacEwan felt the integration of EBSCO's EDS service could be accomplished in a timely and efficient manner with the least impact upon its users.”

    Bertrand says MacEwan envisions EDS as a living project that will be capable of responding to the changing needs of the university moving forward. “EDS is a flexible tool and EBSCO is responsive to our needs. We know there is a demand for a more efficient search experience for the user and EDS allows us to provide a one stop search experience".

    The university is offering a number of resources in EDS via EBSCOhost Integrated Search™ (EHIS) a complement to EBSCO Discovery Service which extends the discovery experience to external resources that are not made available for local harvesting. MacEwan is also taking advantage of a number of the customizability options available within EDS to include value-added features such as widgets to Lib Guides, Meebo chat and RSS feeds.

    EBSCO Discovery Service creates a unified, customized index of an institution’s information resources, and an easy, yet powerful means of accessing all of that content from a single search box—searching made even more powerful because of the quality of metadata and depth and breadth of coverage.

    The Base Index for EBSCO Discovery Service forms the foundation upon which each EDS subscribing library builds out its custom collection. Beginning with the Base Index, each institution extends the reach of EDS by adding appropriate resources including its catalog, institutional repositories, EBSCOhost and other databases, and additional content sources to which it subscribes. It is this combination that allows a single, comprehensive, custom solution for discovering the value of any library’s collection.

    The EDS Base Index is comprised of metadata from the world’s foremost information providers. At present, the EDS Base Index represents content from approximately 20,000 providers in addition to metadata from another 70,000 book publishers. Although constantly growing, today the EDS Base Index provides metadata for nearly 50,000 magazines & journals, approximately 825,000 CDs & DVDs, nearly six million books, more than 100 million newspaper articles, more than 20,000 conference proceedings and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source-types.

    About EBSCO Publishing
    EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator, offering a suite of more than 300 full-text and secondary research databases. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). The company’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search™, Business Source®, CINAHL®, DynaMed™, Literary Reference Center™, MasterFILE™, NoveList®, SocINDEX™ and SPORTDiscus™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases such as ATLA Religion Database™, EconLit, Inspec®, MEDLINE®, MLA International Bibliography, The Philosopher’s Index™, PsycARTICLES® and PsycINFO®. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world. EBSCO is the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ a core collection of locally-indexed metadata creating a unified index of an institution’s resources within a single, customizable search point providing everything the researcher needs in one place—fast, simple access to the library’s full text content, deeper indexing and more full-text searching of more journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com.

    EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
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    For more information, please contact:
    Kathleen McEvoy
    Public Relations Manager
    (800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
    kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

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    August 30th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    August 30th, 2010
    CONTACT:
    Nathan Curulla
    (888) 900-8944
    sales@bywatersolutions.com

    The C.G. Jung Institute of San Fransisco Partners with ByWater Solutions for Koha Support and Implementation

    ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, CA. has partnered with them for the implementation and support of their official Koha integrated library system installation.

    ByWater Solutions will provide the Virginia Allan Detloff Library with a full Koha Installation, data migration, customization of their staff and public interface, 24/7 comprehensive support, and hosting services.

    Marianne Morgan of the Virginia Allan Detloff Library saw Koha as "an attractive option for having an affordable web enabled catalog for our users." When asked why she chose ByWater for the library's support needs, Marianne replied: "Several libraries in our local consortium have moved to Koha with ByWater recently, and all have had an excellent experience with them."

    Brendan Gallagher, CEO of ByWater stated: "We are delighted to have the opportunity to partner with the staff of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco for their Koha migration. By adopting Koha in their library, the C.G. Jung Institute is bringing enhanced functionality and greater support for the staff and patrons. "

    The Virginia Allan Detloff Library is targeted to go live by the end of 2010.

    About the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco:

    Analytical psychology is the theoretical foundation for Jungian analysis, a healing practice that serves the basic human need for psychological consciousness and growth.

