~ Moving Beyond Unicode Compliance and Continuing Development Improves the
Searchability of Non-Roman Characters from Journals and Other Metadata ~

IPSWICH, Mass. — January 7, 2011 — Multilanguage searching in EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) resources such as EBSCO Discovery Service™ (EDS) and EBSCOhost® databases continues to expand, now supporting a growing list of languages. EBSCOhost has built upon existing Unicode compliance standards, which enable string match searching for 90 languages, to provide improved language-specific searching for more than 40 of the most common languages in EBSCOhost resources—a number that will continue to expand as development continues and content requires. These ongoing developments offer library patrons improved search results whether the search begins in EBSCO Discovery Service or EBSCOhost databases. With EDS and EBSCOhost, users can now even combine search terms in multiple languages in one search.

While continuing to make improvements to the non-English language searching that EBSCO currently supports, developers have also targeted the most difficult languages for significant improvements. Continued improvements to support multilanguage capabilities for non-Roman character sets include languages such as Arabic, Greek, Hebrew and Russian, and other languages using alphabets such as Cyrillic. Additional improvements also target searching in complex languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean—typically the most technically challenging languages for keyword searching.

The EBSCOhost user interface is currently localized into 23 languages meaning the interface’s labels and messages are translated into those languages. The EBSCOhost search platform has been expanded to now support search, discovery, and display of database and catalog content in more than 40 languages. The current list of languages includes (but is not limited to):

• Arabic
• Bahasa Indonesian
• Bengali
• Bulgarian
• Chinese, Simplified
• Chinese, Traditional
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Estonian
• Farsi
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hindi
• Hungarian
• Irish Gaelic
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Latin
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Malay
• Nigerian
• Norwegian
• Pashto
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Tagalog
• Thai
• Turkish
• Vietnamese
• Welsh
• Yiddish

Supporting multiple languages with non-Roman characters is a challenge for any online search service. For example, phrases or sentences in languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, are commonly written without spaces between words. Some languages contain multiple scripts per language and there are regional and historical variations to consider. EBSCO has created a system to handle these variations among character sets and now offers unparalleled searching in these non-Roman languages.

The Japanese language alone combines more than 2000 Kanji or Chinese characters, Hirigana and Katakana characters that represent syllables plus the Latin alphabet in Romanji and even foreign words which use their original characters or letters. These systems are used together or often in combinations so all that needs to be accounted for in each and every search. It is conceivable that a single user searching in Japanese, for example, might require the EBSCO search system to confront five completely different writing systems.

EBSCO developers have created the most robust search capabilities available for those languages including:

• Inter-searchability between Simplified and Traditional Chinese characters
• Japanese searches using New Kanji that are able to retrieve results containing both New and Old Kanji
• Hiragana/Katakana inter-searchability and word-matching that accurately retrieves compound words from parts of the word in Japanese
• Korean word-matching (accurately retrieve compound words from parts of the word)

The growth of EBSCOhost throughout the world, the continued addition of non-English content to databases and the advances in resources such as EBSCO Discovery Service, which extend searching beyond EBSCOhost resources, all require multilanguage search development. EBSCO Publishing Senior Director of Software Development Ron Burns says providing support for a growing list of languages has expanded along with the scope of content and coverage of EBSCO’s resources. “EBSCO knew it had to develop a custom solution that addressed the needs of a global and diverse customer base. Multilanguage searching is an essential element of the continued development of the EBSCOhost platform.”

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

~Let EBSCO “host” Your Catalog—EBSCO Publishing Now Enhancing the User Experience of Online Catalogs by using EBSCOhost® Search Functionality~

IPSWICH, Mass. — January 7, 2011 — EBSCO Publishing is leveraging its expertise in loading and enriching data along with the popularity of the EBSCOhost® interface to enable public libraries to use EBSCOhost as the front end of their online catalogs. Loading catalog records on EBSCOhost® allows public libraries to provide public library patrons with a better user experience using the features and functionality of EBSCOhost.

