~EBSCO Discovery Service™ Selected New “One Search” Service Bringing Together Resources with Easy Linking Capabilities~

IPSWICH, Mass. —November 30, 2010 — The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) has selected EBSCO Discovery Service™ from EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) as the basis for One Search, the library’s single search experience. By looking closely at the available discovery options it came down to the interface, the ability to easily link to full text from within the results, customizability and the university’s experience with EBSCO.

The university was looking to upgrade its catalog at a time when discovery solutions were being introduced and quickly saw that discovery was the future of searching. UNCG librarians believe discovery services are a huge improvement over existing services—correcting the problems inherent in federated searching and bringing together multiple resources in a the way federation should have been designed to do from the start.

The Electronic Resources and Information Technology staff of UNCG created the first OpenURL Link Resolver so easy linking was especially important. University of North Carolina at Greensboro’s Assistant Dean of University Libraries, Tim Bucknall, says the school looked at other discovery options and EBSCO’s ability to easily link to full text via SmartLinks was a deciding factor. “Summon, for example, provides more of a ‘portal’ in which every link needs to go through a link menu meaning more clicks and an increased possibility of failure. Because EBSCO has SmartLinks and a full user experience with EBSCOhost®, using EDS means fewer clicks and better results for the end user than other discovery systems.” EDS provides users with a robust search experience providing detailed records and instant access to PDF full text or e-journal content.

Bucknall says the school’s working relationship with EBSCO, through both the Carolina Consortium and NC Live, made the decision to go with EDS easier. “EDS serves the needs of librarians whether they are reference experts looking to link together the rich resources in a library collection or systems experts looking for a solution that can grow with the expanding needs of the library. Working with EBSCO, we know the technology will continue to grow to enable libraries to include their OPACs and present the library catalog as a piece of a large and varied collection rather than the first stop for the user.”

In addition to its large database collection, UNCG will also add its Institutional Repository of faculty publications and dissertations plus a digital collection. UNCG will customize the One Search service to match school branding and colors. The university will also use the optional widgets in EDS to incorporate chat and Lib Guides functionality to add to the user experience and to direct users to subject clusters for the various majors offered.

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, NISC™, 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