    The C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco was founded to advance a viewpoint vital to the conscious, ethical practice and utilization of analytical psychology and to disseminate knowledge central to that end.

    The Institute trains psychotherapists to become Jungian analysts and maintains a collegial society to provide continuing education and ethical review for member analysts. It offers education and information to other professionals and the general public and promotes research about Jungian analysis and psychotherapy. It maintains the Virginia Allan Detloff Library and the Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism as educational resources.
    The Institute recognizes that the potential of wholeness and individuation depends on psychological development that in turn is supported or hampered by collective attitudes and laws. With this understanding, the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco supports in principle efforts that promote universal human rights. For more information please visit: www.sfjung.org

    About Koha:
    Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

    Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies--XHTML, CSS and Javascript--making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit
    www.koha-community.org

    About ByWater Solutions:

    With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: www.bywatersolutions.com

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    August 27th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    Norcross, GA — August 26, 2010
    The American Council of Learned Societies’ Humanities E-Book has gone live with Koha. Equinox Software is providing hosting services and performed the initial data migration.

    Eileen Gardiner, Director of ACLS Humanities E-Book, says, “ACLS Humanities E-Book (HEB) needed a secure and friendly environment in which to create and archive the MARC records that it distributes for its collection. The team at Equinox made some sound suggestions, and we were able to get our system up and running in just days. Koha turned out to be an ideal solution for HEB, and Equinox made it all happen quickly and easily.”

    Galen Charlton, VP for Data Services at Equinox, says, "I am pleased to welcome ACLS to the Koha community, and I take special note that they will be using Koha not as a traditional library but in support of their e-book MARC record distribution service. The flexibility of Koha and other open-source integrated library systems means that they are not just for physical libraries checking out physical books, but can be used and grow to support the virtual libraries of the world."

    About ACLS Humanities E-Book

    Humanities E-Book (HEB) is a digital collection of nearly 2,800 full-text titles offered by the ACLS in collaboration with twenty learned societies, nearly 100 contributing publishers, and librarians at the University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office. The result is an online, fully searchable collection of high-quality books in the Humanities, recommended and reviewed by scholars and featuring unlimited multi-user access and free, downloadable MARC records. HEB is available on- and off-campus through standard web browsers.

    About Koha

    Created in 1999 by Katipo Communications for the Horowhenua Library Trust in New Zealand, Koha is the first open source Integrated Library System to be used worldwide. The software is a full-featured ILS with a dual database design (text based and RDBMS) built to be library standards compliant. Koha’s OPAC, staff, and self-checkout interfaces are all web applications. Distributed under the General Public License (GPL), libraries are free to use and install Koha themselves or to purchase support and development service.
    For more information on Koha, please visit http://koha-community.org.

    About Equinox Software, Inc.

    Founded by the original Evergreen designers and developers, Equinox Software is a growing team of skilled professionals who provide services for Evergreen and Koha. These services include software development, consulting, legacy data migration, 24x7 technical support, and system hosting. Equinox also engages and supports a rapidly expanding open source community.

    For more information on Equinox Software, please visit http://www.esilibrary.com.
    Press contact: Corinne Hall, corinne@esilibrary.com, 770-709-5571

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    August 26th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    ~New EBSCOhost ®Feature Supports Reading & Comprehension Benefitting School and Public Library Databases ~

    IPSWICH, Mass. —August 26, 2010 — EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) has added text-to-speech (read aloud) support to EBSCOhost® databases, including its major school and public library databases, by embedding Texthelp Systems’ SpeechStream toolbar—a valuable benefit provided at no additional cost to the user. Users will be able to take advantage of this new feature with any full-text articles available in HTML.

    Text-to-speech support, already featured in EBSCO’s English Language Learner Reference Center™, allows users to read along while a human-sounding voice speaks the text on the screen. The support toolbar provides significant assistance to those for whom text-to-speech capabilities are highly valued such as English Language Learners, users with low vision, slight physical and/or learning disabilities, as well as eBook and PDA users.