Public libraries have long been concerned with the usefulness of the interfaces through which patrons access the library catalog. With so much time and so many resources put into the development of a library catalog, the user experience is often criticized and antiquated. The goal of having catalogs available via EBSCOhost is to allow users to explore their library resources with ease based on what are now common search techniques. Adding library catalogs to EBSCOhost allows libraries to leverage the power of the intuitive EBSCOhost interface to present their catalogs to patrons via a familiar search experience already optimized for end users accustomed to Web searching.

An OCLC report: Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want indicates that end users expect their library catalogs to function like the websites and search engines they use everyday.
The OCLC study asked end users to choose the information that is most essential in catalog searches. Respondents indicated that the following items were most important:
• A list of libraries that own the item
• The ability to see what is available immediately
• The author
• Item detail
• Links to online content/full-text
Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want, OCLC, 2009 (End-user pop-up survey), p. 20.

Let EBSCO “host” Your Catalog

Searching catalog records using EBSCOhost is designed to provide easy access to catalog content including:
• Easy access to catalog content, including books, eBooks, audiobooks and other materials available from a given library, branch or union catalog

• The choice of straight-forward basic search options or robust advanced searching options with facets to narrow searches

• Up-to-date search experience through real-time availability checking, daily updates and the ability to limit results by location

• Catalog content—such as book jackets and subject headings—displayed in the result list

• Relevancy ranking ensures that keyword searches bring back appropriate results

• One-stop searching with direct links to related information

• Ability to brand the interface with library colors and logos to further market valuable resources and create awareness of services

• Option to create a profile that includes the library catalog along with EBSCOhost databases in a single search, at no extra cost

EBSCOhost was redesigned in 2008 with the end user in mind as described in the article The 21st Century Searcher: How the Growth of Search Engines Affected the Redesign of EBSCOhost.
EBSCO Publishing Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Michael Gorrell, says using the EBSCOhost interface to provide library catalogs is a logical step in the development of EBSCOhost. “While EBSCOhost offers a strong starting point for access and utilizing catalogs, we have put a lot into specifically developing the service not only to provide a more intuitive user experience, but to heighten the value of the catalog records through contextually related material. Now libraries can offer a catalog search experience that heightens the value and usability for patrons, while also bringing to light important content held by the library where users can take advantage of it.”

Adding links to other library resources is another way using EBSCOhost as the online catalog’s front end can help public libraries leverage their subscription content. Libraries subscribing to an EBSCOhost database such as Literary Reference Center™ would be able to provide links from the catalog records to the pertinent literary criticisms or author biographies while NoveList® Select subscribers would be able to add reading recommendations for millions of titles. Libraries will also be able to add related information such as book reviews, similar books, other books by the same author and links to resources such as Google Book Search and social media sites. The ability to brand the interface with library colors and logos allows libraries to further market their valuable resources and push their services to patrons.
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.
###
For more information, please contact:
Kathleen McEvoy
Public Relations Manager
(800) 653-2726 ext. 2594
kmcevoy@ebscohost.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Norcross, GA —January 7, 2011

Sage Library System of Eastern Oregon has gone live with Evergreen as their next generation ILS. Equinox Software, Inc oversaw the installation and migration of data from their previous system.
Sage Library System of Eastern Oregon consists of 63 public and school libraries. The University of Eastern Oregon library is also a member and the university provides hosting services for the consortium.
Karen Clay, Library Director at Eastern Oregon University, says, “We are very excited about the change to the new software. I think library users will get a better online experience. I am also pleased that after the transition, more of the public funds paid by Sage member libraries will be used for public purposes rather than being paid to a commercial software vendor.”
Equinox CEO, Brad LaJeunesse, says, “A consortium like Sage with very diverse libraries will certainly see the benefits of open source software. Public, school, and academic libraries all have different needs but the flexibility of Evergreen makes it an ideal system to allow every library to function at its highest level.”
About Evergreen
Evergreen is a robust, open-source integrated library system best known for its unique ability to meet the needs of very large, high-transaction, multi-site consortia. However, it has also proven equally successful scaled down for even the smallest libraries.
Since its debut in September 2006, the software has sustained the 280-plus libraries of the Georgia PINES consortium. Evergreen has earned acclaim and praise from users worldwide, including a Technology Collaboration Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Evergreen now supports over 700 libraries of every type-public, academic, special, and school media centers. Evergreen’s rapidly expanding community includes libraries across 4 countries including 18 U.S. states and 8 Canadian provinces.
For more information about Evergreen, including a list of all known Evergreen installations, see http://evergreen-ils.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
Evergreen and Koha are open source software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL. Evergreen and the Evergreen logo are trademarks of the Georgia Public Library Service.

