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    August 3rd, 2010LISWire aggregatorLISWire

    ~ Top-Ranked New University in the United Kingdom Chooses EBSCO Discovery Service™ ~

    IPSWICH, Mass. —August 3, 2010 — Bournemouth University has chosen EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing as its discovery solution—bringing a single search box to the library collection. Believing that single search discovery tools are essential for the continued success and viability of libraries, the university began looking at discovery options to replace its federated search system. Bournemouth selected EDS after a detailed review of the service, determining that EBSCO Discovery Service met the university’s long term plan for a single source for the discovery of all library resources.

    Bournemouth had been using a federated search system and saw it as a solution to some of the issues facing libraries, however, the challenges of discovery and content retrieval for end users remained. In order to fill the gaps Bournemouth turned to discovery solutions—evaluating the commercial services available, speaking with colleagues at other libraries and becoming a beta partner for EBSCO Discovery Service.

    Chris Spencer, library procurement and systems development manager at Bournemouth University says having a single source for the discovery of all library resources has long been an aspiration for Bournemouth University. “It is important to be able to provide a single source of access for all resource formats and for the diverse user groups within a university. For example, the integration of the Institutional Repository is an important requirement for our research community, whilst in the future it may be important to be able to provide guest access in a controlled way for the local community or alumni.”

    The university will maintain mySearch, the name of its outgoing federated search service for the new discovery tool. mySearch will serve as an important part of the library website bringing library content into the virtual learning environment (VLE) via direct links to EDS and quick search boxes. The library’s chat widget will also be added to EBSCO Discovery Service.

    Bournemouth will add more resources to the result list by pairing EDS with the optional EBSCOhost Integrated Search™ (EHIS). EHIS is a complement to EBSCO Discovery Service extending the discovery experience to external resources that are not made available for local harvesting. Bournemouth also has more than 20 databases on EBSCOhost® and uses EBSCO A-to-Z® and LinkSource® in addition to using EBSCO Information Services as its subscription agent.

    Spencer says the university’s relationship with EBSCO, both before and during the beta partnership, impacted the decision to go with EBSCO Discovery Service. “EBSCO has an understanding of our requirements and the suite of products we license integrates seamlessly with minimal administration. EBSCO’s position in the library services market and its established relationships with publishers were also important factors.”

    Spencer says he expects EDS to continue to develop and keep abreast of future changes in library services. Continued development of EBSCOadmin®, the administrative tool within EBSCOhost, is also expected to add to the existing customization options offered with EBSCO Discovery Service. Spencer also expects the EDS base index to continue to expand reducing the need for federated connectors.

    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 and hundreds of thousands of additional information sources from various source-types.

    Bournemouth University has been rated the United Kingdom's number one new university by The Guardian University Guide for both 2009 and 2010.

    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