    Texthelp Systems is the industry leader in literacy and language support technology for online learning. Recent studies have shown that students using Texthelp’s literacy support tools demonstrated significant improvements in both reading comprehension and writing performance. The President of Texthelp Systems, Jack Dolan, says SpeechStream delivers high quality reading support via the Web to improve access to information. “With the ever increasing demand to provide all users access to electronic resources when and where they need them, our partnership with EBSCO allows us to deliver the literacy support tools these users require.”

    Utilizing the text-to-speech feature via the EBSCOhost platform provides many advantages. Users have the ability to read-aloud by selected text, sentence, paragraph, or continuous reading with dual color synchronous highlighting (highlighting of the passage being read with a second color highlighting the specific word being read aloud at that moment). User control of read-aloud personalizes the learning experience for each user. Users can control reading speed as well as select between three different high-quality voices—American, British, or Australian. These options also enable teachers and professionals to incorporate the features as a tool for teaching English and reading.

    About EBSCO Publishing
    EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator, offering a suite of nearly 300 full-text and secondary research databases. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). The company’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search™, Business Source®, CINAHL®, DynaMed™, Literary Reference Center™, MasterFILE™, NoveList®, SocINDEX™ and SPORTDiscus™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases such as ATLA Religion Database™, EconLit, INSPEC®, MEDLINE®, MLA International Bibliography, The Philosopher’s Index™, PsycARTICLES® and PsycINFO®. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world. EBSCO is the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ a core collection of locally-indexed metadata creating a unified index of an institution’s resources within a single, customizable search point providing everything the researcher needs in one place—fast, simple access to the library’s full text content, deeper indexing and more full-text searching of more journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com. EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.

    About Texthelp Systems Inc.
    Texthelp Systems (http://www.texthelp.com) provides literacy software solutions for individuals, K-12 schools, higher education institutions, and publishers. The company’s mission is to provide high quality and innovative technology for persons of any age seeking to develop their literacy skills through the use of a computer. Texthelp’s products include: Read&Write GOLD, Fluency Tutor, Lexiflow, and SpeechStream. Read&Write GOLD is a customizable easy to use toolbar that seamlessly integrates with mainstream applications allowing students to access reading, writing, studying, and research support tools from within software programs they use everyday. Fluency Tutor is an online solution for developing and measuring oral reading fluency. Lexiflow and SpeechStream allow publishers to deliver digital talking ebooks, assessments, and online content with the support tools students need.
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    For more information, please contact:
    Kathleen McEvoy
    Public Relations Manager
    EBSCO Publishing
    (800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
    kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

    Christina Nawn
    Marketing Communications Manager
    Texthelp Systems
    (888)-248-0652
    c.nawn@texthelp.com

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    August 25th, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    The University Libraries and College Libraries Sections invite proposals for our 2011 ALA Annual Conference Program:

    Academic Librarian Lightning Round! Innovative New Roles

    Innovative College and University Librarians are increasingly assuming new academic, governance, professional, and service roles and responsibilities. By forging new pathways and partnerships, academic librarians can reassert the centrality of the library in their colleges and universities, and expand their expertise to benefit the core missions of their library and their institution. This fast-paced program features a variety of Lighting Talk presentations (also known as Pecha Kucha presentations) that dive right to the heart of the issue and engage the audience.

    RULES: 5 minute presentation, 20 slides, 15 seconds per slide

    EXAMPLES:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NZOt6BkhUg

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKe_cX5Ms_w&feature=related

    Proposals should include a title and 75-word description of the presentation. They can be submitted here:

    https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFZyb1MzVGtodWtTT0hHNEN...

    Proposals will be due SEPTEMBER 15, 2010.

    Notifications of acceptance will be made by November 1, 2010.

    For more information, please contact Catherine Doyle, cdoyle0@zimbra.naz.edu

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