DUBLIN, Ohio, January 6, 2011—The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded $350,000 to fund researchers and developers from OCLC, the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington and Zepheira LLC to continue work creating a more credible Web search experience based on the unique expertise, services and input from librarians worldwide.

The goal of the Reference Extract project is to make it easy to find credible information in the digital age. Researchers and developers are expected to have initial practical analysis and models of this “credibility engine” to share with the community in early 2011. Details of this work can be found through the Reference Extract home page at http://www.referencextract.org/.

Reference Extract is designed to capture Web site URLs and references that librarians and other experts use in answering questions. This information, including data used to determine the most credible resources, is harvested, processed and then made available through a variety of Web environments. For example, Reference Extract will use a Web-based architecture that allows information to be embedded into existing and new Web sites and applications.

The Reference Extract system links the questions of users to Web sites referenced by librarians and other experts as well as to the resources used to answer the questions. This approach varies from traditional Web search engines that represent only a single type of relationship—a Web page that points to another Web page. Reference Extract adds another relationship—linking to resources that librarians and experts point to and use.

“The best search engines are great for basic search, but sometimes the Web site results lack credibility in terms of trust, accuracy and reliability. So, who can help? Librarians,” said Dr. Mike Eisenberg, Dean Emeritus and Professor at the Information School of the University of Washington and a lead on the project. “If a librarian recommends a Web site, you can be pretty sure that it’s credible. Reference Extract will take hundreds of thousands of librarian recommendations and use them to help indicate to end users which site is credible. We’re extremely fortunate to have the MacArthur Foundation’s support bringing together the right team to start to actively develop and showcase this work.”

Zepheira, a professional services organization with extensive expertise in Semantic Web standards, Linked Data principles, Web architecture and collaborative solutions, is working with OCLC, Syracuse and Washington to create the piece of Internet architecture that will make it easy to embed credible information in Web-based experiences.

“The computational machinery behind the Web is today somewhat like a small child in a shopping mall; it has no mechanism for distinguishing what sources of information to trust,” said Eric Miller, President of Zepheira. “Building a general architecture that makes it easy to re-use credible information on the Web is one thing; populating this architecture with trustworthy information is another. Building upon librarians’ expertise and existing virtual reference service offerings is a powerful way of offering new means for accessing credible information in a range of different online experiences.”

Reference Extract leaders say the project will work best if the entire library community gets involved to create a Web-scale effort to support this cooperative innovation. QuestionPoint, the OCLC virtual reference service supported by a global network of cooperating libraries and an infrastructure of software tools and communications, offers a starting point for building the service. QuestionPoint has more than 6 million reference transactions collected in a central knowledge resource and more than 10,000 librarians worldwide participating collaboratively to test the principles and impact of such a dynamic utility.

“The only way this will work is by making a project of an entire community,” said Dr. R. David Lankes, Director of the Information Institute of Syracuse and Professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies. “Web searchers get to tap into the incredible skill and knowledge of the library community, while librarians will be able to serve users on a whole new scale.”

In November 2008, the planning and research phase of Reference Extract began through a $100,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation. The MacArthur Foundation has continued to fund the project for the pilot development phase. Reference Extract work follows on previous credibility work supported by the MacArthur Foundation, most notably the Credibility Commons.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The MacArthur Foundation supports creative people and effective institutions committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world. In addition to selecting the MacArthur Fellows, the Foundation works to defend human rights, advance global conservation and security, make cities better places, and understand how technology is affecting children and society. More information is available at www.macfound.org.

