~ Easy Access to the Library’s Valuable Collection, a Viable Alternative To Search Engines and Quality Metadata Reasons Why EBSCO Discovery Service™ was Selected ~

IPSWICH, Mass. —October 5, 2010 — Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine has selected EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) from EBSCO Publishing. The decision was made to answer key questions that a researcher faces when using a premium content collection from a library such as: Where to start? What's the best resource? How many unique "silos" of information do I need to search? EBSCO Discovery Service is designed to harvest metadata from both internal (library) and external (database vendors) sources, and creates a pre-indexed service of unprecedented size and speed—reducing silos and providing everything the researcher needs in one place.

Executive Director of Library & Educational Information Systems at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Etheldra Templeton, says students and faculty want fast, comprehensive searches that will mine the full range of the library’s licensed resources. “With discovery, users get a simple, Google-like search of all our quality electronic and print content. The robust metadata assures targeted, relevant search results and the pre-indexing from discovery assures fast retrieval.”

Templeton says EDS allows users to take advantage of its collection and find the valuable content only available in a library collection. “The library buys high quality, peer-reviewed and vetted information resources—far better than what an open Web search will find—but the sheer numbers of collections, vendors, and interfaces pose a problem for users. With EDS, we are able to provide one search box that exposes our collection to the user.”

Another important factor for Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine was the availability of a mobile interface with EBSCO Discovery Service. Having mobile access allows the library to provide its growing number of smart phone users with easy access, helping the college serve its users anywhere, anytime.

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.

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.

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