The School of Information Studies at Syracuse University
The School of Information Studies is The Original Information School in the nation. It is a leading center for innovative programs in information policy, information behavior, information management, information systems, information technology and information services. The nationally ranked school (U.S. News and World Report) has professional degree programs at the undergraduate and master’s levels and a research degree at the doctoral level. The school offers its master’s programs in campus and distance learning formats. For more information, visit www.ischool.syr.edu/about/.

The University of Washington Information School
Each year, the world creates more than 161 exabytes of new information—enough to fill 2 billion 80GB iPods. So much information can be overwhelming. Rigorous study of the users and uses of information conducted at the UW Information School helps answer important questions. By tackling key social and technical problems in the information field, the UW iSchool has become an important link between users of information and designers of information systems, connecting society with the information it needs. For more information, visit www.ischool.washington.edu/.

OCLC
Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 72,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat on the Web at www.worldcat.org. For more information, visit www.oclc.org.

Zepheira
Zepheira is a US-based professional services firm comprising leaders in web architecture, semantic web standards, and linked data principles used to achieve integration of data stored in multiple systems and formats across organizations. Zepheira experts have a long history of leading Internet standards initiatives and delivering solutions founded in open standards and open source software. These solutions apply social computing principles and focus on allowing communities to collaborate around the analysis and curation of their data. Zepheira's solutions benefit a broad range of industries including memory organizations, manufacturing, financial services, medical research and life sciences. The company is privately held and has offices in Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. For more information, visit: http://zepheira.com.

OCLC, WorldCat, WorldCat.org, QuestionPoint and Reference Extract are trademarks/service marks of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks/service marks of their respective owners.

Boston College Libraries Is One of the First in the Nation to Serve Students with a Mobile App

McLean, VA – Boston College Libraries has released an iPhone app that leverages LogiXML’s new library data reporting technology to help students find and use library resources. The iPhone app — built using LogiXML’s newly released product, Logi Insight for Libraries — allows students to view their library record, check the availability of books that were assigned for courses, and ultimately will allow students to search the library catalogue for resources. LogiXML, one of the fastest growing business intelligence providers, developed the technology with a number of leading academic libraries including Boston College.

“This iPhone app built with LogiXML is all a part of making library resources more accessible and available to students and faculty,” said Kevin Kidd, the Manager of Libraries for Boston College. “Once we installed the LogiXML software, we realized that it was very easy to use, and this is just the beginning of where we plan on going with it, since there are many apps you can use for purposes as calling with the International calling app West Palm Beach FL. So far we’ve gotten very positive feedback from users.”

Boston College worked closely with LogiXML as part of a charter partnership to develop Logi Insight for Libraries. The solution allows libraries to track and analyze the usage of library resources that cost millions of dollars each year to maintain, and is designed to help them create budgets that reflect the priorities of their patrons. Prior to the development of Logi Insight for Libraries, most libraries have struggled to access valuable operational data which is spread out across multiple sources. The iPhone application makes part of this data available to students and faculty.

“The rapid proliferation of mobile devices means that the old, outdated practice of charging customers per user will no longer be sustainable,” said Brett Jackson, CEO of LogiXML. “A big reason why LogiXML is expanding so rapidly is that, unlike our competition, both our products and our pricing model are aligned perfectly with the way customers like Boston College need to use our products.”

LogiXML will be showcasing the new Logi Insight for Libraries solution at the upcoming American Library Association Midwinter Meeting January 7th-11th in San Diego, California.

About LogiXML (www.logixml.com)
LogiXML was the first to market with next generation, web-based business intelligence software. LogiXML provides web-based dashboards, user-friendly reports, and on-demand analysis that enables both technical and non-technical users to make better decisions for their organizations. For more information, please visit www.logixml.com.